Welcome to the Lessons in Leadership Series!

We talked about 3 enemies of excellence involving pride last week. This week we are tackling two more enemies of excellence before we get to the good stuff!

Can you recall the first 3 enemies?

Pride, perfectionism and complacency.

Your challenge last week was to pay close attention to any areas of patterned pride in your leadership. And to confide in a friend or mentor who you could trust to pray with and for you.

This week let’s look at the next two profound challenges we should readily recognize as leaders:

• Working outside our giftedness
• Lack of boundaries

If you tuned in to my Embedding Excellence session at the Ministry: Online! AWI conference you may have heard me share a story about the time I served in a church nursery. And failed big time.

I was at the church to research a bible study I was writing and instead ended up praying for the Lord to spare my life in the nursery one long winter night. (I’m only half kidding!)

Was I capable of it? Yes! Am I gifted for it? No.

Often instead of examining if we are working within our giftedness, we ask if we are working inside our capabilities.

I am capable of cutting down a tree if need be, this doesn’t mean I should quit my job and become a lumber jack!

The same goes for any areas of leadership in ministry.

This one gets a bit tricky because so many of us simply want to serve! Yet when we jump into a position we are not spiritually gifted for the Body as a whole suffers. There is a place for you in the ministry of the church. Every believer is spiritually gifted!

Ask yourself, if you are already serving in ministry, if you are working in a position you are simply capable of doing or one you are gifted to do?

Chances are you can look to your passion for the position you are serving in to gauge the answer of this.

More often than not, what fires us up and gets us excited to serve, is where our spiritual gifts live.

Leaders need to know their gifting because if we don’t know where we serve best, we will end up serving everywhere.

Stop. Read the above sentence again.

Did you catch the significance of that statement? It’s in our nature. You and I? We are going to lead. We were born for it. The question is, are we going to lead where we are called to lead?

I shared in my session the following example.

I’m an idea person. I am at my best when I am leading, teaching or sketching out a vision for something new in ministry.

If you were to ask me to lead a prayer team that weekly meets on behalf of the Church, honestly? I wouldn’t thrive. Sure, I would do it. I am capable of praying, obviously. But I know myself and I would have to drag myself to that prayer meeting each and every week. It would never be something I was passionate about on a regular basis.

Now if you signed my husband up for that same prayer group? You’d have a man on fire for his Church and the people of God. He’s probably get there early just so he could prepare his heart and mind for the meeting.

That is the power of working inside our giftedness.

It is the difference between mediocrity and excellence.

Lack of boundaries is also a big challenge in leadership. A BIG challenge.

Leadership means daily interaction with people. Whether they be ministry team members, co-workers, book club ladies or a sewing group you head up.

We need to be wise about the boundaries we set up early on. Pray with purpose on guidelines for your leadership.

Ask yourself:

• How much access am I willing to give those I serve?
• How much time will I spend mentoring in person?
• Answering the phone? Email?
• What will my “work” hours be?
• In what ways can I serve effectively without burning out?

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that those you lead will automatically respect your boundaries! Often times you are going to have to enforce the boundaries you set in place.

There are days when every question that I get asked does not get answered. If I were to answer every single email I get, I’d never see my husband! One of the best decisions I made in the last year was setting up office hours for Exemplify as a ministry. It has helped me have a clear beginning and ending to my work day. If I didn’t adhere to a schedule, I’d burn out fast. (This is not the easiest thing to do. As a matter of fact, I have two awesome friends who hold me accountable and tell me to shut it down when I’ve worked longer than I should.)

Hear me when I say: boundaries are not only healthy, they are necessary.

Ultimately by setting up clear boundaries you are able to serve more freely.

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This week I want to challenge you to examine where it is you serve in leadership. Are you passionate about your position? If not, maybe you have taken on too much and need to realign your leadership priorities.

Also, write down some clear boundaries for the areas you lead. Yes, your blog counts! If you consider your blog an avenue of ministry, I highly encourage you to jot down the mission of your blog and three or four boundaries you feel will best help you serve your readers.

Next week we’re going to do something fun. I promise!