Five Pillars of Transformational Leadership — Romans 12

0:00 So, in some way or the other, some way or another since about 1978, I've been focusing on this concept of leadership. And, after meeting Jesus, 11/17/1985, I realized that the structure of leadership was contained in word of God. And I I love what what Doug said last week, LGL, let God lead. So what I wanna do today is I wanna take a half an hour, and I wanna take a satellite view, not a 30,000 foot view, a satellite view of this concept of the five pillars of transformational leadership. You know, a satellite view, you could tell from a satellite view that Mount Everest exists, but you really don't understand all of Mount Everest at a satellite's view.

1:09 So what I have here is the whole concept behind the five pillars of transformational leadership is something that I could do over the course of an entire eight hour training day or I could do it over several weeks. So I'm to just touch on the main part here. So about seven or eight months ago, I got a phone call from one of the conferences, the Lorain County eight Conference, and they asked if I would come and speak to about 200 or 300 athletes about this concept of leadership. So when they introduced when they asked me to do that, I sat down and really as going I through preparing for that, this concept, the five pillars of transformational leadership, really got a hold of me. And the entire thought here, all of this concept, everything is found in the Word of God.

2:06 That's the most important thing to understand, is that through this entire process, we find everything in the Word of God. So why am I doing this? Okay? So I am here today to expose you to these five pillars because we have a huge leadership vacuum that exists. In all actuality, if you were going to sit down and do some research, you'll find that back in the late 1960s, early 1970s, those people that we would consider leaders, their ability to lead or their mindset of leadership was slowly spiraling downhill.

2:51 Most of us don't remember Lyndon Johnson, I don't, but he... Okay, we've got a couple of hands. Lyndon Johnson began a downward spiral and our boy Tricky Dick Nixon helped alongside of that, right? So, when you're sitting down and you're seeing the leader of the free world who's supposed to be a leader not leading, we kind of lose this entire leadership thought process. As a matter of fact, I don't think that there are many people today that actually understand what leadership is.

3:26 So my goal is to go out and take what I've learned and try to help other people understand leadership because this vacuum exists and as believers in Christ, we are set up uniquely to fill that vacuum and start helping people become leaders. So, what is a transformational leader? Again, transformational leadership is a concept that started in 1978 and I think the best definition of transformational leadership is from John Maxwell. He says, One who leverages their training to impact the world and others for real positive change. So the idea behind transformational leadership is that I need to change.

4:19 I need to be transformed. I to create in me a leader's heart. I need to step forward, and I need to become a leader. And everything that I learn is supposed to help me grow as a leader, then I can bring somebody alongside of me. I like this idea, this whole thought process about transformation.

5:03 He met Jesus Christ and forever he was transformed. Remember, here's a man that was out there killing Christians. Here's a man that was persecuting Christians. As a matter of fact, Jesus said, Paul, why do you persecute me? Why do you persecute me?

5:20 Paul became a wonderful evangelist and a great author and many of the books in the Bible that we have right now are credited to Paul as the author with the help of the Holy Spirit. So when think of transformational leader, we need to think about transformation. We need to think about the process of change. We need to move from point A to point B. So that's transformational leadership.

5:50 Now, I've used this verse many times, and I know Bob Buttress has encouraged me with this verse many times, but when I talk about transformation, I like to go to this verse right here, Romans 12 verses one and two. Right? It says, therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

6:34 Now I highlighted in here many different points. Each one of these points is an action. It takes action to do this. But because of time, what I want to do is I want to drill down and I want to go to that renewing of your mind. What exactly does that mean, renewing of your mind?

6:54 I'm telling you, I'm reading this, I'm spending time, I'm taking a look at other authors, and I'm trying to get a real good understanding of what this whole concept of renewing your mind actually means. And this was brought to my attention recently from an author. We remember that when Adam and Eve were in the garden, after they ate of the fruit that they were told they shouldn't eat of, God came walking in the garden and was asking, Where are you? God knew exactly where they were. I believe He was calling to them, Where is your mind?

7:48 What is going on inside your mind? Why would you do that? So what we need to do is we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. What is the best example I could give you of a transformational leader? The best example that I could give you as a transformational leader is Jesus of Nazareth.

