This week I am kindling 'Be A People Person : Effective Leadershio through Relationship' by John C Maxwell. He has a great chapter on how to be a person people respect. A key part of having respect is "failure proofing" your life through listening for the “alarm bells” in your life. Here are Maxwell's 10 questions every leader must ask to help spot those warning signs.
1. Is My Personal Walk with God Up to Date? Every leader should be able to answer the question, “Do you have a word from the Lord that is up to date?” or “What have you been learning recently from the Lord?” We should have something that God is teaching me us today.
2. Am I Keeping My Priorities Straight? Countless numbers leaders have become “successful” only to discover the tragic price for their success was a broken marriage or loss of health. At some point along the road to success, their priorities shifted. Our priorities must be God, family and vocation - in that order.
3. Am I Asking Myself the Difficult Questions? We must ask ourselves the critical questions : Why am I doing this? What are my motives? How should it be done? When should I do it? When does God want his task accomplished?
4. Am I Accountable to Someone in Authority over My Life? Much of the problem of credibility in the Christian community is caused by people with power who struggle with the same tough moral issues as the rest of the world, yet are often not accountable to anyone. Authority minus accountability equals a very dangerous situation.
5. Am I Sensitive to What God Is Saying to the Body of Christ? Are you sensitive to the fact that God speaks to others too? If you can’t answer an unqualified yes, you’re skating on thin ice. God the Spirit speaks to others in the body who complement us and make up for our weaknesses.
6. Am I Overly Concerned with Image Building? Too many of us have become more interested in image building than in kingdom building. Change in this area requires us to ask : Do I make decisions based on what is right or what is most easily accepted? When I do something for the Lord, do people see me or do they see my God?
7. Am I Overly Impressed by Signs and Wonders? We all seek to experience revival. But more than seeking revival, we need to seek God. Then we certainly will experience revival, healings, and miracles. But if we pursue revival for revival’s sake, we’re seeking after secondary results. God is not in the entertainment business. When he works miracles, it is for one purpose only—the ultimate good of his kingdom.
8. Am I a Loner in My Service to the Lord? When we design our lives after the Lone Ranger concept, we are sure to suffer some unfavourable consequences. We develop a distorted perception of ourselves, our ministries, and other people. We become irrelevant because we don’t live where other people live. There is a sense of exclusiveness and an inability to relate to the real world.
9. Am I Aware of and Honest about My Weaknesses? To be forewarned is to be forearmed! Most of us know our deficiencies, but we have a tendency to try to cover them. We need to set aside time to reflect on our weaknesses. Areas where we become sidetracked and are prone to sin. We then need to ask God to strengthen us. Paul David Tripp has great advice about this.
10. Is My Commitment Constantly Before Me? This is supremely important if God has called you into a position of Christian leadership. When Paul stood before King Agrippa, he said, “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision.” Paul could have been tempted to give up, take other options, or yield to the persecution, but the thing that kept him on track was the vision before him.
Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013
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