GYC 2007: Be

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Jay Gallimore and Paul Ratsara - The Heart of a Servant: Models of Biblical Leadership

Jay Gallimore

Paul Ratsara Sr.

The Heart of a Servant, Part 1

And I'll tell you what's so great is that you just sit right up front right to start with.

I'm going to have a word of prayer and then we're just going to kind of do a little introducing and we'll get right into things.

Our Heavenly Father, you're so good to us.

We want to praise your name this morning may all that we do bring glory to your name And when we leave here Heavenly Father may we have a new concept of what it means to give leadership in your work in Jesus wonderful name amen I have with me elder Paul Ratsara I want him to stand here so you'll know who he is elder Ratsara is the president the division president of the Southern Africa Indian Ocean Division how many how many members do you have in that?

Better tell us where it's at on the map a little bit.

Tell us where it's at on the map a little bit.

If you see the continent of Africa, the southern part of that continent, and then the islands in the Indian Ocean, that is where the division, the Southern Africa Indian Ocean Division.

We have 23 countries in that division and territories and 2.2 million members in our division.

How many conferences and unions do you have?

38, 38 union, I mean 38 conferences and fields and 8 unions.

How many members does your largest conference have?

How much, what's your largest Union more than half a million more than a half a million Wow that is amazing totally we have 2 of them and that is Zambia Union Conference and then a Zimbabwe Union Conference to more than 500, 000 our largest Union North America is going to be the Southern Union with about 130, 000 give or take.

North American membership in Canada and the United States and Bermuda is about a million, just a hair over a million.

So that kind of gives you a perspective there.

It's Interesting that a lot of the literature now is telling us that the center of Christianity is moving away from the Western world and moving to Africa that Particularly biblical Christianity is moving in Africa Christianity and Africa is growing much faster than any other religion, including the Muslims.

You hear that about the Muslims only grow usually by fertility.

But Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds.

Now we want to make this a seminar, which means it's a teaching seminar.

We don't plan, we haven't got a group of sermons.

But as we go through, you're going to be able to hear, if we go from section to section, you'll be able to hear Elder Ratzaroff will be weaving his story in.

Just some amazing things, just marvelous things.

He invited me to come to his division and I got to sit and watch him lead his division.

And I can tell you, and I'm not trying to build him up here, but I can tell you the Spirit of God is working with him.

His union presidents love him and his conference presidents love him.

He had both his conference presidents and his union presidents there.

And I've never seen better leadership anywhere than what he was doing.

Some of the best leadership I've ever seen was what he was doing with his group.

So we're all going to grow and learn from Elder Retzirer.

I'm just thrilled that we have him here and he has the experience.

He's been a conference president, he's been a union president, he's been now a division president and he has a wide range of experience.

He's been a pastor, He's been an evangelist and evangelism.

He's just got a lot of experience to bring to the table.

Now we are talking, Elret Sar, we're talking not about, we're not talking about leading General Motors, are we?

And that's going to be very different from things that people hear in the secular world.

You may have been to a lot of seminars on leadership.

And I've been to some great seminars and great information But you could take some of that information and become the new Hitler of the world You think about So we're talking about something totally different We're not talking about even political as a big political contest going on in the United States, you know, if the new president of the United States.

And so we're not talking about political leadership, we're talking about the most precious thing in the world, God's church.

And there's no way that we can lead this church if we are not spiritual.

So we're going to start off with something that you've not if you've been to any leadership conference I promise you that you've not heard that I should say I promise you I my guess is you're not you've not heard What I'm going to show next what I'm going to tell you next because they don't think in these terms and before we can lead you gotta follow in God's church, Elder Atzara, before you can lead, you've got to be a good follower.

Without the Lord Jesus, we have no pattern of leadership.

Unless you follow, you cannot be a leader in God's church.

In fact, the first thing that Jesus says to his disciples, you want to give it back to me, anybody remember?

And so, unless we become good followers, we cannot be good leaders.

Now that really changes the paradigm, because everything you hear out there in leadership comes, oh, you got, you know, you got to do this, you got to make the connections, you got to everything in the world, and they got all these things, 21 laws of leadership, which that's got a lot of good stuff in it.

But what you don't hear, they talk about what it means to be a leader.

Let's take a look at some people's lives here.

First of all, let's go to the definition of what it means to follow.

Feel free to raise your hand, make a comment.

I think we ought to take a look at the dictionary.

By the way, any of you later, if you want our notes, if you can bring a flash stick or something and pull them off, we'll be glad to give them to you.

To follow or following means to go or to come after.

Now notice the next part, because that gets more close to where we're at.

And that's exactly what Jesus meant when he talked about that.

You know, most leaders want people to obey them.

To be a good follower means that we've got to be obedient.

In other words, you do what the leader does and the leader's way of life becomes your way of life.

Now, Elder Isar, you made a moment ago, you said we've got to be spiritual if we're going to give leadership in the church.