8:19 He is the perfect example. So let's take a look at what Jesus did. He invested in people. He took time to care for the individual. He remained focused on the big picture.

8:33 He entrusted others with the mission. He surrounded himself with people not like him. He surrendered his will to a higher purpose. Okay. Now I'm going get out of the way because maybe you might want to take a picture of that because I think this is something that we can look at on a daily basis to understand what should I be doing, what really is this whole idea of transformational leadership.

9:05 I mean, look, Jesus of Nazareth invested in other people. Alright? Take a look at... We'll jump down to He surrounded himself with people not like him. If we take a look at those who we call to be apostles, And this isn't meant to knock these guys down, but you know what folks, they're knuckleheads.

9:32 We could take a look through Scripture and understand that these men, these apostles, they were knuckleheads. Just like you and I. Alright? Jesus surrounded himself with people that were not like him. That's what transformational leaders do.

9:53 They surround themselves with people not like them. He surrendered His will to a higher purpose. Okay? Jesus came down to to fulfill the will of the father. As a matter of fact, in the Garden Of Gethsemane, what does Jesus say?

10:21 Not my will, but thine be done. Not my will, but thine be done. And he entrusted others with the mission. Take a look around. This is who he entrusted with the mission.

10:48 Upon His death, He entrusted those faithful disciples and apostles to the mission. Here is God who has a perfect vision, a perfect understanding, knows exactly what's going on, and He trained up the Apostles and His other disciples to complete the mission upon Him leaving. And through the power of the Holy Spirit and through God... Through Jesus alive in us, he's entrusted us with the same thing. This is what transformational leaders do.

11:29 They make a mark on their world and then they move on, and they train the other ones up to carry on with that mission, to move forward, to accomplish the tasks that they were trained to do. Okay? Transformational leadership. And what does Paul say? Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.

12:04 This is what I uncovered. There may be more. It may be different, but this is what I've uncovered. The five pillars of transformational leadership. What do transformational leaders do?

12:16 Number one, they show up. Number two, they encourage others. Number three, everyone is a leader. Understand that concept. Everyone is a leader.

12:29 Number four, leadership is a verb. There is action involved. And number five, leadership is a process. So over the next fifteen minutes, what we're going to do is we're going to go through these pillars of transformational leadership and we're going to talk about them a little bit and I'm going give you a Bible verse for each one. One Bible verse for each one.

12:55 Did you get them all, Mason? Okay. Okay. So number one, leaders got to show up. Leaders have to show up.

13:12 So growing up, everybody has phones now, you play games on phones, everybody's got these game consoles that they can do, right? The guy just saw today in the news feed that the guy that invented one of these game consoles just recently died. But growing up, the fun game that we had to play on TV was called Pong. Raise your hand if you remember Pong, right? That was it man.

13:35 You sat down and you twisted this little dial and you're playing ping pong on the TV. So what we did a lot is we went outside and we played this game called Follow the Leader. And what you would do is you would follow the leader. So somebody was declared the leader and whatever the leader did, you did. So if the leader raised his left hand, you would Okay, if the leader put his hand on the top of his head, you would?

14:01 Alright, if the leader was jumping up and down, you would? It's called Follow the Leader. Right, thank you very much. I appreciate you playing along. Now here is a question.

14:12 Can you play follow the leader if there is no leader? So leaders have to show up. They have to be there. The leaders have to be present. They have to be involved.

14:25 Okay? So, follow the leader. The leader is the example. You have to be present because you are the example. So take a look at this verse.

14:43 And again, put the CSB down and as I was sitting there this morning I'm thinking I probably should do the King James or the New King James because as I said a couple of Sundays ago, I like how they start out better. When the time came to completion, or the fullness of time. I like that rendering better. In the fullness of time, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!

15:21 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir. Alright, this is among other things, this is the entire gospel message in three verses, right? Entire gospel message here in three verses. But the important thing to understand, right, Christ Jesus came unto the world sinners. Christ Jesus came unto the world to save the sinners.

15:50 Alright, He showed up. Christ Jesus showed up. We talked earlier about in the garden, the whole concept of Christ coming into the world was mentioned in Genesis when when it was said that the the snake will strike my heel and I will crush it. Okay? But in order for that to happen, in order for that to come to fruition, Jesus had to show up.

