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Implementing a Theology of Work - Lesson 6

Different Styles for Training Leaders

In this lesson, you will learn about the importance of training leaders and the resources available to help you in this process. The Bible serves as a guide, and Jesus is the model for effective leadership. You will discover the difference between position and influence, and how influence is the key factor in making a lasting impact on others. The lesson also explores the impact of spiritual leaders on personal life and the need for training spiritual leaders for different spheres of society. You will be introduced to different training styles that cater to various personalities, and the importance of embracing your uniqueness instead of comparing yourself to others. Lastly, you will learn about 12 different styles or types of assistance for emerging leaders, starting with establishing new believers in their faith.

Kent  Humphreys
Implementing a Theology of Work
Lesson 6
Watching Now
Different Styles for Training Leaders

I. Introduction

A. Importance of training leaders

B. Resources for training leaders

II. The Bible as a Guide and Jesus as a Model

III. Position vs. Influence

IV. Impact of Spiritual Leaders on Personal Life

V. Training Spiritual Leaders for Different Spheres of Society

A. Different training styles for different personalities

B. Preparing people for various spheres of influence

VI. Types of Assistance for Spiritual Growth

VII. Comparing to Others and Embracing Uniqueness

VIII. 12 Different Styles or Types of Assistance for Emerging Leaders

A. Establishing new believers in their faith


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  • In this lesson, you learn about the importance of developing and supporting workplace leaders, likened to shepherding horses, and how to guide them to make a positive impact in their workplaces while growing spiritually. You'll explore the challenges of managing their independent spirit and potential pitfalls, and the significance of trust, control, and focus in their development.
  • Through this lesson, you will gain insight into God's purposes for us in the workplace, emphasizing the importance of relationships and the four key words the Holy Spirit highlights: Kingdom, Relationships, Community, and Transformation, helping you become an effective ambassador for Christ in your workplace.
  • This lesson teaches you how to naturally proclaim Christ in the workplace, emphasizing that the core mission is to love God and love people. You will discover the importance of evangelism and discipleship as ongoing processes, and how incorporating biblical values in the workplace positively impacts employees and business growth.
  • This lesson helps you understand and overcome obstacles to workplace ministry, emphasizing the importance of personal transformation, serving the community, and representing Jesus in daily life.
  • In this lesson, you will learn about Jesus' approach to work and leadership by examining the five things He did: telling everyone the good news, teaching many to understand God's principles, training some to do the work, equipping a few to reproduce, and modeling a relationship with the Father. These principles can help guide your own approach to work and leadership in various settings.
  • In this lesson, you gain insights on the significance of training spiritual leaders, using the Bible as a guide, and Jesus as a model. You will understand the value of influence over position and how to train leaders for different spheres of society. Embracing your uniqueness and learning about 12 styles of assistance for emerging leaders will equip you to effectively develop others in their spiritual journey.
  • In this lesson, you gain insight into the vital process of connecting church leaders and workplace leaders, fostering personal relationships, and understanding the six key responsibilities pastors have toward workplace leaders to create a thriving spiritual community and extend the church's influence beyond its walls.
  • Walking through open doors teaches you to bring Christ's kingdom to the workplace, developing relationships and fostering unity. Learn the four steps to successful workplace ministry, including prayer and responding to opportunities, while offering support during times of crisis.
  • In this lesson, you learn the significance of character in leadership, focusing on God, and the importance of building trust through relationships. You'll also explore the value of people and their gifts and understand how to hold others accountable and empower them as a spiritual leader.
  • This lesson highlights the importance of finishing well in your spiritual journey, emphasizing the need for a heart for God and an undivided heart, while providing biblical examples of those who succeeded in doing so, encouraging you to strive for the same in your own life.

With Kent Humphreys. Using the mental picture of a shepherd caring for his sheep, Kent Humphreys likens the shepherd to a pastor and the congregation to sheep, into which a few horses (strong business leaders) have been let loose. It is hard to understand these horses, who are just as capable of causing chaos with their strength and of standing quietly off in a corner of the pasture by themselves. How is a pastor to understand and equip these potentially powerful creatures to be part of the “flock” and then to go out into their workplace to minister and influence it for God? The answer to that question is the focus of this book. Taking the example of how Jesus handled His “horses”, a simple plan is offered that can build bridges between pastors and workplace leaders, impacting both the church and the community.

