Joseph G. Smith

EAST JAMAICA CONFERENCE ST. THOMAS ELDERS’ MEETING

May 16, 2015

EFFECTIVE CHURCH LEADERSHIP FOR THE 21st

Century

Pastor Joseph G. Smith, PhD, JP

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KEY THOUGHT

If Seventh-day Adventist leaders do not deliberately and consistently

focus on the MISSION of the Church we will drift away from being “fishers of men to being

keepers of the aquarium”. Joseph G. Smith 2

Objectives of Presentation

TWO Purposes/Objectives

To sensitize Church leaders regarding the critical role leadership plays in advancing the mission of the Church.

To assist Church Leaders in Preparing themselves to Effectively Lead God’s Church in these Challenging Times

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Definition of Terms

“Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives”, (Yukl, 2006).

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Definition of Terms

“Leadership is at least as much an art as a science” (Bennis, 1989, p. 145).

Spiritual leadership is moving people onto God’s agenda –

Blackaby & Blackaby (2011, p. 36).

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Imperative of Leadership

Summoned forth by human wants, the task of leadership is to accomplish some change in the world that responds to those wants. Its actions and achievements are measured by the supreme public values that themselves are the profoundest expressions of human wants: liberty and equality, justice and opportunity, the pursuit of happiness (Burns, 2002, p. 2).

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Imperative of Leadership

Everything rises and falls on leadership

(Maxwell, 1995, p. 6)

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Why does the SDA Church exists?

To make disciples in preparation for Christ’s second coming (Matthew 28:18-20)

A church without a purpose and a mission will eventually become a museum.

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The early Adventist pioneers were driven by a sense of the prophetic mission (based on Daniel and Revelation) and an overwhelming sense of urgency to advance that mission.

That same vision, based upon the same prophecies, also provided the mainspring of early Seventh-day Adventist mission.

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“From their beginning Sabbatarian Adventists never viewed themselves as merely another denomination. To the contrary, they understood their movement and message to be a fulfilment of prophecy. They saw themselves as a prophetic people with God’s last-day message to take to the entire world before the harvest of the earth (Revelation 14:6-12)….

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It is the loss of that very understanding that is robbing so much of present-day Adventism of any real significance and meaning. The eroding of that vision slows church growth and will eventually transform Adventism from a dynamic movement into a monument of the movement and perhaps even a museum of the monument of the movement” (Knight, Lest We Forget, p. 368).

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TESTIMONIES Volume 9, pp 19-20

“In a special sense Seventh-day Adventists have been set in the world as watchmen and light bearers. To them has been committed the last warning for a perishing world. On them is shinning wonderful light from the Word of God. They have been given a Work of the most solemn import – the proclamation of the first, second and third angels’ messages. There is no other work of so great importance. They are to allow nothing else to absorb their attention.”

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CURRENT CHALLENGES

Relativistic, individualistic and materialistic society

Every person who comes into the church has his or her own agenda

Every member of the church has both a mission and a ministry: the tasks of church leadership is to ensure that each member is occupying and fulfilling both his or her mission and ministry (Luke 4:17-19; Matthew 28:18-20; John 17:18)

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Role and purpose of church leadership

Move people onto God’s agenda.

Vehicle – Two types of leadership best fits Christianity

1. Transformational leadership (Burns 2003)(Nehemiah)

2. Servant leadership model – Jesus

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The Church has the Answers

The church has answers to the most pressing questions

people are asking (Blackaby & Blackaby, p. 15).

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The Church has the Answers

Psychologist Steven Pinker states that “People everywhere strive for the ghostly substance called authority, cachet, dignity, dominance, eminence, esteem, face, position, preeminence, prestige, rank, regard, repute, respect, standing, stature, or status” (in Ginsberg, p. 74).

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The Church has the Answers

Every man (MALE) is driven by three things, says Patrick Morley in Pastoring Men:

1. A cause to live for

2. A companion to live with

3. And a God to live for

Cause, companion and conviction constitute the sum total of a man’s existence. Joseph G. Smith 17

The Church has the Answers George Knight writes:

“One of the greatest strengths of Adventism is the lifestyle and doctrinal commitments that set it apart as a unique movement. It stands for something biblical, something true, something worth living for. That is part of the attraction of the Adventist message for people who are looking for the answer to life’s most perplexing problems” (Knight, Lest we Forget, p. 366).

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Five Essential Ingredients for Effective

Church Leadership for the 21st Century

1. Vision

2. Industry

3. Perseverance

4. Service

5. Discipline

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Vision

Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18)

Vision is an act of seeing …, an imaginative perception of things, combining insight and foresight. But more particularly, it is … a deep dissatisfaction with what is and a clear grasp of what could be. It begins with indignation over the status quo, and it grows into the earnest quest for an alternative.

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Vision

Vision is divine discontent.

George Bernard Shaw wrote: “You see things as they are and ask ‘why?’ But I dream [of] things that never were, and ask ‘why not?’ ”

Examples:

Moses 3

Nehemiah 2

Paul – gospel to the Gentiles Joseph G. Smith 21

“Nothing much happens without a dream. And for something great to

happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every achievement

is a dreamer of great dreams.”

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Industry

The world has always been scornful of dreamers.

“Here comes that dreamer!” Joseph’s older brothers said to one another. “Come now, let’s kill him…Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams” (Genesis 37:19).