In order to be spiritual, does that mean that you are some kind of a mystic?

The Heart of a Servant, Part 2

We pray that Your Holy Spirit will be here.

Thank You for the angels that can see Your face that are present.

I was, during the break, I was just having somebody, and I won't say who, so I was just having somebody tell me that they worked in a secular corporation and said what a wonderful experience it was.

Then they worked in a religious setting and they said it was doing God's work, but it was such an awful environment.

I commented to the individual, I said, you know, so the corporation that you're working for was using God's principles in the pursuit of Mammon and here is a religious organization using the devil's principles in order to try to get the Lord's Word out.

It's kind of an interesting world sometimes.

But what we want is we want the 2 together, am I right?

We want God's work to be carried out God's way.

Let me tell you what Ellen White says to some people like me.

People say, oh you're a conference president.

Let me just tell you this, or you're a division president.

I put my shirt on just like everybody else did this morning.

Position does not give value to your life.

I mean, it has value, but it doesn't make you more valuable than somebody else.

Neither does it necessarily give you more wisdom.

In fact, Al-Hawy says, you know, the job of conference presidents is to consult.

Other times you have to give you have to get things going, you have to give direction, etc.

But the whole concept is that we're to consult with 1 another because we are all brethren, and I'll put the cistern in there too, we're all brethren and cistern.

The ground is equal to the foot of the cross.

Now that doesn't mean that we don't respect people's responsibility.

The pastor, I had a ministerial director told somebody the other day they had talked to a pastor and they did not talk too nice to the pastor.

And the ministerial director said to them, he said, look, I don't mind you having a difference of opinion, but You treat Him with respect.

But we should treat everybody with respect, should we not?

He treats us with respect even when we are in the opposite camp from Him.

We were left on the part about picking up the cross and following Jesus.

I've got just a little bit more I want to do on this before we switch to another part here.

I've got a little story on here I'd like to tell you.

I'm sorry I can't pick up the young man's name right off.

How many of you are acquainted with the Alamo?

Very quickly, when Texas was trying to win its independence from Mexico, they were in a war and they had a fortress that they took over, a fort called the Alamo.

And my dad, when something would go tough, my dad, when I was growing up, would say, and we were not from Texas, but he would say to us, just kind of 1 of his little quips, he'd say, okay son, remember the Alamo.

So when I ran across this little story I thought it was kind of interesting.

It's a sad story, but the Alamo, they only had about 160 some, 170 some defenders of the Alamo, and the Mexican general came up against that fort with 4, 000 soldiers.

They knew that they were going to get wiped out.

He said, you surrender, you've got a few days to do it.

If you surrender, we'll save your life, but if you don't surrender, we're going to kill every 1 of you.

So they consulted together, and they had a young man there who was about 18, 19 years old, and they said, look, if we could get some reinforcements here, we could actually carry on a fight.

So he slipped through the lines of Santa Ana and he made his way to another part of Texas and he asked them for some reinforcements to come.

And they said to him, look, we don't have the reinforcements, no reinforcements are coming.

Now he knew at that point, if he makes his way back to the lines of Santa Ana and delivers the message that there's no troops coming.

It means they're all going to die, including him.

He had a heavy responsibility, but he said, It's my responsibility to take it back.

Slipped through the lines of Santa Ana and delivered the message to the rest of them that there was no reinforcements coming.

They'd already decided they were going to fight to the death, and they did.

Sometimes responsibility takes us places we wish it wouldn't.

There have been times in my life saying, how did I get myself here?

When you were in the Congo, How did you get yourself here?

He may tell you that story a little later, but taking responsibility is a powerful thing.

What does responsibility, what kind of responsibility does a Christian leader have?

Not long ago I was teaching, I had a devotional for a stewardship seminar at Andrews University, the North American division, and held 1 that asked me to hold a little devotional.

And usually when you think about stewardship, what do you usually think about?

Oh, those are the people that are going to help us give more money.

But that's a very, very narrow view of stewardship.

Stewardship is really the management of my life.

Now Jesus has a stewardship parable and I won't take time to read it, it's there found in Matthew chapter 24, it's the last part of it there, and he talks about a servant that he puts over his house, and he says the faithful servant gives food to everybody, the faithful servant or the faithful manager gives food to everybody just when they need it.

But it says then there's the unfaithful manager.

And the unfaithful manager says, my Lord's delayed, he's coming, and so he begins to eat and drink and have a party and he's just a mess.

I want to say that if you have a responsibility, if you're the youth leader in your local church, if you're the elder, the Sabbath school teacher or whatever you are, there's other areas of stewardship that are very, very important And 1 of the areas of stewardship is the stewardship of the truth.

In other words, we need to take care of the truth.

Contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.

Sometimes that can be costly for us, but we have responsibility.

Sometimes people will say, well, it really doesn't matter, you know, we want to be nice.

