Could We Have Made an Oversight?
–Luke 6:13 (NKJV)
And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles...
In my last post, I focused on vision — the kind of vision that helps us find the harvest Christ wants to bring into His Church. While we look for the harvest, it is possible for us to be guilty of a serious oversight.
Each church and ministry already has some harvest in the barn. There are saved souls already in the congregation, and we have a job to do in discipling them. We have a serious responsibility to steward the potential leadership gifts in the people we already have.
It’s easy to look jealously at other ministries because of their caliber of leaders. If we give in to this temptation, we will neglect the method Jesus used. As our example, He made leaders out of the people who were already in His “congregation.”
If leaders in another ministry look better than the ones in ours, it is because ours are still in an undeveloped state. Even precious gems are in raw form when they are mined; they must be refined and polished.
So, have we made an oversight? Are there some potential leaders that we have not yet noticed? We tend to rate our people and pick the best person we can see for each ministry position. Jesus did it differently. He prayed for His Father to show Him who to invest the most time in and develop in leadership.
Discovering the vision that God has for our ministry must include developing leaders. A bigger harvest requires an expanding pool of leaders. Jesus ministered to all, but focused on the twelve. Let’s don’t make the mistake of trying to do it all and running out of time to focus on our leaders. That would be a costly oversight indeed!
Have we sought God to identify the leaders He would have us focus on? If not, it’s our next step. God’s vision won’t come to pass without it!
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