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Lloyd's Leaders Letter
The goal of spiritual formation
11/04/13 12:00
This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Spiritual Formation, which you can download in it’s entirety here
The goal of spiritual formation is to become like Jesus. Galatians 4:19 (TNIV) "My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you..." We have the privilege and task of becoming both Christ-like (Christ being formed in us) ourselves, and helping others become Christ-like, like Paul, labouring to see Christ formed in others.
There are central teachings that Jesus gave His followers that move us towards this goal of having Christ fully formed in us and within those teachings, tools that are central to helping that formation. Two key spiritual formation verses in the New Testament were both a result of Jesus reinterpreting Old Testament passages.
Every Jew from their earliest age would have learnt and recited the “shema.” Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (TNIV) "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Jesus reminded the expert in the law who asked Him what was the most important command first of this Old Testament command, and then added Lev 19:18 "Love your neighbour as yourself." And then He goes on and further refines it in John when He says, John 13:34-35 (TNIV) “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Jesus was saying if you do these two things – love God and love others (and of course you must love yourself if you are to love others properly) – then you will look, act and be like children of God, and Christ will be fully formed in you. Jesus also took a common prayer the Jews prayed – the kaddish ("Magnified and sanctified be his great name in the world He created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the house of Israel, speedily and in the near future. And say amen.") and developed it into what we now call the Lord’s prayer. Both of these are profound spiritual formation statements and tools of discipleship. The goal of following Jesus is that Christ is formed in us – in other words we act like Jesus would if He were in our skin. A Kingdom disciple can be described as a person who loves God, loves him/herself and loves others. And they regularly pray a prayer centred around these priorities.
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Servants who lead, not leaders who serve
27/02/13 17:00
This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Vision, Calling and Vocation, which you can download in it’s entirety here
I have always found it easier to hear God’s “no” than to hear God’s “yes.” Sometimes my enthusiasm or desire can sound too much like God’s “yes” for me to trust it in a lot of situations! So my practice is to assume the answer is “yes” unless I hear a “no” from God. God is very able to communicate “no” through losing my sense of peace, through the scriptures, through people and circumstances. God also seems to speak more when we are drifting “off course,” than telling us over and over that we are “on course.” Is 30:21 And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
So while I don’t have a clear sense of “calling” to be leading churches, what I do have, however, is a very deep sense of the calling to follow Jesus (John 21:19), and to be a servant of God. My identity as a Jesus follower is that I am a servant of God. I choose to live a life of voluntary restraint - choosing to obey God over and over again, and build my new life around His ways. Since making this decision to follow Jesus in 1977 I have had the privilege of training to be a secondary school maths and science teacher, serving as a youth pastor and assistant pastor, a Bible college lecturer, a church planter, and a church movement leader. I have of course also had the great privilege of serving my wife through being a husband to her, and serving my family through being a father to my children
I am utterly convinced that the role of the servant is the best role one can have in this life. (Yes, I am aware that Jesus said I no longer call you servants, but friends - but this is referring to our relational connection and identity rather than function). The wedding guests at Cana (John 2.1-11) got to drink the finest wine, but they had no idea where it had come from. But the servants who filled the jars with water, got to see water turn into the finest wine right before their eyes.
We are servants who lead, not leaders who serve. There is a very profound difference between those 2 statements, and they produce very different leadership styles
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Inviting the "Peter, James and John"
07/08/12 12:00
This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Discipling, which you can download in it’s entirety here
“Recently we gathered a room-full of younger and middle-aged leaders to pray, dream and strategise the next phase of the development of Vineyard churches in NZ. One idea to rise to the surface during our two days together was that, whatever we’re doing as leaders, we should be inviting two or three other people with us. The language around that thought was to bring our “Peter, James and John” along with us, in order to encourage and influence them, and to ensure they are exposed to the same experiences and thinking that we are.
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others (2 Tim 2:2).
Our intention is to have leaders who have made discipling others, and becoming Kingdom disciples themselves, their greatest priority in life.”
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What Leadership is and does
03/07/12 09:30
This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Leadership Overview, which you can download in it’s entirety here
“Christian leadership is closely related to discipleship. In fact, discipling, mentoring, teaching, coaching etc are all forms of leadership. They are all about helping a person move from who they are and what they are doing, to becoming a different person doing different things. It is an incredible privilege to influence another person.
