Leading Young - Sam Johnson and Ben Ryan

Join this interactive session as Ben and Sam share about the heart posture, mindset and actions that can set up young people to lead well.

Sam joined the Elim ministry at 23 leading a church in the Welsh

valleys. He is now the Associate Pastor at City Church Cardiff.

Ben is the Director of Ministries for Limitless, and is on the leadership team at Living Waters Church, Chorley.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Cool. Good afternoon, everybody.
Are you doing OK? Fantastic.
Good. Well, I'm going to do a little
bit of housekeeping. Then we're going to introduce
ourselves and then we're just going to get kicked off into the
session. Is that all right?
The aim really is that we will kind of share a little bit.
We're not going to, this isn't going to be the exhaustive thing
about leading as a young person,but hopefully, and if you're

(00:22):
writing notes, we'd love you just to connect with maybe one
thing, take something away. If there's something that really
sticks out to you, write it down.
Take a photo of anything that comes up on screen.
We think that would be great. But really as well, it's about
discussions and Q&A. We are going to open up for
about 10 minutes at the end for question and answers.
So or question and response. I should say, I won't claim to
answer everything. So if there are things that are

(00:44):
cropping up as we're saying, saying something, then just
remember it. And then we're going to give
space for you to ask questions at the end, if that's OK.
And yes, so just to say, probably in the size of this
room, we could have done this onthe, the floor.
We don't want it to feel like we're up, up, up and away in the
in the up on the stage, but we're recording and there's,

(01:06):
there's lighting and technical stuff that is needed.
So we're up here, but we want this to kind of be us in the
room together, if that's all right.
So Ben, do you want to introduceyourself?
I've kind of done half the job for you.
And then go from there, yeah. Hello, my name is Ben, so I am

(01:27):
Laura. I have three wonderful girls and
a few months ago I started working for Limitless, which is
our National Youth ministry as adirector of ministries.
So I work alongside Tim. Alfred is our national Director
and I'm also an all day minister, so I am in a church in
Chorley, Livermoreton's church in Chorley as well.
And so yeah, I'm getting used toa new role as well as working in

(01:49):
a church as well. And I've been preaching and
leading youth ministries since Iwas 19 years old.
So that's a little bit about me.Yeah, that's great.
So I'm Sam. I'm 31 years old.
I am married to NIA. We are having our 10th year
anniversary this year. Thank you very much.
Bless you. We have two kids.
I've got a 5 year old daughter, a 2 year old son.

(02:10):
We live in the Welsh valleys. I am English, they are Welsh and
I am slowly being converted to Welshness.
Do we have any Welsh? She's in, Yes.
And you're a Welsh speaker? Shami Citi Yeah, come on.
And the rest of that, you don't know what I've said.
And and they don't need to know.So I came out of regions AT23I,

(02:32):
joined a church in the Welsh Valleys on my second day.
The senior leader there said, bythe way, I'm leaving and I was
handed a church fairly fresh faced out of Bible college and
had to lead that after six years.
I took a step out. I had a bit of a Sabbath season.
I worked for Cardiff Food Bank for about 18 months and then in
January I joined the team as theassociate pastor at City Church

(02:55):
in Cardiff. So I'm sticking around Wales.
Come on, Bowler. And kind of I love you guys.
So yeah, that's a little bit about me.
Great, son. So I'm going to start by
addressing the elephant in the room and all he's wondering what
that is. That is this.
I am not a young leader. I'm sorry.
I am actually 38 for some of youwho might feel that's young, but

(03:16):
I don't feel like I am a young leader.
I'm actually statistically closer to a midlife crisis than
I am to a young leader. But here's where I see the first
issue and the very fact that I was asked to do this seminar is
that for Elam, I am seen as a young leader at 38 years old.
And you know, that's that's something what kind of
discussions we go through that gives it some indication of why

(03:39):
this is needed in the movement and what what the issue is that
we are trying to address right now.
Currently we have over 700 ministers within Elam.
Of those 700, just 29 or under the age of 30.
So you'll see of that, just 29 or under the age of 30.
And to give you a percentage that's just a snippet, over 4%

(04:04):
of our ministers are under the age of 30.
And so for a movement that was started by a passionate bunch of
20 year olds, that is shocking in my opinion.
And you may have some thoughts as to why you think that is the
case. And to be honest, we could
divert for a long time and go digging today into all of that.
But there's a few observations that we have around that that we

(04:27):
want to dig into. And I think they they will come
up on the screen shortly in that.
But Sam has kindly written them out here for me.
Two particular ones that I, I have here is that one, young
leaders are not represented in our movement.
What do I mean by that? And I, I might feel like I'm not
holding back any punches, but I really want to go into this a

(04:47):
little bit is within our national leadership team.
I don't know what the average age of our national leadership
team is, but I can assure you it's probably more than my age.
In our average age, where is therepresentation of young
leadership within our movement? Who are we looking to?
Who are young leaders looking to, who will lead them into the
next season of their lives? Who are our teenagers looking

(05:09):
to? Who are young leaders as well?
Another thing that I, I think wewanted to kind of address, and
me and Sam have met a few times before we did the seminar, is
whether there was a lack of opportunities as a young leader
to lead churches, to preach, to just get involved in ministry,
whether churches were opening upthat opportunity for young

(05:30):
leaders. Ministers given opportunities to
lead often lead later than theirpredecessors.
So obviously people are retiringlater, so people are getting
chances much later. Ministers more reluctant to give
up those spaces. And I'm thankful that I haven't
experienced that so much in my journey, but I know many, many
people experienced that. Ministers are more reluctant to

(05:53):
give up spaces. There's a little bit of a risk
in doing that with younger people especially, and our
ministers stayed in those seniorpositions for longer and much
more into old age, not being able to release young leaders
into those spaces. That's just a little snippet of
where we're up to and of the many changes that I see across
Ealing, particularly in our larger churches, but it's not

(06:14):
much different in any size churches.
It's that it's our 45 to 60 yearolds that are the ones moving
around the churches, not the 20 to 30 year olds that are moving
into leadership positions in those churches.
And I fear for Elan and Mark Pugh has asked us to do this.
So we're allowed to say what we want.
I'll be Sam. And so I fear for Elan that we
are playing the short game a little bit and not playing the

(06:36):
long game in this. And maybe we have chosen what's
considered the safe route and put in many of our churches in
what we would consider safe hands instead of taking a risk
on the next generation. Yeah.
And we're going to keep this on screen because I think this is
something of a cycle that we aregetting into an elim.
And I want to be really clear, this is not we're young, let's
slay older people. Just putting it out there.