Recommended Books

Shepherding Horses, Volume I (A Pastor's Guide to Equipping Workplace Leaders)

Shepherding Horses, Volume I (A Pastor's Guide to Equipping Workplace Leaders)

Kent’s most well-received book yet! This 50-page guide to Understanding God’s Plan for Transforming Leaders is a must-read for any pastor and the strong and driven...

Shepherding Horses, Volume I (A Pastor's Guide to Equipping Workplace Leaders)
Shepherding Horses, Volume II (A Pastor's Guide to Equipping Workplace Leaders)

Shepherding Horses, Volume II (A Pastor's Guide to Equipping Workplace Leaders)

In this book, Kent encourages pastors to invest in the incredible resource they have - the business leaders in their churches. The book is full of practical and possible...

Shepherding Horses, Volume II (A Pastor's Guide to Equipping Workplace Leaders)

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Implementing a Theology of Work
Dr. Kent Humphreys
cm120-06
Different Styles for Training Leaders
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:05] Welcome to this session. And this session we're going to be talking about different styles, different methodology for training leaders. I think you'll find it very helpful and helpful and different ways that we can equip leaders, our source for this for this session. There's a couple of chapters in shepherding horses Volume two, that you'll want to get in. Those resources are available that along with the original Shepherd in horses and in the walking through open doors will be available as resources for you for this course. And you'll find that very helpful to be able to review and maybe add some things to what we're talking about. And we're also recommending there in Your Resource Guide is a mentoring DVD by Stacy Rinehart and some other resources in the mentoring area, his website mentor link. And you might want to look at that website mentor link dot org and those things will be helpful to you. So let's talk about how do we train spiritual leaders. The Bible is our guide. The Bible is always the course book. The Bible is our guide. Jesus is our model. If you want to train another leader, go to the Bible. You can go to the best books on leadership that you can find, and none of them will be as helpful as the Bible sitting right there on your desk. And Jesus is our model. And so the principles are the same. Whether you're a pastor leading the church, whether you're a leader in the workplace, running a firm, leading the firm and management of a firm, the principles for leadership are the same. We're going to be sharing some of those principles with you on leadership in a later session. But today we're specifically talking about how do we train spiritual leaders and how do we train the person who can influence others spiritually.

[00:01:54] One of the things that we need to understand as we go into this process is the possession position is not necessary in order to impact others. In fact, Jesus wants you to understand that position is not the important thing. Influence is the important thing. So position is not necessary, but it's normally used by God to put you in a position whether you're over someone or under someone in the training process. But the ultimate goal is to have influence in both the breadth and the depth of other lives over the long term. So God has been teaching me over the last few years. I've been in a position of leading a large company. I've led a worldwide ministry of business leaders. But God says, Can't. You're at the stage of life at 63 years of age that I want you to understand that it's about influence. It's about influence that you have with your peers, the leaders of other organizations, churches, businesses, Christian organizations, leaders of the next generation. So it's about influence. What is your influence over others? Who are the people who have most impacted your life as a spiritual leader? Let me just give you just a second to write down. Just write it down on a piece of paper in front of you. Who are the two or three men or women who are the two or three men or women who have most influenced your life, your spiritual life? I think about my own life, particularly when I was in my twenties and thirties. I wrote down in over a period about ten, 12 years. God brought 12 different men into my life that dramatically impact on my life. My father, who disciple me in the areas of business and money.

