What does Jesus Christ teach about success and leadership? | Chapel Hill Online | Gig Harbor
#success #winning #leadership
How do you define success? Is it attracting crowds? Being charismatic and having chemistry with people? Or is it having complex plans that lead you to your success metric? Jesus Christ defines success completely differently than any of these traditional ways we do. Join Pastor Mark as we learn what success looks like to Jesus Christ.
Thinking Further:
1. What’s your personal measurement for success? Is it a crowd? Or something else? How has Covid challenged your definition of success?
2. Read Mark 3:13-19. Jesus says no to crowds, chemistry and complexity. How have you found small group discipleship or one-to-one discipleship to be formative in your own life?
3. “Be…and send”. How can you live out these simple but effective ministry goals in your own life? What can you do this week to invest in being with Jesus, and to share the gospels with others?
Join us in person, or find out more about us online at https://www.chapelhillpc.org
Sermon Notes:
A year ago at this time, Cyndi and I were in North Carolina visiting our daughter, Rachel, when COVID hit …and doors started slamming shut. We paid through the nose to get an earlier flight home because we were concerned that we might not GET home. And I returned to discover that our team had prepared for me to preach my first ever on-line sermon. This is what YOU would have seen one year ago today as I preached my first COVID message- “Defiant Hope.” This is what YOU saw.
Now let me show you what I saw. An empty room…a camera…and a sound man. That was it. I had never preached to an empty room before. And…I didn’t like it. I didn’t know if I was connecting with you. I didn’t know how long to pause after a joke…or if you were even laughing. I didn’t even know if you were out there or not!
It was one of the emptiest experiences of my ministry. I missed the crowd. I realized how much I FEED off the crowd. And I cannot tell you how glad I am that, week by week, the crowd is returning. I’m glad we can come into your homes. But I didn’t sign up to be a TV preacher. I REALLY love connecting with a room full of people. And for preachers… honestly… a big crowd is one of our measures of success. The bigger the crowd, the more successful you are.
Unless you are Jesus. Jesus, the subversive leader, had a different definition of success. In this story where he calls 12 disciples, I want you to notice how he disrupts OUR standards of success by saying NO to three things: No Crowds, No Chemistry and No Complexity. Let’s read it then I’ll unpack it:
Mark 3: 13 And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
In this brief story Jesus disrupts three of our ideas of what “success” looks like. His first subversive idea? No Crowds. Bigger is not necessarily better. One of our predominant definitions of success is POPULARITY. A bigger customer base. More market share. More “likes” or “subscriptions” than the other guy. If you have 1 million followers on line, you are a “mega-influencer” and can command $ 1 million per post. Only have 999,999 followers? Then you are a mere “macro-influencer.
We pastors are suckers for the “popularity” definition of success. The bigger the crowd, the better. We say that we want more people to hear the gospel of Jesus…and that’s true. But honestly, the whole size thing plays to our basest instincts. Every year I meet with a group of pastors who lead churches with more than a 1000 in worship. But this January, I pointed out that as a result of COVID, NONE of us qualify to be in our own group! So…how do we think about our ministry… our own sense of value and purpose…when we define ourselves by butts in our pews…and those butts are suddenly gone? What is our NEW measure of success?
It’s not that Jesus didn’t draw large crowds. By the time we reach this story in the early part of chapter 3, Mark has already mentioned TEN TIMES the huge crowds following Jesus. Jesus was massively popular. But the focus of his ministry was NOT the masses. IT WAS 12 MEN. A small group. A Lifegroup. It must have been WAY more exciting to receive the adoration of thousands, but that was not Jesus’ definition of success. For Jesus…success would be when his small band of apprentices was able to carry on his ministry without him…. FIND THE REST AT https://www.chapelhillpc.org/listen