(06:58):
That's not what we're saying. But what I want to say really
clearly is that the call to leadership is the call to
sacrifice. We're going to look at a little
bit that later. So if we want to see these
cycles changed, we cannot point to older leaders and say, oh,
well, you should do things differently.
I feel like we are called, as younger leaders say, I'm going
to change my mindsets, my heart postures to shape what Elim

(07:20):
looks like in the future. We have got to receive that call
to say I can't just whinge and wine.
I can't say they're bad because they're not these senior
leaders. We stand on the shoulders of
incredible people that have lived exceptional faith.
And so we are not here to beat them down.
But we are here to say that the cycle we are getting ourselves
into is 1, where people get opportunities later and then

(07:40):
they want to hold on. And then do you know what?
We celebrate ministers when theyretire at the age of 67 and
they're still senior leaders? I'm not sure we should be
celebrating that as much as a scene someone who says I'm
retiring and over my the last 10years I've seen other people
raised up and I've taken steps to the side.
That would be my opinion. Please come and share that in
our discussion sections. And you can argue that against

(08:02):
me, but I see it in the ministryof Jesus who says I'm going to
give you 3 years and then you'regoing to go, you're going to go
and you're going to do somethingand I'm going to step out of the
way. We know that when Jesus sent the
Holy Spirit, he says it is better that I go, it's better
that I get out of the way. And I think if we have that
mentality as young leaders, we can start to break something of

(08:25):
the cycle that we are seeing where it just feels like these
opportunities might well feel untouchable.
But what can we do that and, andfor me as someone in a, in a
position of leadership to say atwhat point and it almost at
every point can I raise someone up and get out of the way and be
offering other opportunities, other spaces, even opportunities
that I would love to take. What can I do to raise someone

(08:48):
up and release someone into those places?
So that's something that I just want to make sure and, and
challenge us and say, Hey, this,This Is Us focusing and saying
we need to take responsibility and we need to take action and,
and change and shift our hearts and our minds sets to make sure
we're ready for what may come down the line.
So in a very, that's kind of thethe context of elim that we

(09:10):
think we're leading into. And in a very elimi way, as we
were discussing, we realised that the three topics we're
going to look at are heads, hands and hearts.
If you're at reasons, you know that that's kind of, yeah,
that's the we didn't know we were planning and we were like,
oh, this could be really cheesy.We could try and avoid the
cheese or we could dive right into it.
We've dived into it. So we're going to go through
heads, hands and hearts and lookat different mindsets and heart

(09:31):
postures and actions that we cantake as young leaders to lead
healthily. If you were in the sessions just
now with Boyd, you'll have heardhim talking about not just
success, but health. How do we grow healthy churches
or areas of responsibilities that we hold.
So Ben, you're going to jump into our first area, which is
heads if you. Can, yes.
So this is heads, which is a top.
We're going to kind of come out of the the context of Elam a

(09:53):
little bit and put our focus a little bit on ourselves as
younger leaders potentially thismoment or people who want to
raise up young leaders. And so I think one of the
roadblocks that we see for youngleaders is this idea of a fear
of failure. As I said, I have been leading
in youth ministry since I was 19years old.
I was released by my the assistant pastor at that time

(10:15):
to, to lead a help with a local youth group.
And it was a plant into a local estate.
It was absolutely chaos, I can tell you that right now.
And we had just lads coming in into a church building that
belonged to us. That church building week in,
week out was smashed 2 bits. It felt like we were always
battling and putting out fires. Thankfully it was owned by a

(10:36):
church who were very, very for the community and loved what we
were doing. But I remember at that time, you
know, it was a real thing for methat as as you, as a young
leader stepping out into ministry, I was just scared of
getting it wrong. I was completely just fearful of
failure. I think this is something we can
all relate to whatever life, whichever stage of life we are,

(10:59):
but we often internalise this pressure to succeed quickly.
And I think as Christians, we wewant to see fruit quickly.
Florida State and, and visibly. And when we don't, it can feel
like we're not cut out for leadership.
But the truth is this fear of failure is a universal
experience. It's not something to run from,

(11:21):
it's something to learn from. There is not a person in Elam
that hasn't had some sort of imposter syndrome at some point.
And what I love about God's economy is that fear of failure
isn't fatal. You know, when we fail, it isn't
fatal in God's economy. You know, think of Peter.

(11:42):
He failed publicly. He denied Jesus three times, and
yet Jesus still said this. He said that you are the rock on
which I will build my church. You see, God doesn't discard us
when we mess up. In my ministry, I have messed up
so many times. Thankfully, I've been surrounded

(12:03):
by leaders who've been so graceful and helped and
supported in that and developed me as a leader in that as well.
But all I need to know is this. We all fall short of the glory
of God. You know, we all get it wrong.
But what we need to do is stop viewing failure as the end.
Start seeing it as part of the journey with Jesus.

(12:26):
And when we do that, we leave more humility, with more
resilience, with more courage. It's not about being fearless,
but about being faithful in spite of all the fears that we
have. And I think when as a young
leader, you understand that failure is often where character
is forged, you can step into leadership less afraid of

(12:47):
falling and more focused on following.
And I think when you are more focused on following Jesus and
less worried about falling, thatcompletely changes everything.
One of my favourite quotes is this from, erm, McManus in a
book called The Last Hour. He says we can become so afraid
of death that we never live, so afraid of failure that we never

(13:09):
risk, so afraid of pain that we never discover how strong we
really are. And so I want to do is just
encourage, you know, we all havethose feelings of failure at
times. We all worry about those moments
where we think, you know, we're just going to mess this up or
this has gone wrong or, you know, we've thrown that event
and nobody showed up, which has happened to all of us, you know,

(13:29):
in ministry at some time. But you know, we we our trust is
in is in Jesus. We're here to follow Jesus and
we are here to be obedient to what we feel he has called us to
do. And so I think we have to take
those risks and we have to not be afraid of those moments that
we may fail because we've stepped out in faith in an area
that maybe we felt uncomfortablein.
That's great. So the second mindset that we

(13:51):
want to be aware of, secondly, is this, that wisdom is a gift.
Wisdom is a gift. We are not promised wisdom and
we when we get it, we do not have a monopoly of it.
We have got to stay aware that we are not promised it.
The Bible is clear that is a gift.