[00:03:39] My father today is my father is 88 years of age. He has Alzheimer's. There's five of us kids. He doesn't know me by name. He doesn't know that I'm a son. Over the last couple of years, his mind has deteriorated. He had a very bright mind. But for many years, my dad, when he came to Christ, actually, I didn't know him when he came to Christ as a young boy. But when he was my father and he met a man who disciple him in 1956 from the Billy Graham team who had a dramatic, dramatic impact upon my dad. My dad was basically a businessman who was going broke in business. He had wanted to make $1,000,000 by the time he was 40, and by that age in his late thirties, he wanted to get out of debt sometime the rest of his life. But my father had a dramatic encounter with Christ as this man brought him into a more personal, intimate relationship with Christ. As my dad began to spend time with Christ every day, not just a church member, but a follower of Jesus who passionately followed Christ. And He influenced my life dramatically, particularly in the area of money and in business. Then there was a business man who was not like my dad. He was a wealthy business leader. He was a man in our church. He was the opposite of my dad. My dad was really nearly broke. The Southern man was wealthy and this man took a group of 12 men. We met every Saturday morning at 6:00 and he disciple me. He showed me in my twenties and thirties how I could stand up before a group of people and teach a Sunday school class or lead in a conference.

[00:05:14] And 30 to 40 years ago, he gave me the courage to stand up like this and help others in their walk with Christ. And so he equipped me. Then there was a Bible teaching pastor who was later a member of our church, just been a Bible teacher and a pastor all of his life. He loved the Scriptures, could stand up and quote chapters from the Word of God. And he was a teaching pastor who gave me a love for the Word of God. There was a business leader who modeled to me that not only could I disciple men and women, but I could do that in the context of the marketplace and that I could integrate my faith in work. And he was a tremendous encourager. I never spent a lot of time with him. He was more of a what we call a passive role model that I watched his life over a period of years. And he was such a model to me. My own father in law was a physician. He modeled to me servant leadership. He was the most gracious, kindly, merciful man I've ever known. He died at an early age in his fifties of a heart attack. But before he left and went to be with heaven, God had him modeled to me a man who loved people. He was such a mentor to me. And each of those men had an impact on my life. On another six or seven others Of the 12, about five or six were either pastors or in professional ministry, and five or six were business leaders. All of them had a tremendous impact upon my life. In early age, one was a seminary professor doctor having an impact on me, on how I looked at the Word of God and how I looked at myself as a lay person.

[00:06:48] So you and I want to train spiritual leaders for every area of our society, not just for the church or the religious area, but for every year, for the for the sphere of influence and business and for those in the media, for those in government, for those in education, for every sphere of society, we are to train spiritual leaders for each of those areas. So we need different training styles for different personalities to fit their needs, their time of life, their position, and also our gifting. Because this will throw you maybe, but you know, we're not all the same. We're not all the same. And one of the problems that we have is we begin to compare ourself to others. And I'm sure that you wouldn't do that, but I did that a lot in my twenties and thirties. I compared myself to other people and so I compared myself with a guy who had different gifts of evangelism or leadership or whatever. That gift was discipleship, and I wasn't good at those areas. So we need to prepare people for each one of the seven mountains. One of the things you may want to go to is one of the seven mountain type sites. But for the church, for the family, education, government, entertainment and sports, the media, the marketplace, some people have broken it up over eight or ten spheres of influence or 12 spheres of influence, but whatever you want to call it, when we go out to our community, we need to prepare people in whatever it takes to impact each of those mountains, those spheres of influence for Jesus Christ. So how do we do that? There's different types of assistance that we can give to another person to help them grow spiritually, and that is dependent about a set upon their needs and upon our skills and giftedness.

[00:08:34] And we're going to be covering those different types with you. So my testimony was I compared myself to others. I looked at this guy and he had the gift of evangelism. Nearly everyone he talked to came to Christ. Another guy would get up every morning and meet with men individually, discipling men and women. Another guy was a leader. If he walked into this room, we would follow Mathews, a dynamic leader. Today, 30 years later, still in business and in the church. And so my testimony is for probably several years, two or three or four years, I wasted a lot of my life trying to be like someone else. Have you tried to do that? Have you as a pastor, have you as a leader in the marketplace? Have you tried to be like someone else and copy them instead of being the unique person that God wants you to be? I wasn't comfortable today. I know my place today. I realize I'm not very good at many things, but the few things that I am, I'm good at. And so you need to know the talents and the gifts, the circumstances, the things that God has given you. So we're going to look at 12 different kinds or 12 different styles or types of assistance that we can give to emerging leaders. Some of these will be easy for you as they are for me. Three or four of them are fairly easy. Other ones I'm really not comfortable with, so either not do them or do a little bit of them. The others will stretch you and it will be learned behavior. Some will be right in the middle of your comfort zone. So what we do is we do a number of things with a person.