Leadership happens in the home – husbands and wives have a profound influence on each other, and one of the important goals of marriage is to serve each other in such a way that we become the man or woman God intended us to be. Marriage is the most effective discipling and leadership training programme given to humanity!
Raising children is all about leadership – we use leadership of our children to help develop them into the people God intends them to be. We give them support, nurture, challenge, resources, opportunities in order to move them from one degree of development to another.
As Christian leaders, we also are given an incredible opportunity to influence other people, who are not part of our family, to be all that God intends them to become, and to do all He intends for them to accomplish.”
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A Short Kingdom Overview
05/06/12 12:00
This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter TheCentrality of the Kingdom of God, which you can download in it’s entirety here
“One thing that defines us as a particular type of church is our understanding of the Kingdom. It shapes how we worship, how we teach, how we pray for people, how we disciple and how we see the Kingdom expanding. In the Vineyard, we believe the expansion of the Kingdom of God is God’s chief objective, rather than the expansion of the church. Church is a subset of the Kingdom. We are a Presence-focused movement (see letter #1) and we understand the King is present in His Kingdom. His Presence and His Power are the same thing, and He invites us to seek first His Kingdom.
Vineyard is committed to the theology and practice of the Kingdom of God, rooted in the vision of the Hebrew prophets and fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. We have been commissioned to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom, bearing witness to the already and not yet of the Kingdom in words and deeds. The Kingdom of God is the over-arching and integrating theme of the Bible. From our beginnings, Vineyard has been committed to the proclamation of the Kingdom and to bearing witness to the deeds of the Kingdom through healing (physical, emotional and social), doing justice and delivering those held captive by evil. Since the Kingdom of God is the future reign of God breaking into the present through the life and ministry of Jesus, we are a forward-leaning movement emphasising the ever-reforming nature of the church engaging the world in love.”
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A Presence-led movement
01/05/12 00:00
This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter The Importance of Using Spiritual Gifts, which you can download in it’s entirety here
One of the significant promises God gave me when we started this movement of churches in New Zealand was Exodus 33:14, “The Lord replied, ‘My Presence will go with you and I will give you rest’.”
We are a Presence-led church-planting movement more than a purpose-led, or programme-led movement, though purpose and programme are important. We are churches and people who are looking for the Lord’s Presence. Outside of the church gathering we are looking for the “breaking in of the Kingdom”. There is a swirl of activity around the advancing edge of the Kingdom and we seek to spend as much time as possible with people who are at the advancing edge of God’s Kingdom. It seems that certain people attract more supernatural activity than others. There are some who the Lord seems to draw near to especially – people in pain, the poor and the marginalised, the foreigners, the brokenhearted, the needy, the humble and those in transition (life stage transitions, geographical transitions, relationship transitions etc).
It is good to remember that the results of using spiritual gifts, which produce “signs, wonders and miracles”, are all signs – they point people to Jesus. While they certainly alleviate suffering, they are not an end in themselves – they draw people to their God. Our adventure is looking for the times and places that the Kingdom breaks in and God draws nearer to a person, and in that moment, taking a risk and partnering with Him as He brings His Kingdom to people.
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Four M's
02/04/12 11:53
This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Vision, Values and Structure, which you can download in it’s entirety here
Every generation needs to redesign or re-develop what the church could and should look like so that it remains connected to the culture it finds itself amongst. When we work cross-culturally, it is obvious that we need to contextualize both the gospel (what the words and concepts mean in that culture) and the structures (how we do things) if we are to connect at all to the people we are trying to reach. It is just as vital to contextualize to a generation, a socio-economic, an ethnic context.
The four main elements we need to work with are:
- The Message - while we must never add to or take away from the gospel as expressed in the Bible, it must be translated into the place we find ourselves.
- The Messenger - those who have embodied or incarnated the Message - people like you and I who are living the message of the gospel in such a way as to encourage as many other people as possible to follow.
- The Media - the various ways we carry or communicate the gospel. These obviously change with technological advances and culture changes. For example, websites, blogs, YouTube and social media were not mainstream communication forms even five years ago.
- The “Market” - our culture, society and communities are dynamic and ever-changing and so we must change with them, or be left behind as an irrelevant group.
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