In your leadership role, whatever it is you're doing,
first of all, has God given you the grace to be a leader?
Second of all, if so, multiply other leaders.
Bring men and women around you
in whatever that vision is that God's given you
and be thinking about not just,
oh, wow, I've got 200 followers
or I've got a church of 1,000 people.
No, how many leaders do you have in there?
How many leaders are you raising up?
We are looking at 2 Timothy 2
on kingdom of God, principles of leadership
by the apostle Paul.
And when we look at the book of Acts
and we look at the New Testament epistles,
one thing we see from Paul and his writings
is how much he valued people,
how much he valued other pastors that he had raised up.
And then how quickly he was able to multiply leaders
with these men and women that were around him.
I mean, it's a case in point, actually,
in the last chapter,
the last verses of the last chapter of Romans,
where Paul lists like 20-plus names
of people that he gives commendations to in Rome.
He's writing from Rome.
He's writing to the Romans.
And he knows these people.
And in so doing, you see he can name them off
one right after another.
Tremendous modeling of what it means
to be a good leader in stewarding your people.
So the last time I talked about the fact
that in this passage, he's talking about the grace,
the gifting of leadership.
But then I mentioned,
and I'm gonna talk about this continually,
there's a multiplication aspect of leadership.
Now, this is probably one of the hardest things to do
for most leaders.
Most leaders have no trouble leading
because they're just innately gifted that way,
either with natural talents or spiritual gifts
or acquired skills.
But to take what you know and multiply that into others,
takes an intentionality that's really, really difficult.
So in verse two, 2 Timothy 2.2, this is what Paul says.
And the things that you heard from me among many witnesses,
commit these to faithful men
who will be able to teach others also.
So number two, under leadership principles from Paul
is multiplication of other leaders,
raising up other leaders.
In our passage, just this verse,
four generations of leaders, four generations.
He says, things you've heard from me,
so that's Paul to Timothy,
commit to faithful men,
that's the third generation, faithful men,
to teach others also.
So there's four generations of leadership
right here in this verse.
Paul, Timothy, faithful men, others.
Well, that takes a lot of work, men and women,
to be able to have an intentionality
with the men and women you're working with
that you could train them to take what you're teaching them
that they might teach others also.
And yet this is what Jesus did.
Paul got the idea from the early disciples,
because remember, he was a late,
you could say he kind of was a late bloomer
in the sense that he was not one of the original 12.
He was not following.
As a matter of fact, he was persecuting the early church.
Then he gets radically saved
and he starts to hear the stories.
It appears in Galatians,
between 14 and 17 years after he came to know the Lord,
he was kind of meditating in, reading,
rehashing his views from the Old Testament.
Also said that he began to hang out with James
and with Peter and others.
So probably during that time, I would imagine,
they were telling Jesus stories.
Jesus did this and Jesus did that.
And one of the things that Paul obviously picked up
is one of the highest priorities of Jesus
was raising up disciples.
And so his ideas for discipleship came from Jesus.
And then he commits himself
to going after men like Timothy and Silas
and Barnabas and others,
with the intentionality that they would go after
their own Barnabases and Timothys and Silases
and so forth down the line.
And that's why men and women
that we have the multiplication of the church
all over the world today
is because of the multiplication of leadership.
That's key.
In your leadership role, whatever it is you're doing,
first of all, has God given you the grace to be a leader?
Second of all, if so, multiply other leaders.
Bring men and women around you
in whatever that vision is that God's given you
and be thinking about not just,
oh, wow, I've got 200 followers
or I've got a church of 1,000 people.
No, how many leaders do you have in there?
How many leaders?
are you raising up?
Paul is telling Timothy,
this is key in the church in Ephesus
where you're pastoring is multiply leaders.
Verse three,
you therefore must endure hardship
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No one engaged in warfare
entangles himself with the affairs of this life
that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.
Wow, this is pretty militant language.
So number three,
under leadership with Paul
is you gotta have a warrior mentality.
You have to have a warrior mentality.
He mentioned soldier twice.
He mentions warfare once.
So these are soldierly military terms
to describe leadership.
Pretty obvious here in verse three,
you therefore must endure hardship
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ
that Paul saw leadership as hard work,
super hard work.
And I would agree after 40 years of this stuff,
it is a battle.
The leader is often the tip of the spear
and we are called by God to send us go into places
that nobody else wants to go,
that we have to be the first one in and the last one out.
And that's part of leadership.
So leadership is brutal at times
because you take the hits.
I'll tell you when you are making a tough decision
in a church or a company or anywhere,
the leader is the one that's gonna take the shots.
