The power of a new perspective is always better than an old idea.

God hasn't told me

I was talking to a leader who had called me for some advice and help a few months ago. After assessing the situation I made some suggestions on how he could turn the situation around and make some really important and pertinent changes in his church. I believed that those changes were vital not only to his survival but his relevance as a church. In the course of the conversation he said to me "I can't do that because God hasn't told me to do that" I find it very difficult to then continue the conversation when I hear statements such as this. Who am I to argue with the Almighty.

It got me thinking about when God speaks to us and how God speaks to us as leaders. I sometimes- in my more bored moments, watch God TV. I see the TV evangelists selling their wears and telling us they had this great conversation with God. God told them this and God told them that and they laughed and God laughed and the best thing of all is if we support them by sending our monetary gift then we too can share in the financial blessing that they have received. The question I ask is did they really have an audible conversation with God? Or rather was it a process of reading the scriptures and prayer and a revealing of revelation through the witness of others, the word of God and a supreme sense of peace that this was the direction that they should go. I am not saying that God doesn't speak audibly to people but in my experience it is rare. The fact is God does speak in different ways to different people.

But one of the ways that God speaks is through the witness and wisdom of others that cross our everyday paths. The leader that I was talking to a few months ago needed help, he asked for my help, I looked at his situation, discussed the situation with him and came to my conclusions. Because he didn't like those conclusions his default setting was "Well God hasn't told me to do that" In that moment in that instant he was clear that God had not talked to him and shown him that he should go down the path I was suggesting. The unfortunate thing is that  his church as continued to disintegrated even more over the last few months.

In the last few days I have been to two events and heard things that really thrilled me. In one event the guest speaker said that God did not tell him to start and pioneer his church he just did it and in the last eight years he has grown from 4 or 5 meeting in his front room to over 400 meeting in a hired industrial warehouse every Sunday morning. The fact is that God has already told us to build his church, He hasn't changed his mind. In the second event I was in a leaders meeting and the senior leadership team shared about how they do church and why. It wasn't that they waited on God for revelation on how they should do stuff they just got on with it. They built structure and function as the church grew and put in place systems as they were required. All the time they built around the two central points that they felt was God's original intention, Love everybody and win the lost for Christ. For the rest they used the wisdom and expertise of those people that God had brought to their church to build it.

Sometimes it takes an Ass as in the case of Balaam for us to believe that God is speaking to us. Or like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus, sometimes we are not willing to give up the obvious for the sake of seeing the truth. For many leaders sometimes the answer is staring them right in the face but they can't see the wood for the trees and they become paranoid that a this can't be the answer to their problems. Sometimes the power of a new perspective is always better than an old idea.