[00:10:02] But the first thing that. We do with the person is to establish them in their faith. When a new believer comes to Christ, there are some of you out there that are really good at establishing them and laying a spiritual foundation for them and the basics of the Christian life. Paul says, For I long to see you, that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established. We need to take those who first meet Jesus and establish them in their walk. It's a very critical time. We don't want to lose them to the enemy, establish them in the Word of God, establish them in a local church, establish them in fellowship with other believers. And so it's important. And you may have that gift of helping new believers, which is so critical to conserve the fruit and let them not be one that comes in one side of the church and goes out the back door. A second language. You're far more familiar with this disciple in disciple ing that's helping another believer come all that Christ wants them to be. Paul said, We dealt with you personally. Stimulating your faith. Discipline is a process and normally takes part over a one or two year, three year period at the most, where you actually disciple a person in the basics of the Christian life. Not only are they established, but you're going to spend time with them every week or every few weeks, maybe every few days. At first you're going to help them to get into the Word of God. You're going to help them get established in the church. You're going to help them in various character qualities in their life. You're going to help them in the relating to their spouse and their children.

[00:11:39] You're going to help them in some basics of evangelism. You're going to help them in some basics of Bible study and discipleship and all the things as a person learns to walk with God, their prayer life, their time with God, their evangelism, they're reaching out to others. Their fellowship. Discipline is a process that we're probably the most familiar with, where one man or one woman takes another man or another woman and invest their life for them over a period of time, for six months, 12 months, maybe a couple of years. Discipline, that's another variety of thing we can do. It's helping another believer be all that they can be showing them step by step how to live well before God. A third, The third step is exhorting. Yeah, there are some of you out there that are really good at exhorting the rest of us to action. That's motivating us. Paul writes, And First Thessalonians chapter two. We were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you in your faith. And so exhortation, those are its orders that stand up in a group and exhort us to do something. They motivate us. They come up to us and say, you know, Can't you really should do this? They're always telling us what we should do, what God wants us to do. Sometimes they're not received very well, but an exhort or is so necessary. I've had a number of people around me who are orders, who are constantly encouraging me to move on to the next step, to be all that God can want us to be. And they are so important, particularly to young Christians or some of us who have walked with Christ for a long time. And we need to be exhorted, encouraged to take the next step.

[00:13:21] Some of you find that easy. The fourth one is like discipleship. It's known fairly well teaching. We impact how people think. We talk about knowledge wise. Men and women are always learning, always listening for fresh insights. They love the word of God. They love to teach teachers, or we're more worried about the details than they allowed to get in the details of the scripture. Teaching is one of my spiritual gifts. I love to teach, and and I speak a lot today. It's really probably more speaking than teaching. But I love to do the research for teaching. I love to get on the word of God. I love to use the word of God to explain the word of God. So I love to teach. And although I spend a lot of time exhorting business leaders to do and to equip, I love really teaching. And I'm not a classic teacher, which classic teacher really loves preparation more than the teaching himself. But teaching is one of those styles that we can do is one that we're familiar with, like discipline. It's fairly obvious and it's needed in our churches today. And so we've dramatically, you know, this this is very we really do need teaching. It's very important, but it's not the only thing. It impacts how we think. We teach everyone we can, all that we know about him. I mean, Paul loved to teach. He was a teacher. And so teaching is a very important thing that we do. A fifth thing is training. Training is more about what we do instead of how we think You're familiar with that scripture in the second Timothy Chapter three that all Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching. For reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness.