I've been in hundreds of situations
that I wish I could just run to the hills.
But when we stick in there and we stay in there,
one of the things that's helped me through the years
is to ask the question,
A, is God calling me to make this decision?
Have I really, really, really heard from God
to make this decision?
Number two, do I have enough other men and women around me
that we're making the decision together?
And with teamwork, we're gonna walk into this battle
or this decision that we're gonna make together,
not gonna do it alone.
Somebody's gotta have your back.
Thirdly, that you have the skills
to be able to manage the decisions, choices, changes
that you're bringing into a system or to people's lives.
So do you have the skills?
If you don't, Google it.
No, I'm only kidding.
You gotta figure it out.
And the best way to figure it out
is to get around people who are smarter than you
and get wisdom from them.
I'm in a situation right now here at the church
where I'm leaning in to three other men
with a decision that we're making
where I feel like at least in two of the three guys,
they've got probably more wisdom than I do
on this particular decision.
So I'm leaning a lot into their wisdom,
but it's a warrior mentality.
You gotta be a fighter.
You gotta be able to look at the direction
and the vision God's given you
almost with a view that this is a war.
There's demonic principalities and powers that oppose you.
And you are leading based on the commands
of the commander in chief, Jesus Christ.
Paul goes on.
And also if anyone competes in athletics,
he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
The hardworking farmer must be first to partake of the crops.
Fourthly, follow kingdom laws of success.
Follow kingdom laws of success.
And he says that leadership is a lot like competing in sports.
You're not gonna get crowned
unless you compete according to the rules.
And there are kingdom rules.
I would say there's like kingdom laws
that determine the universe.
So if you're lying and cheating people in your leadership,
you're gonna be found out.
And you are going to lose that which you've built.
But if you're treating people with integrity,
if you're walking in holiness,
if you're keeping short accounts with people,
if you're receiving as well as giving forgiveness to others,
you have integrity in your life.
There's so many things we could go into
about kingdom laws of success.
Some people have called them the software and the hardware.
I don't necessarily like that term.
Here's what they mean.
Hardware and leadership are the skills that you come with.
If you go to college, you're gonna get hardware.
You're gonna get a degree in engineering.
You're gonna get a degree in computer science.
You're gonna get a degree in criminal justice,
whatever it is.
That's a hardware skill.
Software or the soft skills are people skills,
relational skills,
the ability to navigate a difficult situation with skill
using your voice, using your heart with others.
The reason I don't like that is because hard and soft
seem to be opposites.
They're not opposites.
They actually work together.
One way to think of it is acquired skills and human skills.
So I'm gonna say it that way.
Acquired skills would be the hardware.
the hard and fast, knowledgeable things you need for that job,
and then the human skills, or what some call software.
Human skills are how you relate humanly.
So here's what you find in leadership.
Initially, most people are hired because of the hardware,
because of the acquired skills,
because it looks really good on the resume
that they've done these things.
But you get fired because you lack the software
or the human skills most of the time.
Most of the time, people do not get fired
because they didn't know what to do on their job.
They got fired because nobody likes them.
You come in with acquired skills,
but you have to go on to success with the soft skills,
with the human skills.
So I want to challenge you to grow in your human skills
and your acquired skills.
You got to grow in both.
But of the two, the most important is your human skills,
the ability to relate to people,
the ability to forgive when you're offended.
I was in a situation three days ago
where a person basically lied to me, okay?
They told me one thing they knew wasn't true.
They said it, and I knew they were lying.
And I had a choice.
Okay, I can get really upset and call them out,
or I can call them out without getting really upset.
So I chose the latter.
And I said, you know, it doesn't seem to line up
because it seems like I recall that we said this,
but now you're saying that,
and I'm not sure I know which to believe.
And then he was like, well, I kind of got blown away.
And he said, yeah, you're right.
And I gave him an out.
I didn't call him out, I gave him an out
to be able to move forward with the project
without everybody getting upset
and breaking the whole thing up.
Well, that's almost daily in my life.
And so as you grow in leadership,
you're gonna be called by God,
by the gracelets of God, by the power of God,
to be in situations with people
where they're gonna offend you.
They're going to offend you.
They're gonna say things that are like really dumb.
And when you hear that, you're gonna have a choice.
You're gonna get upset and angry,
or you're gonna be unoffendable,
move forward, and maybe at a later date,
you can talk to that person about some character issues
that they need maybe some guidance in.
So I hope this is helpful to you.
I think Paul is giving us some clear,
easy to follow principles for kingdom leadership
that I think are helpful for all people at all times.
I hope it's helpful to you.