I will Start with Why – How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
I have taken long to read this book because I was reading it as I was starting my new job assignment. I am in charge of the outreach department of a growing church with a congregation of more than 1,700 churches. The strategic plan for the church goes up to 2017 and my strategic objectives have been outlined for me. I am assisted by two very dynamic young men who have a passion for mission and evangelism work and I am supposed to steer the vision of the department for the next five years. As I have read the book, I have been prompted to ask myself exactly why I am in this office and how I can inspire the church to missions. The Man from who I am taking the realms from has been of great inspiration to many and he was a very dynamic and charismatic man. I realize I have large shoes to fill. This reminds of the quote in the book that ‘we are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong… is what gives them the ability to inspire us’. I have always felt like I belong to Africa Gospel church. They took me in as a young inspiring missionary when I was 24 years old and they nurtured my gift and passion for missions for 6 years. They also gave me a chance to grow as they gave me challenging responsibilities which propelled to aim of excellence since they trusted me with the work assigned.
As I come back to the church, I still have to ask myself why exactly I am here. What is my purpose, cause or belief? I have always had a passion to see the gospel established to those who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel well enough for them to be able to make a conscious decision to follow Christ. This is now my task. My main responsibility is to see one million souls won for Christ in the next five years, 200,000 every year. Is this achievable? Yes it is. As I have met leaders of the denomination and mission fields, and read their reports and seen their enthusiasm in see this accomplished, I can see that it is possible. My main task is to give them all the support they need since they are the people on at the grass roots.
These leaders I have chosen will have to be early adapters. I need for them to buy into the vision and be optimistic that it can be done. We have been able to break down the numbers to manageable pieces and seen that if every adult in the church leads a person to Christ then this is achievable. The church has 200,000 active adults and therefore is it possible to see every adult lead a person to Christ every year. AGC is largely a rural church and rural people in Africa tend to be very sociable. One of the categories of incidental groups that the church will focus on are the men who are addicted and hooked to alcohol. It has become so prevalent that many villages are being managed by women because men spend all their free time in drinking dens. In some places, there has been a negative population growth because there are no viable men in the villages.
One of the challenges I got from the book is that leaders offers the followers a place to go, not a plan to follow. I also realize that according to USA business surveys, 90% of all new businesses fails in the first 3 years, it could be the same with the plan of action to achieve my strategic goals at work. I will therefore ensure that I am always aware that my primary call is to inspire people to do things that inspire them. This I will commit to do and always ask myself ‘WHY’ I woke up to go to work. All I can say for now, I love waking up every morning to go to work and I look forward to every opportunity to grow the vision of the church to ‘ the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world’.
Joy Mindo
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.