(14:13):
You can see the Scripture behindme here from 1 Kings 3.
And it's the story of Solomon. And God says to Solomon, ask for
me, what, what do you want from me?
And Solomon says, would you giveme wisdom?
Essentially you can read it and fall behind me.
And God is pleased that he asks for it.
God, God, God expresses his his love, his thankfulness that

(14:33):
Solomon asks for that and gives him so much more than wisdom,
but it starts with his request for wisdom.
God likes it when his people seek wisdom.
How often do we say God, give methe give me power, give me, give
me, give me opportunity. But how many times do we say
God, give me wisdom? God, would you give me wisdom, a
wise heart. James 15 says this.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all

(14:57):
liberally. We're scared of that word in in
the cultural context of our of our world at the moment,
liberally and without reproach and it will be given to him.
You can ask for it and I recommend you do, but we have to
be aware of the world that is around us.
Really important because there is this cultural assumption and
it is very prevalent within the church that you get as you get

(15:18):
older, you get wiser. And so therefore young people
are foolish, older people are wise, and we are all on a
journey towards wisdom. That is not true.
I'll tell you how I know that's not true.
I've met a lot of very foolish older people.
Forgive me, but it's true. And I've met lots of wise young

(15:39):
people and I've met lots of foolish young people as well.
Let's not get that twisted. But we have got to get out of
our heads that we are just on a natural journey towards this
sort of utopia of wisdom. That is not what God says to us.
And very importantly, notice that Solomon was a man who asked
for wisdom and then ended up just veering off the path and,

(16:00):
and getting three, you know, hundreds of wives.
I have one. One is perfectly enough.
There is obviously some process where where there where you have
to understand, OK, if I receive wisdom, I don't just get to now
keep it for myself. It is an ongoing process in
receiving, listening and acting.The next slide shows a quote

(16:21):
from Beth Moore, who says this. It's absolutely beautiful.
You don't age into wisdom. You yield into it.
When I read that, I was like, flippin Eck.
Yeah, because this idea, and it speaks against this idea that
I'm just going to get there eventually.
I'll just keep going and my experiences and then I'll be
wise. No, it what it shows is it's not

(16:44):
an image of attaining. To yield is not to attain, it's
not to grab, it's not to get. It's actually letting yourself
lean into wisdom. You yield into it.
So what it's actually saying is I have to relinquish my earthly
wisdom. I have to relinquish my heart,
my mind. The things I want to say in that
argument, the things I want to chat with that person when they

(17:06):
cut me up in the road, are the thing I want to do when my
natural urges are not towards wisdom.
And they aren't and they won't be when I'm 80.
So to find wisdom is to yield isto say, here's what I want to
do. God, how can I yield into the
wisdom that you have to offer me?
So my encouragement around wisdom is seek it out.

(17:29):
Don't think it's going to come to you.
Don't sit and wait. Seek out wisdom, ask for it, and
when it comes, learn to yield your own thoughts and wisdom to
the wisdom that God brings. Thanks Sam, so good.
And so carry on this theme of heads that we're diving into
this cheese. As Sam said, and this is a, this
is a rocket science, but servingis leading.

(17:52):
I want to be very clear on that.Serving is leading.
And I think Mark Pugh in his address this morning tackled
this. And I'm probably going to repeat
some of the things that he said this morning.
But so often I think leadership is confused with having power,
holding a microphone or being inthe spotlight, being on the
stage. I think we confuse leadership
this way. But Jesus flips it on its head.

(18:14):
He flips it completely upside down.
And he says this. The greatest among you must be
your servant. You see, Kingdom leadership
start at the bottom. It begins by picking up a towel,
not a title. And that's truly what Counter
cultural Kingdom is all about. But it's also the clearest
picture of how influence works in God's Kingdom.

(18:38):
You see, when we serve, we buildcredibility.
When we serve, we earn trust. And when we serve, we grow into
the kind of leader that people want to follow, not because we
have told them that we are the leader and they should follow
us, but because we showed them how to lead.
Serving positions us to lead with authenticity and integrity.

(19:01):
It removes the entitlements and it builds an empathy with the
people around us. We have to learn to lead by
lifting others up rather than climbing over each other.
I think in the workplace we see this often is that the only way
to get to the top is to climb over people.
The only way to get to the top is to put everyone around you
down. That is not Jesus way of the

(19:22):
Kingdom. You see, we learn to lead by
lifting others up. You don't need a platform to
start leading. You just need a heart to serve.
I've been in an Eland church since I was 10 years old.
In fact, my mum is in front of me in the room over here who

(19:43):
told me about Eland Church when I was 10 years old.
Hi mum, thanks for the support. There's probably not many roles
within the local church that I don't feel like I have done at
some point over those last 28 years in in Eland.
I've haven't served in in so many different, whether it's
kids ministry, youth ministry, whether it's been preaching all
the way to to pastor, assistant pastor, all those roles.

