The following blog post contains notes and application questions from our December 8, 2019 message, Leadership. For more from this series, check out This Is The Life.

Discussing and Applying the Sermon

• What’s one way—based on Scripture—you can do a better job of leading yourself this next week?
• If you could ask God for anything, what would you ask him for? Read 1 King 3:5-11 and discuss with your community group

Summary

The greatest crisis in America, your home, your work, our world, and your own personal life is a leadership crisis. As we continue our series, “This is the Life,” Todd Wagner starts the first of two weeks teaching on leadership, its importance, and why a leadership problem is really a discipleship problem.

Key Takeaways

• God blesses you to be a blessing to others.
• Repentance has become a cuss word in the church and that’s why the church has become a cuss word to the world.
• Leaders who fail to use their position to care for the weak are the greatest failures and weakest of leaders.
• God doesn’t want you to go to a weekly meeting, He wants you to change the world!
• When you say you have a leadership problem you are in effect saying you have a discipleship problem.
• When you have an unaddressed problem with a people you always have a leader problem.
• I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been…if you repent, you can be a blessing and a leader to others.
• Great leaders love and serve their people…and wisdom is what allows us to love and serve.
• When a leader gets better everyone wins.
• It’s a sign of judgment on the land when there are leaders who are living and leading without wisdom.
• When God’s wisdom informs our life we are the leaders God wants for His people.
• The Bible is not a leadership manual, it is an autobiography of what the greatest leader in the history of the world has done.
• Anyone can be a Leader if they learn to follow.
• Great leaders are made not born. They are called disciples.
• If you aren’t leading at home, you aren’t being the lover or the leader you need to be.

Memorable Quotes

• "A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." -Charles H. Spurgeon
• "Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.” -Charles Finney

Mentioned or Recommended Resources

• Suggested Scripture study: Ezekiel 22:23-31; Proverbs 10:21; Proverbs 11:14; Proverbs 28:15; Proverbs 11:10; Proverbs 28:12; Proverbs 29:2; Titus 3:3; Isaiah 3:1-12; 1 Kings 3:5-11; Proverbs 4:5-9; Proverbs 3:5-6; John 5:19,30; John 8:28; Proverbs 11:3; Proverbs 12:24,27; Proverbs 13:18; 1 Timothy 3:1-7
• Sermon: Leadership Matters…and Other Seminal Truths
• Sermon: Introducing Our Elders: A Great Day or the Beginning of the End