The scary part of leading

By God's grace and design on my life, I have found myself in leadership positions most of my life. Seriously, from the time I was playing pick up games with my buddies to my current role as pastor, I have always tended towards leadership. This is nothing of my own doing, just something God decided to do in my life. All credit to him. My journey does certainly go with our theme for "WALK" this week that the Holy Spirit uses many different means in our everyday lives to help us grow. God has graciously given me a chance to lead in a lot of settings, but today I was reminded why leadership is so scary...DETAILS! Surprise...I'm not a details guy. So I get excited about this big vision that comes easily for me...it's all so clear in my mind...THEN people started asking questions like "how?" and "why?" and "have you thought about..." and "well, I think we should". I just sat through three hours of meetings for the North American Christian Convention in 2014 (shadowing the president because in 2015, I'm going to be in that role)and I have a "details headache". I just want to dream about the theme and we have to assign workshop classes, leaders, topics, locations, etc... Well, what to do. Relax...just as the Lord created visionary leaders, he also created organizational leaders and detail leaders and stretegic planning leaders...praise God for them. Here's the big lesson they didn't tell me when I was first in ministry. I DON'T HAVE TO BE A DETAIL PERSON to be successful in ministry. Now, don't get me wrong...I've learned and matured in my ability to cover some details (like sermon preparation, and leadership meetings) but here's the "aha": someone else is dying to to the detail stuff of ministry in partnership with my vision. They get just as excited about details as I get about preaching...I had to breathe into a paper bag for a few minutes today and realize...I don't have to be scared....I'm not going to organize all of these details...someone gifted to do that will make that happen...Ahhh... I feel better now!