(20:05):
And you know, what I kind of reflect upon in those last kind
of few years, especially in my license, I got ordained is this
and, and, and Mark said it this morning that we do not need any
more superhero leaders. We don't need any more superstar
leaders. In fact, I worry sometimes that
I don't know about you, but I watch all these American

(20:26):
churches and the mega churches and they're great on YouTube and
the worship's great and the sermons are amazing every single
week. And you know, we see the
highlight of that. And I worry that we're adopting
a little bit of that culture into the UK church when actually
we are called to be different. We're called to be leaders who
are servants. You know what, I don't know, all

(20:49):
those big pastors, maybe they doserve and maybe we don't see
them taking out the bins in the churches and all that kind of
stuff because they don't film that stuff on a Sunday morning.
But we need leaders who are prepared to serve coffee.
We need leaders who are preparedto fix the coffee machine when
it's broken. We need leaders who have

(21:11):
preferred to do every role, whether it seems bigger than
them or not. I'll leave it there.
Yes, amazing. So we're going to jump into a
time of discussion now. So if you go to fantastic, it's
on behind me. Thank you very much.
So if you around you in groups, twos, threes, fours, whoever

(21:33):
you're in, we want to take a fewminutes, 3 or 4 minutes just to
ask yourself this question. What do you perceive as the
biggest strengths and weaknessesof leading as a younger person?
So 4-5 minutes, go ahead, discuss and we'll hear back in a
second. OK, brilliant.
We'll bring it back in. Now Ben is going to run around

(21:55):
with a microphone. So preferably if you've got
something to say, could you be as far away as possible that
would just allow Ben to run further?
No. So if, if in your, in your
groups youth, you'd love to feedback, we'll just have a
couple of these. Just pop your hand up and then
Ben will come around to you. So what do you perceive as the
biggest strengths or weaknesses as of leading as a younger
person? Yes.

(22:15):
Oh, no, sorry. I thought I, I see that hand.
Is there another? We've got one over here.
Yeah. I think as young leaders, we
adapt more to change and we embrace technology.
So that then becomes a bit of a struggle for our older
generation. And they don't like change

(22:37):
really. And when you're a young person
and you bring an idea that you feel that due to technology
we're moving forward, they become a bit uncomfortable with
it. And that is not, like you said,
to slag them off, but they're not moving with time.
So it's a bit difficult. Yeah, absolutely.
And can I just say that increases our responsibility to

(23:00):
teach and to show and not go, hey, cool, we we know how to use
social media and then go if you don't get this, you're not part
of it. It it draws that sort of past
all heart out of us to say, how do I make sure we connect with
people on social media and not it's great.
Thank you. One more.
Yes, we've got one over here. Thank you very much for making

(23:20):
him run. Appreciate that.
I'd say a strength is just freshideas, especially being younger
we you have the lack of experience.
But because of the lack of experience you can allow your
mind to basically go wild with imagination.

(23:41):
And I'd say a weakness is sometimes because of either age
or receives lack of experience, sometimes you can lose a bit of
of the respect as far as other people or older leaders
respecting you and your ideas. So I'd say that's kind of been
my experience. That's amazing.
That's brilliant. Thank you so much.
And yeah, just to say on that, it's so funny, isn't it?

(24:03):
We when something's a bit dry, we think, oh, we want, we want
someone new to come in with fresh eyes.
But if we have fresh eyes from within, sometimes somehow
they're not valid. So I think that's great,
actually, the ideas you have, the new ideas you have, the new
fresh eyes that you're looking at something with are very
incredibly valued and can be a fantastic benefit to the church.
So don't quiet in your voice. Use it right.

(24:24):
We're going to jump into the next section.
So we're looking at heart. So if you go to the next slide,
then that is it's looking at thepostures.
What how do we lead ourselves well to serve others as as Ben
said. So, Ben, over to you.
Yeah, yeah. So we're going to go into the
first part of this one, which isabout authentic leadership.
And so we are going to have a little look at this together.

(24:46):
And so in a world that is curated, filtered, performance
driven, I think young leaders who are real stand out.
And I'm going to unpack this a little bit.
If authentic leadership isn't about having all the answers,
we've we've just heard a little bit about that there or being
flawless. It's all it's, it's about being
honest. It's about being self aware and

(25:07):
grounded in who you really are. You see, people are drawn to
leaders who are vulnerable, not perfect.
When you lead authentically, youcreatespace for others to do the
same. That's important in this.
See that creates community, not just crowds.

(25:28):
And they are two very different things.
You see, Jesus is the perfect model of this.
Jesus didn't hide his emotions or his fears.
He he wept, he he got tired, he asked questions.
That's authentic leadership. Authenticity also builds trust.

(25:48):
When the people you lead know that you are being honest and
not pretending they feel safe, they're more likely to open up,
to grow, to follow, to follow your lead.
But it starts with you choosing to be the same person on stage

(26:10):
or in position as you are off it.
You see, authenticity isn't a strategy, it's a heart posture.
You see I'm originally from Liverpool, although I've lost a
little bit of my Scouse accent over the time.
But when I started my minister in training with my wife we had
a 2 year old at the time. So I've got 3 girls now.

(26:32):
I just had one girl at the time and she was 2 and we moved to a
place called Telford in the Midlands and we found it really,
really tough. I'd grown up in a church, I had
a fantastic bunch of mates from the youth group and school and
all that kind of stuff and so I had a great family around me and

(26:53):
so we went to this brand new place.
We knew nobody there and I couldnot make a friend for anything I
tried. I was trying to play football,
trying to get in with the local people.
I just could not make a friend for the life of me.
My wife was really struggling. She'd left the village of our
family in Liverpool that we'd had before and and we just found

(27:16):
it really difficult as a family moving to a new place.
And I could have done something in that season of my life.
And it is this. I could have pretended that
everything was OK. And I fear that, that sometimes
we get sucked into having to pretend that everything is OK
when in reality, when we shut the front door and go home, it

(27:38):
is not. And in that season, I had to
make a real decision. And there was lots of tears in
that season. And that wasn't just from my
wife, that was from me as well. Lots of crying out to God in
that season. And in that season, I chose to
be open with the leadership teamof the church.

(27:59):
I chose to be open with the, theyouth team that I was leading at
the time. In fact, I even chose to be open
with some of the young people that we were serving to say how
challenging it was to to leave your family and your friends and
to serve God and to sacrifice. And, and that is what the cost
is of that really. And I believe in that season, it

(28:21):
was because we had it all together, because trust me, we
didn't have it all together at all.
But it was the fact that I was able to be real with people, the
fact that I was able to be truthful with people that in
that season, even though it was really difficult for us
personally, we've seen God pour out his blessing upon amongst
the church. In fact, the youth group was

(28:42):
growing at a rate that I'd never, nothing had ever done
before had happened like that. And yet behind that was pain,
tears, lots of tough conversations.
And so God was moving, but because I was open and honest,
and I think if I'd pretended my way through that season, I

(29:03):
honestly think that the goodnessof God wouldn't have moved in
that moment. That's what offensive leadership
is all about. You don't have to have it all
together. God is asking us to be real.
That's not airing all of our dirty laundry to the world, but
it is being real with the peoplethat we need to be real with
around us. That's great.

