Level 4 of FreedomMinistry International is entitled, “Leaders Who Make Leaders.” I am personally leading this level at present as I continue to prepare leaders who make leaders, so I am actively involved in proving the principles to see if they produce the purpose.
Fundamentally, kingdom is about leadership. And, kingdom leaders prepare and position leaders who can make leaders. While nearly everyone says they need more leaders, they also gripe about the dearth of leaders and the quality, dependability, and honorability of leaders. They both desire leaders and fear leaders because of the poor leadership they find in their own leadership.
One leader in my history once said that he believed God would send him leaders who were ready to lead. I laughed and he didn’t see why I was laughing. I was sitting there thinking, “How can you miss reality that far?” While this leader had a big work, it was consistently diminishing right before his eyes, and he was certain the strategy of God was to send him leaders.
In the kingdom of God, when a leader doesn’t have leaders he needs to fulfill his assignment, he must understand that it is his job to make leaders, not wait for God to send him some already prepared and positioned.
This man actually said that he was going to go hire some professionals to run his ministry departments. I didn’t laugh then. I wept because this is even further afield from the strategy of Jesus. This is foreign to the Ecclesia, not a norm or a strategy of God. Hire professionals? This is what Jesus condemned!
For example, if a kingdom leader is to succeed, he needs intercessors. If that leader asks God to send him some intercessors, from where does he think God would send them? From another man’s leadership? Does he think God has some leaders to do all the work of the kingdom so he can receive the kingdom into his own ministry and use these prepared leaders to fulfill his assignment? This is so obviously Nicolatian!
If a leader has an assignment in the kingdom, that assignment requires intercessors. So, the leader given the assignment must have intercessors who can pray at the level and scope of his assignment. First order of business for such a kingdom leader is to prepare and position intercessors who can pray at the level and scope of his assignment. How does the leader do this? By praying with people called by God to be intercessors, preparing them by praying with them to pray at the same level and scope of his authority. He has the authority of his assignment, so he must prepare and position intercessors to pray at that level and scope with that authority.
In other words, if you don’t the intercessors you require, it is your job to make intercessors of the people God sends you, not sit around waiting for God to impoverish someone else’s ministry of the intercessors they prepared! Make leaders! Don’t recruit a professional to train your intercessors! That professional won’t have your level and scope of assignment, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have your heart.
If a leader need leaders, he makes leaders of the ones God sends Him. He doesn’t wait around for God to send him leaders prepared somewhere else.
Would you say that the modern leadership preparation systems of church-anity are good at producing intercessors? Would you say that there is a system to produce apostles, prophets, teachers who can function at an international level when they get a diploma? Would you say that the process of leadership preparation we need for the kingdom will impress the heathen and that we need to have our process accredited by people who believe just the opposite of what we believe? Is it any wonder that we have lost so much of the kingdom in the Ecclesia when we have lost the very essence of kingdom by subverting the leadership development process and embracing humanism at the foundation?
If you need leaders, go make leaders! That is Jesus Christ our Lord in action! That is the strategy of discipling, fathering, anointing, preparing, positioning that your Bible talks about.
Once we accept the accumulation of believers as the definition of “church,” we accept the accumulation of professionals as our definition of leadership. Our leadership is good at the same things Disney, Marriott, the country club, the nursery, the customer service professionals are good at. Our “best practices” are not learned from people who heal the sick, preach the Gospel with a demonstration of power, or cast out demons – I’m referring to what Jesus did – they are people who impress the wrong people or impress people with doing things that have nothing to do with the definition of Ecclesia! What we call “parachurch” is really the church; and what we call “church” and “community” is foreign to the kingdom! “Doing things in excellence” to us means that we are measuring ourselves by the standards of this world, ways and means of making people happy so we can be successful at accumulating believers.
I do go on…
If you need evangels, go make some evangels! Don’t sit around waiting for God to send you some when it is your responsibility to do so.
A word on apostles and prophets: this would be a good starting point for defining maturity in the function of these foundational leaders. We should start measuring apostles and prophets by their fathering, not by the accumulation of apostles and prophets in old structures that make the word “network” means something Amway can explain better than the Bible.
