Courage

"If you're not afraid, your not courageous."

This was a statement from Rick Warren that really challenged me. Over the last year I have learned that if anything leadership is based on courage. I have found in church planting for the first time in my life the fear of leadership. Will people follow? Will it cost me my career? How will I make a living to put meals on the table if this doesn't work? The temptation then is to settle into a maintenance mode. To go along with the people in your church rather than lead them. To make the easy choices rather than the hard ones. But that is not leadership.

The courage to lead is the courage to take some early losses, make adjustments so that you win when it counts. Rick made his point poignantly by relating the issue of his own experience after a year of church planting and coming to the point that he passed out in the pulpit. He was literally afraid to get up and preach again. He took his family away to their in-laws house in Phoenix and he went into the desert for a time of prayer and figuring out what he should do. God told him to stop trying to build a church and instead build the people of God. God took care of building the church. He acknowledged that early loss as important for his ultimate success. His advice was to take your losses early, so you could win when it counts. He said, "After all, it doesn't matter if you went undefeated the whole season if you lose in the Super Bowl."

Great way to make a point.

--Ben