(29:24):
Thank you, Ben. The second thing that I'm going
to share is about humility. This is my absolute hobby horse.
If you want to come and talk to me afterwards, I'll just talk to
you about this. This is my my absolute thing.
Like Ben said, we don't need more celebrity pastors.
We don't need more celebrity leaders.
John Stott, a great theologian, said this at every stage of our
Christian development. And I really don't think we take

(29:46):
this seriously enough. At every stage in our journey,
in every sphere of our Christiandiscipleship, pride is our
greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend.
We are living, and we've alreadymentioned it in a celebrity, in
a title, in a fame focus world. And one of the greatest

(30:06):
struggles that will feed not just into your ministry, but
into your whole life is the ideathat I need to be a somebody or
be a success. It will feed into everything.
It will feed into your marriage,it will feed into your
relationships, it will feed intoeverything.
If you have social media, I do not.
But if you do, it will feed intothat.
How do I look the best? How do I get more liked?

(30:29):
How do I become more watched? How do I become more important
and be a somebody? And that is dangerous.
And I there's three reasons why I think pride is so damaging to
the human heart. So if you are taking notes, you
can write these three things down.
I think it stops us from doing 3of the main tasks of
Christianity. If pride, if you cannot get

(30:49):
pride out of your heart, here's three things that I believe it's
difficult to do. First of all, find salvation.
Why? Because salvation is accepting
that you need help is accepting that I am broken, I need a
saviour. If our prideful hearts get so
hardened and that maybe even if you've become saved, but
actually you've, you've become prideful in that and you've

(31:11):
forgotten that salvation and forgiveness and confession is a
daily practice. You will forget regularly that
you need a saviour. It is exceptionally damaging if
you go I, I can do this on my own, I'm, I'm good.
It's damaging to the first call of a Christian, which is simply
salvation, daily salvation dailytaking up your cross.

(31:34):
The second thing I believe pridestops is worship.
What you cannot worship God and stand above him.
Worship is the bowing of the knee before your Saviour.
And I'm not just talking about some worship, I'm talking a
lifestyle of worship. So if if you stand and you say,
hey, hey, God's put all these things to me and therefore I'm
going to go do them and I'm going to look cool and I'm going

(31:55):
to do these things and I'm goingto say these words and I'm going
to. We are losing the lifestyle of
worship that says God above all things.
Would your name be glorified? God above all things, Would my
life reflect you and you alone? If if we cannot humble
ourselves, many of us know that Scripture before the mighty hand

(32:17):
of God at the right time, he will exalt us.
If we cannot do that, we will live a life that ultimately does
not worship God. And so so salvation, worship and
thirdly, service. Your life is not about you.
We've already heard of it. I'm not going to go too hard
into that. But your life in service is not
about you, Joe. I was walking into town

(32:39):
recently. I was hungry and beautifully
pastoral meetings merged beautifully with lunch.
So I was like cool, let's meet in chopsticks.
So I cheeked out some some food as I pastored this person and I
realised as I was walking home and I went, no one else will
know I've met that person. Not no one else will know.

(33:01):
No one's looking at my calendar.No one's going to, you know,
maybe my wife will say at the end of the day, oh, you know,
did you get up to much what, what happened?
But otherwise no one knows what I've done there except for that
person I met with. And if that is not enough for
you, if the caring and loving and feeding and supporting of
another person is not enough foryou, you are not able to serve.

(33:24):
If out of your service, you needsomething, you need a claim.
You need it to feel good. Here's 1 You need them to get
themselves out of it. The reason that that we struggle
so much with serving people in addictions is because they don't
just get themselves out of it. And then we feel like we haven't
looked after them good enough and we feel like we're a
failure. But it's accepting actually, as

(33:46):
I serve this person, they might fail, they might succeed, but
the pastoral ministry is not that.
I need to get some sort of senseof satisfaction out of it.
And we've got to be careful thatin our moments of service, if
we're laying out the chairs, looking around, going, I wonder
if the camera, the cameras have been left on.
I wonder if someone sees it. I wonder if someone will
acknowledge it. I wonder if there's just

(34:06):
something that will just say, hey, well done.
There's one person that you needto say, well done, my good and
faithful servant. And so I think if we do not
eradicate pride and ego out of our hearts, we are facing a very
difficult walk, firstly with Jesus.
And secondly, in ministry, we have got to be in a space where

(34:29):
we can receive daily salvation, daily confession.
We've got to be in a lifestyle of worship.
And we've got to be a place where we say I'm going to serve
this person like no one else is watching because most of the
time no one is great. We're going to move into a time
of discussion coming next. So turn into your groups and,

(34:50):
and all the questions here I can.
Stop turning around. Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord. What does success in leadership
look like for you? If you were in the session with
Boyd, you've got a little bit ofa head start, but don't do your
success markers point more towards accomplishments or
health. Go for it 3 or 4 minutes.
Be as honest as you're willing to be great.

(35:18):
OK. If you could just wrap up your
conversations and just pop your hand up if you've got any
feedback on this and what the success in leadership look like
for you. Do your success markers point
more towards accomplishments or health?
And Sam is going to run around this time.
So please someone at the back, put your hand up for this one.

(35:40):
I'm half blind, I'll just pass it on.
Yes. So we just had a discussion
about regards accomplishments and how and the sources markers
pointing on both ends. So for me personally, I think I
would look into striking a balance between both of them

(36:05):
only because when you're lookingat the sources backers pumped
into US accomplishment, you findthat that sometimes just like
some of my church members just said, a you look towards like
having a target to achieve. So this can go up to either ways

(36:26):
where you support the young people, you look out for them to
see how they're going to become better.
So it's like an accomplishment to them as well, not just to
you, but just like my senior whohas just said, he said it can
also go the other way. When you see them, they don't

(36:47):
succeed at that point. And sometimes you look at
yourself as a failure. But on the other end, looking at
the head part, when your sourcesmarkup points towards like going
towards the head part, that means you on your own ends, you
work towards being healthy as well as the people you you're
looking at for ensuring that they're healthy as well.