16:29 Transformational leaders show up. Transformational leaders are present. Transformational leaders there. Now here's an interesting thing too. This whole idea of showing up.

16:44 I love this, maybe five or six years ago I heard this. I probably heard it before, but it finally it finally dawned on me. One thing that Jesus did, which is a great example, which I think is good for us to understand is that Jesus met people where they were at. Jesus met people where they were at. I love the story of the Samaritan woman at the well.

17:12 If we take a look at those verses, we notice that Jesus sent the apostles away. They were going into the city to get food. The only two people that were there were Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The only way Jesus was going to have a conversation with this woman was in the situation that Jesus was in, in order to have that conversation with the woman. So leaders show up, but leaders meet people where they are.

17:45 Leaders don't stand up and lord, we're going to see that verse, lord over others. They're not tyrannical. They meet people where they are. They help them. Okay.

17:58 This whole idea, accountability, right? For this entire year, I've been focused, what does it mean to hold somebody accountable? What is this whole idea of being accountable? Well, it comes from this idea of meeting somebody where they're at. Okay.

18:17 So when you give instruction or you ask somebody to do something and then you go back to it and you say, were you able to accomplish that task? And if the answer is no, a true leader that meets people where they're at will understand this idea of accountability and say, how can I help you accomplish that? How can I help you? You're meeting the person where they're at, right? Again, this whole concept of leadership doing a downward spiral, for some reason we think, and I'm pointing the finger at myself, in order to hold somebody accountable you need to be mean, angry, nasty, screaming.

19:04 No. These are concepts that do not exist. We don't see it in the Bible. That accountability process is helping that person out. Okay?

19:14 So leaders show up, and what's important about that is Jesus showed up for us, right? Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. We're sinners. And leaders meet people where they're at. So that's show up.

19:58 You must be a positive influence, encouraging is the most effective motivator. So when it comes to this isn't exactly how I wanted it set up here. Okay. Let's go back to this word disciple or discipleship, and take a look from historical concept where that comes from. What that comes from, it comes from the Mishnah, which is the spoken words of of the Jewish people.

20:36 They kind of added, it's kind of an addition to the Old Testament, but it's tradition. What rabbis would do is they would identify individuals that had the ability to become rabbis. Rabbi is a teacher. They would take a look at the youth and they would identify those that have the right skill. And then at age 13 or so, they would bring these into the house with the rabbi.

21:05 Okay? And what the rabbi would do is rabbi... They would see the rabbi going through his daily work, going through the process that the rabbi has. This is where we get this concept of discipleship from, or the root goes to discipline. Discipline means to put somebody into a process, being disciplined.

21:36 Alright? So this idea, this concept of discipleship is an example of what transformational leaders do. They come alongside others. Alright? They encourage them.

21:52 They train them. It all has its roots, I think, going back to what the rabbis did with the young men. So, again, so what verse did I choose for this one? So it's Ephesians four twenty nine, No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. So this verse right here has multiple thoughts here.

22:28 Alright? First of all, like I said, encouragement is the most effective motivator. Here we are, we're giving encouragement. We're not using our anger. We're not using foul language.

22:42 The whole idea is to build somebody up and it gives grace to those who hear. So what a wonderful concept. I can give you examples of I can use myself as an example, but I'm going to choose not to in this situation. I don't want to point the finger at myself, even though I know it deserves to be there. But I've got a client and this individual person, I look at it and it doesn't give the hearer grace.

23:16 This individual is a believer, but he's really aggressive and angry when he tries to get his staff to do what he wants done. That concept is nowhere in the bible. Alright? It's nowhere in the bible. So we we we need to we need to practice leadership from a standpoint of loving the other person.

24:04 I get asked all the time, leaders born or are leaders made? Again, think I'm not so sure that I would focus on that. Are leaders born, are leaders made? I'm going say everybody is a leader. And the reason why I say everybody is a leader because I like this concept of transformational leadership.

24:23 What that means is that you need to be transformed. So that means that you need to lead yourself. You need to have a specific process in mind, how are you leading yourself? So everybody is a leader. Every single one of us are a leader because we have to lead ourselves.

