week 4 - leadership

Week Four’s theme was leadership, and it began with two really awesome talks from Carl Frost, one of the LT staffers from Ball State University. In his talks, he compared the differences in leadership between David and Saul in the Bible. Throughout both talks, there were 7 different aspects of leadership that we talked about. First, God looks not at outward appearance, but at the heart. Though our society places so much weight on appearance, it’s certainly not what matters or what God judges us by. Second, we talked about leaders who are reliant not on self but on God, including not trying to control everything in our lives and trusting God in whatever we’re doing. A great point that Carl made in talking about this: “God does not need you! He loves you and wants to use you, but He does not need you to control everything in order to get things done. His purpose and work will be done no matter what. Third, Carl talked about not being insecure in ourselves, but being secure in Christ. Some possible signs of insecurity in people is being overly selfish, having a need for other’s approval, being defensive against criticism, craving attention, not being able to handle silence, self promoting, and being overly jealous. We need to recognize it when it’s happening and plant our securities in Christ instead. It’s maddening to constantly compare ourselves to other people. There is always going to be someone better at something you’re good at. It’s okay that you aren’t the best or perfect at something! Next, Carl talked about leaders needing to be willing to take risks while others just play it safe. A risk is defined as something that exposes you to the possibility of loss or injury. The majority of the time we don’t take risks because we don’t want to fail or screw up at something. The battles we usually engage in are the ones we think we’ll win. But, it we always play it safe, we will waste our lives. It’s risky to love people, it’s risky to forgive people, it’s risky to share our faith. But the risk is worth it! We can’t live in fear of the risk. Someone took a risk on us to tell us about Jesus, shouldn’t we do the same? Risk inspires others to act; the greater that moment’s opportunity, the greater the risk. The fifth aspect of leadership was embracing responsibility rather than hiding from it. Leaders have to be willing to accept responsibility even when it’s tough to do so. The sixth was confessing sin rather than rationalizing it or making excuses. Humbleness in leadership in essential! Lastly, a good leader seeks God’s glory and not their own. We have to remember to ask ourselves: What is the purpose of my leadership? For the approval of man, or for the glory of God? (SeeJohn 7:18)


Something else cool about this week’s sessions was that I GOT TO BE A WORSHIP LEADER! First, let me just say that singing in front of people is a big fear of mine!! But as I came to figure out throughout the preparation & week, just getting up there to face my fear was already an act of worship to God. Another LT participant was telling me that he just had this picture of God being just like a Daddy at his daughter’s first recital, so excited and happy. :) It is definitely a different form of leadership to get up there and lead, and it was such an awesome experience! I am so thankful that I was given that opportunity to face my fear while here at LT and see what it’s like. Now I just want to do it more! …. “I will sing and make music to the Lord.” – Psalm 27:6

On Project Day, we went up to 3 hours alone with God and we recited the first psalm that we all memorized together, Psalm 27. I’m proud to say that my house, the 3A girls, won the competition of having the whole house memorized! Then, as is our tradition on Project Days, we spent an hour in prayer. This week we prayed about our jobs in our workplaces and our co-workers. Afterward we all went out and found practical ways to serve and show love to our co-workers.. for the Recreation Department, we went out and bought them all Starbucks! They were so surprised and excited :) Lastly, we also had our first LT cookout for outreach on Project Day, where we invite our co-workers and people we’ve met in Virginia Beach to come out for some free food, games, and socializing. We had a few people come this time, as well as our three managers from the hotel we work at which was very exciting.

On Friday a small group of us decided that we really wanted to go out and do some evangelism on the boardwalk on our own, which was so awesome. We had some go out and do the interviews like before, we had some come and pray throughout the whole time we were there, and we had an LT participant read the Gospel aloud while standing on a bench on the Boardwalk. It was so cool to see that people were paying a lot of attention and actually listening to what he was saying. I stayed near him to be able to talk to people that came up, and I got the opportunity to talk to this man who was originally from Turkey named Helme. He is Isalmic and his wife is Catholic, and it was so interesting to talk to him about the differences in the religions. He promised me that he would take his Bible out and read it again, I hope he does. If you think about it, ask me more about me conversation with him. It was really cool.

Throughout this week I also got the chance to seek counsel in our staff, which I hadn’t been able to do before now, and it was very encouraging, helpful, and awesome! Great news also, Sarah Swann’s (who is a staffer and in my Lifegroup) surgery went amazingly… what they went in to fix they found had completely healed itself. What a miracle! Our Lifegroup made sure to spend some time this week praising God for all the great things He has done:

“Many, O LORD my God,
are the wonders you have done.
The things you planned for us
no one can recount to you;
were I to speak and tell of them,
they would be too many to declare.”
-Psalm 40:5