(37:11):
So overall, I look at it as likeestablishing a balance on both
ends, having a target go, something you want to
accomplish, seeing yourself growand what you're doing, seeing
the young people grow as well, and also overall maintaining the
healthy state on both ends. So I think that's, that sums it

(37:33):
really. There's of course a healthy
balance within that and keep it over the microphone there and
hand it back down. I love the fact you referred to
gentlemen next year as your senior, so in that as well.
So, but yeah, that that healthy,healthy balance within in this,
of course, in terms of like we, we know we want to accomplish
things, but also it's where we where we find their identity in
that as well. So anybody else?

(37:55):
Oh, there we go. Look that right, kind of up the
steps a little bit. Yeah, keep going please.
Yes, there we go. Kind of black T-shirt there.
Come on Sam, keep running. I broke my foot a year ago.
I was just we were talking about.
That you can't have. A true, it's kind of like what
Boyd was saying earlier, you can't have a true accomplishment

(38:16):
without health because if it's not a good, if it's, if it
doesn't have health and it's notso yeah, it's not truly
successful. Yes, great.
And it's worthwhile saying. These weren't trick questions,
were they, Ben? No, they weren't your questions.
No, there is any answer at all. It's a great, great just to get
your feedback and your answer tohear kind of some of those

(38:39):
questions that you guys are having on this as well.
So we're going to move on to ournext topic, which is hands and
what practical steps can we taketo perform our responsibilities
well. So what practical steps can we
take to perform our responsibilities well?
And I'm going to start this one by talking about a topic which

(38:59):
is leading up and releasing downSouth.
Leading up and releasing down. I think this is one of the most
vital, yet often overlooked skills is this ability to lead
up. And that means this honouring
and influencing those above you without needing a position.

(39:21):
In fact, you've perfectly represented it there.
My senior is a great way of saying that is honour in that
very phrase that you used. It's about influencing those
above you without needing a position.
It's about offering solutions, being trustworthy and showing
initiative. It's about when you stop waiting

(39:42):
to be asked and start adding value off your own back and you
start to shift the atmosphere around you while simultaneously
we must also do this, which is releasing down.
And that means this investing inthose younger Thanos.
And not just investing in those younger Thanos, but empowering

(40:03):
them to lead. Making space for others to grow.
You see, it's easy to focus on our own self progression, our
own progression. But healthy leadership is never
self centred. You see, when we commit to
bridge the gap between the generations leading up and
releasing down, we become part of something bigger than

(40:24):
ourselves. And that's how legacy is built.
The goal isn't just to rise, butto raise others as well, and
that's when leadership really does become a multiplying force.
For me personally, as I was reflecting upon this, this meant
this. It meant my pastor taking me on
speaking engagements with him even when I had absolutely no

(40:48):
idea what I was doing there. But it meant him taking me to
those speaking engagements, In fact, at times handing me the
microphone and going go on Ben, you tell the church what God's
saying to them. Sometimes in church life, it is
good to be for a deep end, right?
But it was actually his heart inthat was to release some space

(41:10):
for me to grow. For me, releasing down has
looked like this. Up until 4 1/2 months ago, I was
leading the youth ministry in inChorley.
And one of the the biggest things that I found for me was
I, I have a need for things to be excellent.

(41:30):
So I want everything to be amazing and to be great, which
isn't a bad need, except sometimes when you are releasing
down, you have to put your own thoughts and your own
preferences to one side. And I really struggled this for
a long time in ministry. But for me, leading and
releasing down meant getting over myself.

(41:53):
It meant getting over my need for excellence all the time and
allowing space for younger people and younger than me to do
it better than me. Just because it was different to
how I wanted to do it doesn't mean that what the way I wanted
to do is better. In fact, I have to say, often
times there were was much betterthan any way that I could have

(42:14):
done. That's great.
So the the second one I'm looking at in our hands of how
we can act to lead well is to have self aware leadership.
And this kind of comes into themall.
It's a bit mindset. There's a bit of action we can
see. This is probably one of my
favorite phrases to use. Koran, who is the youth pastor
now at City Church. You'll probably hear this a lot.

(42:36):
I apologise, but one of the biggest things I say to people
is everything communicates something.
Everything communicates something.
Everything we do, especially by the way, when you have the
caveat of being a young leader, and I don't like the title but
I'm using it because we're in a place with that name.
When you have that caveat, everything will communicate

(42:58):
something different to someone different.
You are not only ever communicating one simple thing
and we have to consider what we do and the decisions we make and
what we have to hold in tension with what we are communicating.
I want to give you an example. You might have been able to tell
I'm quite a laid back, quite a jokey person and the best

(43:20):
opportunities I will just try and offend people in a nice way,
make people laugh. So I'll do that from the stage
on a Sunday morning. I'll make jokes, maybe jokes I
shouldn't do. We have an over 60s ministry
that we run in the church and I was hosting with a lovely lady
who's in her, I'd say late 30s, early 40s and she he announced
it and I said, oh, so are you going to go to that bit of a

(43:40):
joke? She's obviously not 60.
Let's all get over it. Now.
That was funny. People laughed.
I got away unscathed. OK.
But what I have to recognize is in that moment, what I'm
communicating in the positive is, hey, there's a relaxed
nature to church that there are people that have come up and
say, hey, Sam, I love the way that you host.
I love the way that it's, it's Ifeel like I'm not in a, you

(44:00):
know, I'm not a security guard. I'm not like standing rigid.
I have to stake. I can just laugh and I can
relax. And I've had really positive
comments and that's been really lovely to hear.
But I can't be naive enough to believe that I will also to some
people be communicating irreverence.
I need to be willing for that tobe the cost.

(44:22):
And we live in a world that saysbe entirely who you are and
don't think anything about it. You don't have that choice in
leadership. I want to say that really
clearly you do not have the choice to just be whoever you
feel like you want to be. You gave up that right when you
said I'm going to serve people. And so I, yes, I want to create
culture. I want to, I want to make, I
want to bring joy. I want to bring happiness.