[00:15:07] So teaching is one thing, reproof is another. You tell us where we're off the pathway correction, how we get back on the pathway, and then training is how we stay on the pathway. And so teaching teaches the principles, talks about how we think training, talks about what we do. And that's another way that style that we have, that we help others. And then admonishing this is a hard one. This is the hard one. We admonish the unruly. We encourage the fainthearted and the weak. We're patient with every one warning or challenging them. There's a number of verses, like in Galatians chapter six here in First Thessalonians chapter five, where we admonish them, we we warn people, you're about to get off the pathway. We warn them you are off God's pathway for your life. We're admonishing them. Those are the prophetic type people. Those are the prophets that always see us. Everything is black and white. There is not any gray with them. They want to admonish us to be all that God wants us to be. The teacher has taught us what we're to do. The trainer has taught us how to do it. The disciple maker has taught us how to walk with Christ. But the admonished you have said you've got a problem in your life. I don't want to warn you about this. I want to challenge you. And fortunately, I've had some people around me who constantly are concerned about me and say, you know, this is a bad habit. You, you, you shouldn't put yourself in that situation. They admonish us and they're helpful to us, but we may not appreciate it at the time. And then there's the counselor. A number of you may be involved in counseling them seminary, or perhaps you're a person who's done a number of counseling.

[00:16:47] A counseling counselor helps a person with a specific problem. I know a lot about counseling, but I'm not a counselor. In fact, out of all these characteristics and styles, that would be the most difficult. I can train counselors, but I'm not a counselor myself. I can train them for the need. I can motivate them. I can exhort, I can teach about it. But I'm not a counselor. I'm not a one on one. We urge you to counsel the Idol, encourage the support that we counseling takes a whole different skill set than the teacher or the disciple or the trainer. And so counseling takes care of a specific problem. You go to a counselor who are who are experts at a certain area of marriage or with children, with teenagers, could be a financial counselor, could be a counselor in many different areas of our life. But they are so helpful. And if they're really a strong biblical counselor and I would say to you, go to a biblical counselor that uses the word of God. Go to a counselor that believes in this book and the word of God that believes in the word of God, that the Bible has the answers to our problems. And so find that can a counselor, many of you are those counselors, and I want you to just really enjoy the gift that God's given you and to use it to help the body of Christ with specific problems that people have. Then there's the encourager. This person is always uplifting their job. My my dad was an encourager when he walked into a room. Everyone was encouraged. He encouraged pastors as he had lunch with them and was so help to discourage pastors. Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews, writes day by day, encourage one another.

[00:18:35] Let's see how we can be encouraging, encouraging love and helping others out. And encourager is so much needed in today's times when we face so many difficult problems economically and otherwise, when the family is falling apart, when Christian families falling apart, when the church is facing difficult problems, when business is facing more problems than they've ever faced before, when people are leaving the pastor with numbers that have never happened before. We need someone to stand up and encourage us from the Word of God in the Holy Spirit. So we uplift and inspire and we encourage others who have been exhausted. We need to be great and courageous, be around people who can be encouraged. You're being encouraged for yourself. And then there's modeling. Modeling has been a living example for them. Our heart, our mind, our motives come forth. Modeling is something that we've kind of put aside today. In my particular life, modeling of leaders has been a tremendous influence on my life. And you may be a model. God may have placed you in a part of the workplace or in the community with your neighbors or in a church or in a leadership position where you may not be a teacher, you may not be an outspoken person, you may not be one who trains hundreds of people, you know, trains all these people. But you're modeling the life of Jesus Christ. You are salt and light. Where God has placed you as a mom, as a dad, as a husband, as a wife, you're a model, as a leader, leading a business, leading the church or a model as a person walking with Christ. You know, when we get to heaven, you're going to find out that your life as a model, as an example, was far more impactful than any sermon you ever preached than in the company you've ever led than anything that you ever did publicly.

[00:20:30] Many of us are going to be surprised at those people who are rewarded by Christ because they modeled his principles. They modeled his life with the people around them and impacted many leaders Miles. My life specifically has been impacted by so many leaders who modeled for me. And then there's influence. We impact people through what we write or speak. Some of you will have the gift of writing, and my wife has the gift of writing. I've written a number of books coauthored with her, but I'm the one that she took the speaking or she took the ideas, but she was really the one with the gift. She has the skill for writing. So we've done five or six books together, and God has given me the ability to be able to speak. I'm not fancy. I'm not smooth. I mean, I basically am I'm just a person who uses scripture. I use examples from my own life and and I'll be passionate about what I say. So whatever you do as a writer, as speaker, you need to be an expert at what you're talking about. You need to know about it. You need to share from your own life. You need to be vulnerable and transparent about what you speak or write about. You need to be passionate about what you do. And so it says. And then I say it. Go write it on a tablet. And I never wanted to write. I mean, when I was in college, I mean, I would have flunked my exams if my wife had to help me with my essays. I mean, I hated to read when I was in high school, and now I read more than ever. But but if you have the ability to write, let me encourage in that my wife had the ability to write since she was a young lady, and she's used that ability by writing a number of books together and separately.