24:44 We have to lead ourselves. Now here's something too, leaders can be positive or leaders can be negative. Leaders can be a positive influence, leaders can be a negative influence. Just to give you a quick story. So growing up, this was on or about 1978 or so, I was in high school walking into the gym, the basketball coach at Brookside High School, Gene Leonard was his name, he was walking out of the gym, he had two basketballs underneath his arm, and underneath his arms he had the basketball rim in his hands, and I'm like, Gino, what are you doing?

25:21 Yep, I called him Gino, we still do today, but that's even as high school kids we were allowed to call him that. What are you doing? He goes, Bob, what I try to do is I try to show the basketball team that both of these basketballs fit inside the rim at the same time. Both basketballs fit inside the rim at the same time. Now things have changed.

25:40 Basketballs are bigger now. It no longer happens. However, girls' basketballs, two of them will fit through the room at one time. Guys' basketballs, they won't anymore. That's changed.

25:50 Okay? And then Gene said this thing, he goes, Bob, I just read this book, it's called Cybernetics, and what it does is it talks to you about your mind, it talks to you about being focused, it talks about overcoming. And it was an influence in my life that I carry with me today, to today. I still look back at that experience and the things that I changed as a result of him changing, right? Transformational leadership.

26:17 He changed. He had this concept. He made me aware of it. Now, leaders could be positive, leaders could be negative. A couple of years later, hanging around with a friend of mine, he had this great idea, let's go out and knock down mailboxes.

26:31 So I did. So I got arrested. So I've got a record. So, year, since I've got these licenses, I've got to explain it every year, even though I was 18 years old when I did this. So, this was a person that had influence in my life that was a negative leader.

26:48 Okay? So we can be positive, we can be negative, but everybody's a leader, and everybody has to lead themselves. Everyone is a leader. So let's take a look at this verse right here. Jesus called them over and said, so this is Matthew twenty twenty five-twenty eight, Jesus called them over and said, You know that rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them.

27:16 It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Everyone is a leader. Here Jesus is showing the disciples, showing the apostles in this situation, about how they need to be different. And then He is giving Himself as an example as well.

27:51 Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. Everybody's a leader. Everybody's a leader. By being a servant, using the word that's in here, by serving others, you're being a leader. Those of you that have that gift of serving, you are a leader.

28:15 You are leading others. Okay? Everyone is a leader. So nobody is allowed to Well, I'm not a leader. I don't need to listen to this.

28:27 I don't need to look at this. I don't need to investigate it. Everyone's a leader. Everyone's a leader. No excuses.

28:56 So transformational leaders lead through action modeling in order to give others traction to transform. Take a look at a Bible verse. I've got three Bible verses from Proverbs in here. This is illustrating leadership as a verb, not a noun. I chose these three because of the concept that is brought out here.

29:24 Verse one, The reflection of the heart belonged to mankind, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. Verse three, Commit your activities to the Lord, and your plans will be established. Number nine, a person's heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his path. So what does that mean? Leadership is a verb, not a noun.

29:46 Using these verses, what we need to make sure is that we have a plan in our life. Right? The reflection of the heart belongs to the man. What I'm reflecting on belong to me. But the answers of the tongue is from the Lord.

30:00 So I am being active. I am my heart, this word right here is more mind, my mind, these are my thoughts, and then I allow the Lord to guide those thoughts. But I still have to come up with those thoughts. Commit your activities to the Lord and your plans will be established. We have to go out and do something.

30:24 What is it that the Lord is calling me to do? So if I go back to Romans chapter 12 verses one and two, what exactly is God calling me to do? I need to put a plan in place, however the Lord is going to adjust that as I move along. So we have to take action. You can't just sit around and wait for things to happen.

30:45 Right? There's people that sit around and wait for things to happen. I call it living in a cocoon. People do the same thing over again every day expecting a different outcome. Alright?

30:57 You have to have action. You have to have a plan. You have to have a desire to move forward. And if you do it under the auspices of God, under the auspices of a believer, your path will be made straight in front of you. Number five, leadership is a process.

31:45 Alright? Two weeks ago, I think it was when Chris was up here, you know, he talked about the fact that here is God coming as a baby, can't walk on his own, has to be taken care of. So diaper had to be changed. So it is a process. Leadership is a process.

32:06 Growing is a process. Becoming the best version of our self is a process. Jesus increased in wisdom, stature, and in favor with God and with people.