(44:43):
I want to teach people that actually church isn't somewhere
to come and be scared and sit inyour Sunday bed and you can come
and relax. And but you're also aware that
if all of a sudden my senior leader is away and I had to lead
someone's mother's funeral, theymight be nervous about if I can
lead it well. And so I need to be willing to
show both sides and choose when and where I communicate and what

(45:05):
I am saying and the way I am saying it.
The worst thing I see in churches, we say, hey, we're
going to do this and it's going to communicate this.
It's like it might do to a group, but this group over here
think you're ignoring them or you're putting them to one side.
And so my encouragement would beto start to be self aware, start
to take a moment in the decisions you make and say, OK,

(45:26):
this is what my heart wants to do.
This is what I think would make sense.
Where is the wisdom of God? Where do I need to be pushed and
pulled and challenged? And actually, what is the
tension I'm holding? And am I happy with the tension
I'm holding it at? Because I have positives on this
side and I have negatives on this side and I have to be
willing to hold the both. The worst place we can be is

(45:47):
we're like, I'm just over here doing my thing and people better
just deal with it. Well, they're going to deal with
it and you'll be unemployed. Like that's your choice because
we want to communicate to peopleI love you enough as a leader to
lay myself down to say, how can I serve you?
At times that is being totally and freely yourself and at times

(46:09):
that is being holding something of yourself back to say because
you need something different from me right now.
Mark was talking about being clothed with the pastoral cloak
this morning, wasn't it? And that's the idea.
It's saying, hey, this is my natural tendency, but this is
what the person in front of me needs.
They are not always the same thing.
Great Sam, I think carrying on from where Sam's I thought there

(46:30):
is this final part on on this isis leading self Craig Rochelle's
fantastic quote. This is the greatest gift you
can give yourself is honesty. You will never be able to lead
yourself as long as you lie to yourself.
Before we can lead others, we have to lead ourselves well and
self. Leadership is where the unseen

(46:51):
battles are won. Your disciplines, your thoughts,
your emotional and your spiritual health.
You see, it's easy to look good in public while crumbling in
private, and I've already touched upon that.
But over time, what is in you will eventually leak out of you.
Over time, what is in you will eventually leak out with you.

(47:11):
Leading yourself means being intentional with rhythms of
rest, accountability, growth andreflection.
It's about developing A maturityto say no to what looks urgent
so you can say yes to what is truly important.
If you neglect self leadership, ahead of you is burnout.
Ahead of you is compromise. But what you need to do is

(47:35):
building healthy rhythms. And when you do building healthy
rhythms, you leave a greater clarity and capacity.
And it's all about asking the hard questions, the questions
that in reality will hurt sometimes when we answer them.
Questions like what is driving me in this situation?
Who am I becoming? Am I living with integrity?

(48:00):
You see, the best leaders don't just have strong platforms.
They have deep roots. Thank God.
So we're going to go to another discussion question.
Yes, we're going to just becauseof time, me and Ben are
preachers. So we go over time.
That's what we do. It's in our DNA.
So we're going to merge the kindof last section.
So we have a discussion question.
So we're going to give you 3 to 4 minutes to chat about this.

(48:23):
And when we come back, we'll do either you can reflect on what
the question was or if you have another question, you can just
ask it and we'll merge it and maybe we'll run over by a couple
of minutes. I'm holding a microphone, I get
to say. So what positive or negative
experiences of leadership have you seen or experienced and how
has it shaped your own ideas andactions?
Take 3 or 4 minutes, chat about that amongst yourselves, and
then we'll come back and hear a few thoughts.

(48:44):
Thanks. Awesome.
Right, we'll come back together.So pop your hand up if you might
want to respond to this. If the person is in the room,
you might not want to respond publicly about the experience
you had with them. But yeah, either that or if

(49:05):
you've got a question that you'dlove to put forward and it's
not, that's fine as well. So put your hands up and we'll
alternate running and then we can kind of.
Yeah. Cool.
Oh, my gosh. Bless you.
Right at the front. Hey man, Hallelujah.
Yeah. Thank you.
So I just wanted to discuss about this leadership one which
I had a negative example of a leadership as I come from India.

(49:28):
I have always seen the pastors as a higher end of they just
step on before the preaching andthey just leave the church but
they do not indulge into the community.
So we always consider the pastors as some supreme people
or like equal to the God but which after coming to UK just
completely changed my mind. Back here in my church the

(49:50):
pastor indulge into the community, he tries to speak
normally and when they some whenthey say something on the stage
we are clapping because Holy Spirit is speaking through them.
But some pastors consider themselves like they should be
appreciated in India. That's the negative side in some
parts of India, like legalism isspreading, which we are not

(50:11):
seeing in elim. That's the positive impact I
feel. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
That's fantastic. Kind of one over here some.
Amazing. Thank you.
Yeah, hello. So yeah, based on the discussion
questions I've talked to the Connor and Charlie about.
So Pastor Harris actually just recently joined the NLT.

(50:33):
He was part of my church before.And one of the very admirable
things I noticed from him is that of course leadership
leaders always delegate, but if he's not able to get some
delegate, he always takes ownership.
So this could just be like, takeout the rubbish and bear in mind
this church has a cleaner and the maintenance person who
usually would take out the bins anyway.

(50:54):
And also you'll be cleaning out the rubbish on the Sunday
morning, coming at 8:00 AM when the service starts at 11 or even
cutting the grass, you know, even sometimes.
And I think things that I has really been re admirable to see
is that he takes ownership. And it's not just because he's
the lead part of it. He takes ownership.
But actually I, I look at myselflike, how can I take ownership

(51:14):
too in, you know, taking care of, of God's, God's building
and, and, and, and God's Kingdomin terms of making it
presentable for those who are new to the building.
So, yeah, thank you. Fantastic.
I'm such a great example of servant leadership as well.
So thank you for. That so a good example of
leadership that I've seen is someone being like flexible and

(51:37):
adaptable in their leadership. So understanding that sometimes
being a leader means leading from the front using your
platform well, but other times it means like getting behind
your people and sort of pushing them in the direction that you
want them to go in as well. So not just thinking I'm at the
front, you guys need to follow me in the direction that I'm
going, but also being like, thisis the journey that we're going

(51:59):
on together and sort of sitting amongst your people and helping
them to to go in the same direction together.
Amazing. Anything else?
Yes. On the negative side, I really
no, no and this is not my church.
All right, let me let me start with the positive side here.
So I am a leader in the Ealing Pentecostal Croydon.