Well, we're always going to be nice, But that doesn't mean that we're going to sacrifice the truth as it is in Jesus.

So what kind of responsibility does a Christian leader have?

We have a responsibility to guard the truth.

The Heart of a Servant, Part 3

We're just going to move right into that.

Here is the Czar of Ages page 250 and Paragraph 1.

We can go back to this we need to Jesus chose unlearned fishermen.

Now, let me ask you does Jesus like ignorants?

So He's not choosing them because He likes ignorants.

We're going to see that in a moment and it should speak volumes to us.

Because they had not been schooled in the traditions and what kind of customs?

In other words, Jesus was going to educate them.

He believed in educating them, but he wanted to make sure they were educated in a good way.

That's why that we all need to always question whether our education and our learning is in the school of Jesus.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't go to college, you should, if that's where God is leading you.

It's not against formal education, but it is a signal to us to say, is this education measuring up to the kind of teaching that Jesus would have me to learn?

Notice it says, they were men of native ability and they were humble and what?

Now that is a quality that you want to remain in the rest of your life.

Even if you are the division president of the Southern Africa Indian Ocean Division.

He wants to maintain a humble, teachable spirit.

And I know that Elder Atzar is doing that because he was so excited we got a chance to visit with each other on the phone.

He said, I've got some new things I've got to share with you.

We'll sit down and he's going to share some new things with me and I'm excited about it.

Are you a man or a woman that God can educate for his work?

Lord, am I educatable or am I already so just petrified that you can't do anything with me?

You have to keep an open mind to God's leading and God's teaching.

Now Elder Ratzauer is going to share with us 3 parts, 3 parts that are absolutely essential, I believe, to this educational process.

So Edurit Sarr, the next slide is for you.

I believe that what we are going to study now is the key, really, to a successful leadership.

I call it a triangle of successful Christian leadership.

I would like us to open our Bibles in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 12 to 25.

We are not going to read the whole verses, but we will go back now and again and pick some 1 or 2 verses from that.

But I would like you to study this in depth, not now, but you can go back to it and study these 3 parts.

I consider this very crucial, very important, and I try to apply this in my leadership.

I will never teach something or preach something that I'm not trying to do.

That is a principle that I have taken already, I've been following.

If I don't do it, I will not preach about it.

That does not mean that I've reached I, I have reached the 100% I'm still working on it, struggling, but 1 thing is sure, I'm trying to apply it.

So the this principle that I'm going to share with you, I'm applying this, I'm trying, I'm working on it.

We are still, we are not getting there yet.

Do you want to be a leader of influence for the glory of God?

You know, we we give all the glory to god.

So that is the goal of, that should be the goal of a leader, just to achieve for God and the name of God will be glorified.

And I believe that if we apply this, if we put this into practice, then we will receive, we will have that success, achievement.

I come from Madagascar, my wife from Mauritius, those 2 islands in the Indian Ocean just next to the main continent of Africa, but we were called to serve in Congo.

And in the capital city, Kinshasa, there was a big, huge building, very nice actually, by the main road.

It was tested and it was stated that this building is not to be occupied because it is dangerous to live there.

Said, they made a mistake on the foundation.

So we need to start with the foundation and the foundation is God, is spirituality.

You see, if you want to build high, you need to go deep in the foundation.

We talk a lot about leadership by example, that is very important, but we are trying to, almost coining this, leadership by spirituality.

I tried to study his life just to find out what is the key of spiritual leadership.

You can see there the prayer life of of Paul.

You see we need to be connected with God first.

You see, Paul, on his way to Damascus, he encountered Jesus Christ.

For a leader to be successful, he must be first converted.

Because an unconverted leader will use an converted method, will take an converted decision, and will lead the church not into conversion, but into reverse conversion.

It is written in the book Christian Service, this reverse conversion, meaning converted to the world.

So the first thing is conversion, deep spirituality, connected with God.

You know, to be a good leader, you must be a good Christian first.

And leadership is like the fruit of being good Christian.

By the way, we will give you a handout tomorrow.

The Heart of a Servant, Part 4

Let's have a prayer together and we'll get started.

Father in heaven, will you continue this subject?

We pray that you will be our helper and our teacher and we thank you for being that.

All right, Alvaret Sar, you're going to continue on here.

It said, all who are under the training of God.

You see here, God as a trainer, God trains us.

All who are under the training of God need the quiet hour for communion with their own hearts.

We are going to practice this for 5 minutes to commune with our own heart.

In them it is to be revealed a life that is not in harmony with the world, its customs, or its practices, and the need to have, this is it, the need to have a personal experience in obtaining a knowledge of the will of God.

We must, this is a must, we must individually hear him speaking to the heart.

Series

Jay Gallimore and Paul Ratsara - The Heart of a Servant: Models of Biblical Leadership

The Heart of a Servant, Part 5

Transcript

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