Sunday, March 11, 2007 - The Growing Pains of Leadership - Part 2

Today was the 2nd part of last week's service as I spoke on The Growing Pains of Leadership - part 2, which is week 7 in our Heroes series. The focus was on Acts 15 and the growth of the churches in Jerusalem and Antioch and the growth of the apostolic leadership. I am so excited to see leaders recognize that in order for growth to happen, we must accept the painful changes that come as we embrace change - and there are three ways to do this:

• Break your box – You aren’t the “end of all knowledge” about how God works. The way God has worked in your life is not the way He works in everyone else’s.

• Reject the romantic – Fall out of love with moments in time, “the way we were” things. While it is nice to remember things as they were, don’t live in the past. The way you found this church when you came is not the way it will remain. Don’t fall in love with moments, fall in love with momentum.
  

• Hang up your hang ups - - Embracing change is painful because we have to release our likes/dislikes.

The last growing pain of leadership is to keep learning - embrace that God's ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:10-11). It was a good message for our aspiring leaders to hear.

But there were other things beyond the message today that greatly excited me - three people raised their hands that they prayed with me to invite Christ into their lives, two of who were first time visitors. I did not receive any info on them, but they were friends of men and women from our church that I will follow up with.

The music was also phenomenal this week - energetic and leading people to experience God. I thank God for the work our praise band does every week in preparation. For attendance, we had 148...