Leadership Seminar Talk

Leadership Seminar

Thanks for coming out to this leadership seminar. I am Stevie Stockholm an intern with Cru. I graduated last spring and as you can see I was in a fraternity. I will talk more about that later. I am going to pray for us and then jump into this.

What is leadership? According to Dictionary.com it is the position or function of a leader, the ability to lead, and an act or instance of leading; guidance, direction. There are a lot of ways to lead within Cru. You can be a bible study leader, you can help on one of the servant teams, and you can serve which is also a form a leadership. Serving is leading in a Christ like manner and leading by example. You can lead by being an RA, joining a fraternity, sorority, or a club, or just by getting to know people in your class, we are going to call that missional leadership.

Since whole books have been written about leadership and spiritual leadership we are going to focus this time on that last style, the missional leadership. Before we get into really what that is I want to share a little bit more of my own personal experiences. When I came here as a freshman I got really involved with Cru mainly because my older brother was already involved. As a freshman I helped on the greeting team before Cru, I helped lead freshman prayer, and helped on the outreach team. Sophomore year was a lot of the same. I lead a bible study and was still helping with the class prayer and outreach team. I was also asked to lead the community team. I am not saying all of this to make myself look good but to show you all where I am coming from. Spring of my sophomore year I realized that I was completely in the “Cru bubble” and I didn’t know how much more I could do with Cru. I also realized that I didn’t have any non-Christian friends. It was then that I started thinking about joining a fraternity; there were several other circumstances that made me finally decide to join my junior year. Some of you might be in the same spot where you feel that you have done everything Cru has to offer or you might realize that you don’t have any non-Christian friend. Maybe you aren’t like that at all and you have a lot of good friends that don’t know Jesus but you don’t really know where you fit in with Cru. This is why we are talking about leading missionally and what that looks like.

Some of you still might not have any idea what I mean when I say missional leadership, so let’s break it down. The word missional comes from missionary. So what is a missionary? What do we expect a missionary to do? How is he going to be the most successful? We have the idea that when we send a missionary overseas he is supposed to learn the culture, dress appropriately for the culture, live in the culture, and basically adapt to the culture. Even though he adapts to the culture his message will not change. He will share the Gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ, in a way that will relate to the culture. Why do we think that that can’t apply to us here in this college culture? We live in a culture now that has its own identity that we often separate ourselves from. Let’s get into to the word just to make sure I am not just making this up.

Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. So Paul is saying that he had to adapt to culture to reach as many as he could with the Gospel. He says in there that he is under the law of Christ. We see in Mark 12 that he is referring to Love God and Love others. The bottom line is that love is motivating him to share the gospel with as many as possible. 1 Thes. 2:8 is another example of this.

We get an opportunity to see Paul live this out in Acts. We won’t turn there now but you can look at it later. In Acts 13 Paul goes to the synagogue in Antioch. While there he stands up and addresses the Jews and gentiles who worship God. He goes through all of scripture and shows how it points to Jesus as the Christ. Let’s turn to Acts 17; here we are going to see how he reaches out to a different group of people in Athens. Verse 16 says “While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” Paul saw what was wrong with the culture and obviously did not start worshiping idols but he knew it was a big part of culture. He is invited by a group of philosophers to a meeting they had. Verse 21 talks about that meeting saying….”spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” In verse 22-23 we see Paul addresses their religious culture and acknowledges it and rebukes the bad in it. In verse 28 we see Paul quote one of their own poets to proclaim Christ.

So recapping what we see in Acts, Paul knows the culture and finds a way to make the gospel reach that culture. He learns what kind of questions the people are asking to know how to proclaim Christ. He changes how he presents the gospel but not the gospel message. You guys may have seen this before but there is an illustration of an open and closed hand. The open had is how you are going to present or relate the gospel and the closed hand is the gospel message.

When we understand the culture it gives us an opportunity to share the gospel more easily even with people we don’t have a relationship with. When I was down in Atlanta for a Greek Conference I ended up getting into a conversation with the bar tender in the hotel. Share the story. I was able to do that and felt comfortable doing that because I had a little understanding of his culture.

Tonight we are going to hear from Stevo Reed and Brian Fletcher about their experiences leading missionally. And Tim Carper will share some of the expectations that come along with this leadership and more practically what it looks like. We will close the night with a time of Q&A but for now go ahead and take a 5 minute break.

Questions for Stevo and Fletcher:

-Tell me a little bit about yourself, where are you in your life

-What made you decide to join the club lacrosse team/fraternity

-How has God used you there/What has God done in those situations

-What sacrifices did you make to serve God in this way

-How have you decided what you are going to do in situations with parties/alcohol

-How has it been living with the guys you are living with

-How important has it been to stay connected with Christian friends and bible study

Next Year

I don't know what I am going to do next year or long term. Recently I have been thinking that it is my right to be on staff with Cru and that it is my right to get accepted this time. Part of me thinks that I am not going to get accepted. Back to this attitude that I have had though. As a student I was kind of anti-staff saying that God can use me where ever I go, but now that I am on staff it is almost opposite. I have had the idea that God can't use me anywhere else so I have not even thought about how God can use me.

Recently I have realized that and I have spent some time thinking about what I have been learning. I have been learning a lot about church and different churches. Part of me is interested in working at a church maybe with youth. I was thinking about a non-existent internship with my churches youth that I found out the other day the church was already thinking about having a part time intern. The church is also in search for an outreach pastor. I don't think I am qualified to do that full time but I do think I can start the ball rolling with some ideas and things I have learned this past year.

I have also thought about the idea of moving out to Colorado and just getting a small job maybe retail or something like that with the idea of getting involved in a church out there even to the point of working for a church. I think that it would be fun to see some more of the US and experience being out on my own. I feel like I can really push myself and my development and growth by being somewhere new where people don't know me and know how I work.

Another option is still working with Cru and with greeks but not at Tech. There might be an opportunity to go to UGA or UNC and work under guys that have been doing greek ministry for awhile.

Yet another option is to go home and get a real job and stay involved in the church but also have the opportunity to put all of the stuff about missional ministry to practice and lead by example in that way.

So many thoughts....still thinking through it.

Thoughts

I have had a lot of thoughts recently and I figured this would be a good way to keep track of them and track my thought process. I don't like writing so I don't know how this will go. Maybe I will find out that I do enjoy it.