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Industry

The dreams of the night tend to evaporate in the cold light of the morning.

So dreamers have to become in turn thinkers, planners, and workers that demand industry or hard labor.

Men and women of vision need to become men and women of action.

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Industry

Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of electrical devices, defined genius as “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

All great leaders find this statement to be true.

Behind their apparently effortless performance there lies the most rigorous and painstaking self-discipline.

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Industry

It was not enough for Moses to dream of the land flowing with milk and honey; he had to organize the Israelites into at least the semblance of a nation and lead them through the dangers and hardships of the desert before they could take possession of the Promised Land.

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Industry

Similarly, Nehemiah was inspired by his vision of the rebuilt Holy City, but first he had to gather materials to reconstruct the wall and weapons to defend it.

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Industry

The dream and the reality, passion and practicalities, must go together.

Without the dream, the campaign loses its direction and its fire; but without hard work and practical projects, the dream vanishes into thin air.

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Perseverance

Thomas Sutcliffe Mort was an early nineteenth century settler in Sydney, Australia, after whom the “Mort Docks” are named. He was determined to solve the problem of refrigeration, so that meat could be exported from Australia to Britain, and he gave himself three years in which to do it. But it took him 26

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Perseverance

He lived long enough to see the first shipment of refrigerated meat leave Sydney, but died before learning whether it had reached its destination safely. The house he built in Edgecliffe is now Bishopscourt, the residence of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. Painted twenty times round the cornice of the study ceiling are the words “To persevere is to succeed.”

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Perseverance

Perseverance is an indispensable quality of leadership.

It is one thing to dream dreams and see visions.

It is another to convert a dream into a plan of action.

It is yet a third to persevere with it when opposition comes.

Opposition is bound to arise.

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Perseverance

But a true work of God thrives on opposition. Its silver is refined and its steel hardened.

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Perseverance

A lesser man would have given up and abandoned them to their own pettiness. But not Moses.

He never forgot that these were God’s people by God’s covenant, who by God’s promise would inherit the land.

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Perseverance

In the New Testament, the man who came to the end of his life with his ideals intact and his standards uncompromised, was the apostle Paul. He, too, faced bitter and violent opposition. He had to endure severe physical afflictions, for on several occasions he was beaten, stoned and imprisoned. He suffered mentally too, for his footsteps were dogged by false prophets who contradicted his teaching and slandered his name. He also experienced great loneliness.

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Perseverance

Towards the end of his life he wrote “everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me” and “at my first defense…everyone deserted me” (2 Timothy 1:15, 4:16) Yet he never lost his vision of God’s new, redeemed society, and he never gave up proclaiming it. In his underground dungeon, from which there was to be no escape but death, he could write: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). He persevered to the end.

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Service

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42-45).

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Service

The emphasis of Jesus was not on the authority of a ruler-leader but on the humility of a servant leader. The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not a power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.

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Service

Why did Jesus equate greatness with service?

The answer relates to the intrinsic worth of human beings, which was the presupposition underlying Jesus’ own ministry of self-giving love, and is an essential element in the Christian perspective.

If human beings are Godlike beings, then they must be served—not exploited, respected —not manipulated.

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Discipline

Every vision has a tendency to fade. Every visionary is prone to discouragement. Hard work begins with zest can easily degenerate into drudgery. Suffering and loneliness take their toll. The leader feels unappreciated and gets tired. The Christian ideal of humble service sounds fine in theory but seems impractical.

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Discipline

The final mark of leaders seeking to follow Christ is discipline, not only self-discipline in general (in the master of their passions, their time and their energies), but in particular the discipline with which they wait on God. They know their weakness. They know the greatness of their task and the strength of the opposition. But they also know the inexhaustible riches of God’s grace.

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Discipline

Many biblical examples could be given.

Moses sought God, and “the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.”

David looked to God as his shepherd, his light and salvation, his rock, the stronghold of his life, and in times of deep distress “found strength in the Lord his God”

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Discipline

The apostle Paul, burdened with a physical or psychological infirmity which he called his “thorn in his flesh”, herd Jesus say to him, “My grace is sufficient for you”, and learned that only when he was weak was he strong.

But our supreme exemplar is our Lord Jesus Himself.

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Discipline

It is only God who “gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. For even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:29-31

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Discipline

It is only those who discipline themselves to seek God’s face, who keep their vision bright. It is only those who live before Christ’s cross, whose inner fires are constantly rekindled and never go out.

Only those who know and acknowledge their weakness can become strong with the strength of Christ.

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CONCLUSION

Effective Christian leadership for the 21st century consist of five main

ingredients - clear vision, hard work, dogged perseverance,

humble service and iron discipline.

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Ellen White on Mission

“If we would humble ourselves before God, and be kind and courteous and tenderhearted and pitiful, there would be one hundred conversions to the truth where now there is only one” (Testimonies, vol. 9, p.

189).

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QUESTIONS/COMMENTS

Reference

Blackaby, H., Blackaby R. (2011). Spiritual Leadership. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group.

Burns, J. MG., (2002). Transforming Leadership. New York, NY: Grove Press.

Knight, G. R., (2008). Lest we Forget. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association.

Ginsberg, B (2011). The Fall of the Faculty. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Maxwell, J. C., (1995). Developing the Leaders Around You. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

Stott, John (1990). Decisive Issues Facing Christians Today. Grand Rapid, MI: Fleming H. Revell (pp. 367-380).

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