Amazing Leadership

Grant and myself just returned from Bear-tooth Mountain Christian Ranch in Montana.  We had to go up there for a Denominational Orientation Week, and I’ll be the first on to admit I was not excited about going.  We met some really cool people and it turned out to be a great refresher for the both of us.  One of the nights we were there I heard one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard from our Conference Superintendent, who’s name is Dale Erbele.  Dale recently lost his wife to brain cancer and has had a rough year, but he spoke to us and there were some things I was just blown away by in his message and the delivery of his message.

I spent two semesters studying Homiletics, or in understandable terms, preaching class.  Dale broke about every rule there is when delivering a sermon, but everybody in the room hung on every word he said.

1.  People listen to you when they respect you: An easy trap to fall into is to demand peoples respect, Dale didn’t have to demand anything, he has earned people’s respect.  What a good lesson for us, may we serve people to a point where they respect us for who we are and what we stand for.

2.  Old age is no excuse for being irrelevant: Dale is probably in his 70’s, and most of the 70 year old people I’ve heard speak are completely irrelevant and have no concept of our current culture.  Not Dale, he’s a man that loves the Lord and is more passionate than ever about reaching people.  He may be retiring from his “job”, but he hasn’t stopped being passionate about serving the Lord.  Regardless of how old we are, we better never stop serving the Lord.

3.  Speaking from the heart is more important than following the “rules”: I understand the importance of speaking in a certain way as to hold my audiences attention.  That’s why I only preached 22 minutes in church a few weeks ago.  But if we want people to hear us and respect us for that matter, we’ve got to be real with them.  Dale was so transparent about his frustration about loosing his wife.

What really hit home with me more than anything in his message was this:

“Dig your well, and dig deep”. While life is going good now, while we have the time.  Grow in the Lord and ask the Lord to fill you with his spirit as much as possible.  Because the day is coming where we wont want to wake up, when we’ll have trials and troubles in our lives.  When those days come, we’ll be glad that we dug deep.

Challenged,

Andy