[00:22:13] She's written puppet scripts, she's written hundreds of those. And then I learned how to write as a business leader is I would write one page letters to my employees and and then letters to other CEOs. And now I write letters that go out on websites around the world. And so you can learn these skills, but you can have influence through writing or through speaking, and that influence can last for other generations. I mean, I'm being influenced by Oswald Chambers from 100 years ago, and many people have said, don't read the current stuff, read the classics, read those that have been written, that have endured the time of of 100 years. And so people like Jonathan Edwards and and people like him are impacting us today. Hundreds of years later, people like Abraham Lincoln, political leaders, religious leaders, these leaders are influencing us today through their writing or through their speaking sometime ago. So let me just encourage you to be an influence through wherever God is placed, you influence them. Speak to us. Moses was told and we will listen. And so people want to hear what God says. Are you a spokesman for men and women for God? Am I a spokesman for God? Is I speak? Am I speaking the word of God? And then there's the equipping process. And this process we talked about in the last class session. This process is we don't really understand. Well, today it's a process of preparing leaders. It's equipping the things that you have seen and heard and and receive from me, practice these things. So it's the equipping process. It's a process that must be used in preparing leaders and as students in the ministry, in a seminary or wherever it is. A seminary has a responsibility.

[00:24:04] We as a seminary have a responsibility to equip you as a leader. That's the why of this mentoring program that will be taking place at the seminary. You as a pastor and a workplace leader, you are to be in equipping the next generation of leaders. What a tremendous privilege to be able to mentor through a program in your church or your business or a seminary or a college to be able to mentor the next generation of leaders. A successful Asian pastor said this are pastors do not know too, how to equip others because they themselves have not been equipped. And so this pastor, Edmund Chan from Singapore, has given his life. He is in his fifties now. He's given his life to mentor and equip other pastors from across Asia. And this takes time. It takes individual time. He speaks to a large group, to his conference. He works with small groups of pastors and leaders and. Then one on one he spends time equipping and mentoring them. And so our pastors and our churches have not been equipped. And so therefore, we have a struggle on equipping others. But you must model as a pastor, you as a business leader must model you as a leader in the church, must model, equip into the next generation. What did Jesus do? It takes time to equip others. Process of equipping that's caught and not taught. So therefore you have to spend enough time with that leader or that small group of leaders so that they catch the passion of your life. The disciple Jesus said is not above as teacher, but when he is trained he will be like his teacher. So as you're trained and then as you're equipped as a leader, you'll become like the people that you spend time with.

[00:25:52] Developing the ministry skills of leaders using the model of Jesus Christ. God wants to equip us with all that we need, it says in the Book of Hebrews Chapter 13. So we need to be involved in the process of equipping leaders. It's a difficult process. It's a rewarding process, but it takes time. Now we teach followers. As I said, knowledge and teaching is a viable skill set. It's one of the styles we talked about. We teach and train workers skills, but we teach and train and equip leaders in character and relationships. So while we as the church today are teaching a lot of knowledge and we're training some skills, we're not equipping a lot in the area of character and relationships. And my prayer is that you as a pastor and you as a business leader, you as a leader in a Christian ministry or in the work marketplace, or you're getting ready to graduate from seminary, college, wherever you are. My prayers that you will not only be involved in teaching, which is valid in training, which is valid, and we need it. But you'll also be involved in equipping leaders wherever you go as a leader in the workplace, whatever company you're in, whatever church you're in, that while you're ministering to the masses of the employees of your congregation, you're also equipping the saints. Equipping of leaders is a long term process that takes time and cannot be mass produced. It's life and life. Therefore, we have to have time alone with God. We've got to have that inner circle of those two or three people. We need to be involved in an accountable community. It has we have to be intentional about relationships, and this process cannot be done just in a large group.

