DeAnna and I are getting ready to hit the road and head to Orlando. Everytime I get ready to leave or miss a Sunday something happens that has me questioning whether I should leave or should I stay and handle whatever fire is blazing at that time.

In the past I would stay and cheat my family.

Not this time. It is a good feeling to have leaders around me that I trust to handle situations. Will they handle them just like I would? Nope. But that is fine. I am learning if you can’t trust the leaders you have around you then you shouldn’t have those leaders around.

Believe it or not, it was a very hard thing for me when the church got the point where I wasn’t involved in the middle of everything. Honestly, it is still hard but I was becoming the bottle neck and I refuse to be the reason this place stops growing or loses momentum. It use to make me feel big time when I left and the guys were calling me because they couldn’t handle things on their own. I thought that was the life a leader. Now if they call when I am gone, it lets me know I have done a poor job empowering, trusting, and teaching them lead.

A SIGN OF MY LEADERSHIP IS HOW WILL THE SHIP RUNS WITHOUT ME, NOT HOW WELL SHE RUNS WHEN I AM AROUND.

I will leave out in a few minutes and the fact is no matter what happens this week (good or bad), RSC will be here when I get back. This thing is bigger then me and it can survive a week without me. I however might not survive WITHOUT the week away from her and the week WITH my family. Learning that lesson has been one of the best things I have learned in planting The Stone.

I can’t wait to hear about how Preston brought IT today. I love Preston and love when he teaches. I trust Preston because he isn’t in love with teaching. That is important to me. I have seen far to many staff guys “fill in” for their pastor only to get that itch to do it all the time regardless of whether they have the skills or not. They listen to the people in the church being nice about their teaching and let it go to their head. I never worry about that with Porter. That is why I trust him to teach. I know he is going to do an awesome job today and our people DO love it when he teaches.

Well, I’m off. Pray that we have an awesome time! I’ll keep you updated here and there if I can.

Peace. I’m out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 am and is filed under General, Ridge Stone Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.