(52:24):
I am one of the youngest leaders.
I I've been serving for five years now.
I'm the youngest ever leader over there.
So one of the positive sizes, I think Pastor Cornelius, he's,
he's pathetic. He will, he cares about the
well-being of the team and he, he listens, actively listens.

(52:48):
He's always there. He cares.
There was a time that we were working very late, I think we
were doing a Christmas ball for the elderly.
And he would come around and say, what do you want to eat?
And then you order Chinese, whatdo you want to eat?
And then order Donna kebab. You know, caring about
everybody's needs and seeing that really he cares.

(53:08):
And the other side of the negative is an experience I
received when I was in Birmingham is micromanaging as a
leader. I don't think that is right at
all. You know, a leader who wants to
detect, manage your every movement.
Like we're saying, young leadersand they stifle any ideas you

(53:29):
bring to try to push you down because they think you're trying
to take over. But that's not the point, Mark
said. One person can't do it all.
You know you need the people around you and that is where
sometimes young people are affected.
Amen. That's great.
Thank you. Right.
Let's have one more and then a. Lot more over here.

(53:49):
I have a question actually. I've experienced sometimes where
like in the planning of things or maybe even just in developing
new ideas or even like when it comes to putting on different
events. Just when it comes to new
things. Sometimes I've found that it can
be a bit jarring to just go fullof force ahead without seeming

(54:15):
like I'm trying to take over, orlike I'm trying to say that all
the younger way is better. So I guess my question is, how
do we, as young leaders push fornew innovative ideas while at
the same time respecting and honoring the people who have
come before us? Depends on all of that answer

(54:36):
that one no, no challenging. That's part of leading up is
recognizing OK, how do I honour this person whilst out stepping
on toes? I think we also have to take
some assumptions out of the way when I think sometimes we think,
oh, I won't do this because I'llstep on someone's toes.
If lots of people are just thrilled to see someone with

(54:56):
passion who's willing to go and lead it.
I think the issue is probably where you're like, I really want
to do this and you need to do it.
I think actually leaders are thrilled when someone says, I
think this needs to happen and I've come up with this plan and
here's some people and I've gathered 3 friends and it's
like, now I'm not, there might be some leaders that would say
no, but I would say generally, let's take the assumptions off
that no one wants younger leaders to do stuff that is not

(55:17):
true and say, actually, have youasked the question?
Have you gone and discussed it? Is it completely out of the
blue? Can you begin to lay some of
the, the groundwork and go, hey,actually I'm considering, you
know, I'm, I'm an associate now and I was sharing with my lead
pastor recently just going, do you know what?
I'm really feeling like we should maybe reengage the men's
ministry. I just want to give you the
heads up. That's kind of on my head and

(55:37):
I'm, I'm thinking about it. He has the opportunity there to
shoot that down or to then go, okay, great.
I've not given him anything elsebecause frankly there's nothing
else in here. But I just know I think
something wants. So it's sometimes laying
groundwork can be really helpful, but then also taking
the step to say, I'm just going to ask you, I'm going to go for
it. Can I do that quickly, Sam as
well? My senior pastor, the church

(55:58):
that I work at in surely as a part of the leadership team of
is very good at this. And this is drip feeding.
So he will find some key people in the church and just kind of
mention kind of something that he wants to do.
And he kind of lets the gossipers do the jobs for him a
little bit in the sense of he will just drip it into someone
like maybe it's somebody who he thinks could lead it or somebody
who could be part of it. And then all of a sudden

(56:19):
everybody's on board with it. And I've seen at the very
beginning stage and just drop itto one person.
And I think it's such a great skill to be able to do that as a
leader. So I'd say find the people
around you in one way. I'm part of a of the church
network with other local churches, so Church of England
churches, Catholic Church in Chorley.
And you know, I am the youngest in that room by at least 30
years most of the time. And actually what I've found is

(56:42):
the if you just come in with passion.
And so actually, maybe we could do this for the Kingdom.
Like they were still taking out a great example of this is at
Christmas time, they were still taking out an advert in the
local newspaper to advertise allthat was happening in the
churches. And I was like, listen, I have
never bought a newspaper in my entire life.
I think we need to change this. Out of that came a conversation

(57:02):
where we built a website for thefor the local church network and
everything goes on there and it all goes on social media and
it's just up the profile massively and they all love
that. But it came out of a simple
conversation where we said, hey,in fact, we did the newspaper
article one last time and then we moved to it on online where
where we knew we could reach more people.
So it's just about drip feeding those ideas as well sometimes.

(57:24):
That's great. That's great.
Well, sorry, we we're going to have to end that there.
What we do have for you is just some application questions.
A lot of this is looking at ourselves as leaders and going
and we want to, if you can, takea photo of them when you get 15
minutes, because Els is such a calm and peaceful few few days.
Take some time to have a think, pray through some of these
things and just consider, OK, what does it look like?

(57:46):
And these are really application.
What does it, you know, what, what, what can I actually do?
How can I invest in raising someone up?
All those sorts of things go away, have that consideration
and start to put some of this inaction.
If you want to chat more, if youhave other questions, please do
come and find me. And then afterwards we'd be
happy to exchange details. But otherwise, let's just pray
to close. Ben, would you pray to close?

(58:09):
Yeah, Father, we thank you for this time together.
Father, we thank you that God that that this is on your heart,
Father. And Father, we pray as we
reflect, Father, as we take timeto just hear from your voice in
our in our lives. Father, over the next few days
and through the seminar, God that you would.
God just be speaking clearly to us, Father, that you would help
us ask the hard questions of ourselves as we go away from
here. God and Father that you would.

(58:31):
Yeah. Father, we see a real increase
in fruitful ministry from those in this space as well.
God and and Father that you're ahand will just be on every
single person that's been here. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
Amen. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of the
conference.