[00:27:34] It requires a deeper relationship and it's normally initiated. This process is initiated by God as he uses one on one relationships in small groups to carry out that process in our life. And that's why if we fail to equip leaders in our churches, if we fail to do that, then we'll fail to impact the outside community that God wants us to do. And this is why, in addition to teaching and training, we as a seminary believe in adding personal relationships of equipping the minute mentoring leaders. And so this course has been developed so that pastors and workplace leaders can work together to mentor and equip the next generation of leaders. Yes, leaders are born with certain, you know, qualities genetics, talents, personality. Some of these leaders are born with some of those things that God's given us. But primarily, leaders are equipped and they're trained. They're not born. Leaders are built. You know, they're not they're not normal. Naturally, we think it's natural. But but leaders have to be built. And most of the qualifications for leadership are not determined by the past, but how you and I respond to the challenges of life. It's very important that as we are equipped as leaders, that we respond properly to the challenges of life and the people that help us to do that are those that equip us. So leaders require three things. Number one, they require teaching. That's what they know, training, that's what they can do. But character, who they are in Spiritual leadership focuses primarily on those character qualities that God has determined that He brings into our life, then packs the various stages of our life. So we're going to look at that character development, those qualities in a later session on leadership.

[00:29:24] But we as leaders do require knowledge. We need the teaching, we do require skills, but we also require character about who we are. And that will be a session for a final one. And then there's the area of mentoring. It's a specific area. As a mentor, you're asked to come into a person's life and and and help them in a specific area. And mentors can be passive mentors that can be active mentors. It can be a very intensive time, but it's in a specific area of our life. Could be in terms of business, could be in terms of leadership and spiritual leadership. Stacy Reinhart said this about transfer. Emotional mentoring, taking the initiative to join someone's life and journey and become one of God's instruments to help that person become all that God wants them to become and to do all that God wants them to do. So you come along for them for a certain period in their life, to mentor them, to see transformation in their life. And although that period may be a short period, that is a period that is very influential in their life and very impactful. You don't have to spend a lot of time with a person to have a tremendous impact on their life. Mentoring was scared for me. I mean, I like teaching. I like leading. I like doing these big things. Mentoring was scary to me, but today when I'm in Oklahoma City, if I'm not traveling around the United States or around the world, if I have three or four days for lunch that week, most of those lunches will be taken up with a young executive who under 40 years of age, who have been involved in their life over maybe five, ten, 20 years.

[00:31:03] And I have lunch with them and they'll say, I need to meet with you again this week. And so I'll schedule lunches. And when I go back home next week, I'll be meeting with some former employees and executives. I'll be meeting with some people that work with me in the ministry, and I'll be meeting with some young leaders. And so those mentoring relationships, there are one on one specific needs of a person. It can be a short or long term. Normally, there are a long term relationship. I mean, short term relationship, it can be a long term relationship where you have a relationship, but God just brings you in and out of that person's life over a period of years. So those are 12. There's many others. But I hope they're that you therefore won't try to compare yourself with someone else of God's called you to be a mentor and a disciple, or then do it. If God's called you to be a teacher, then do it. If God's called you to be involved in training, do whatever one of those things that God's called you to be an encourager or an a counselor or an a manager, whichever one you feel comfortable with, do the things that you feel comfortable with, but don't try to be someone else. Let me pray for you as you do that, Father. Thank you. That you made us different. Thank you. That each one of us is unique. Thank you. That we can do different things and all be acceptable to be approved in your kingdom, to do the things that you've called us to do. Lord, would you help every man and every woman, every leader, every pastor, every business leader, every person that's that's in this class today? Would you help each one of us to grasp those couple of things to say, Man, I feel comfortable with that.

[00:32:40] That's me. Would you help us to know where it is so we can pour all of our energies into that and not into doing something that God is not called to us that you've not called us to, that we've compared to other people that we've gotten outside of your will. Would you get us back on the track on that one or two or three of these tracks that you want us to be on? Thank you. That you've designed the open doors and opportunities for that. Thank you for what you're going to do. And we give you the pleasure. We give you the praise for doing that. Lord, just help us to uniquely discern from the Spirit of God exactly which one or two or three of these things that you want us to do. And that's been most of our life in as we impact others for you, we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

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