Beyond Brainstorming: Leading a Team That Actually Hears God

Looking back now over decades of leadership, one of my biggest regrets, uh, is not a moral failure.

It's really how many things I did or led that actually God never asked me or asked us to do.

We brainstormed, we strategized, we did some introductory prayer and closing prayer.

We got wise counsel.

We hired consultants.

We went through open doors.

We built teams.

We mobilized people.

We cast vision.

Uh, but much of it was driven by anxiety, uh, drivenness, ambition, adrenaline, and often pressure to grow quickly.

Uh, and one of the great lessons of my life, uh, has been this, that adrenaline does not equal the Holy Spirit, and brainstorming is not the same as discernment.

So much of the models of leadership I know that I was taught, and that still, uh, dominates today, is built on urgency and expansion as quickly as possible, and speed.

Uh, waiting, surrender, the idea of communal discernment, uh, quiet listening, those aren't really things we talk about that much.

Yet Isaiah 30:15 says, "In repentance and rest is your salvation.

In quietness and trust is your strength." That is a, uh, a formative, uh, text, has been for me for a very long time, and I trust for even for the EH Discipleship Movement of how we lead our churches.

In repentance and rest is your salvation.

In quietness and trust is your strength.

And so because the joy of leadership comes not from necessarily doing more for God, but actually from discerning, discerning God's will and then actually doing it, doing God's will according to God's timetable and, uh, His way, not our way.

And of course, and of course, in, in, in His power, the Spirit of God, the power that raised Jesus from the dead.

So the problem is that a lot of our leadership teams and a lot of our different ministry teams know how to brainstorm but aren't very good at hearing God together, discernment.

A-and so there's so much at stake.

In fact, there's so...

There's a great saying that you can't, uh, you can't win a battle if you don't even know what the battle even is.

And bo- the scripture says we're, we're battling against powers and principalities, Ephesians 6.

And one of the core areas of warfare has to do with how we actually make decisions as teams.