S3E11: Calvary Chapel: Its Essence and Identity-Servant Leadership & Legacy

Well, good morning. I get an awesome opportunity today to ⁓ talk about servant leadership. if you guys have not read this, ⁓ highly recommend it. ⁓ well the last chapter, chapter six in this book is about servant leadership. And so ⁓ I get the cool opportunity to talk about servant leadership. And so, ⁓ just tell you a little bit about myself and how I came ⁓ to be ⁓ a pastor. ⁓ And that that'll provide a little context for the this morning's topic. And so my wife and I we got married in ⁓ 2007 and I had newly come back to the Lord and ⁓ recently came back to the Lord in 2007 and we started attending this home Bible study. And little did I know this home Bible study was a church plant. I had never heard of a church plant. I I just assumed churches just always were. I I mean I didn't know what I assumed, honestly. But I went to this Bible study and ⁓ I met the the pastor and he was just a normal dude. ⁓ he dressed like me, talked like me, acted well, more maturely than me, but you know, you get it. And that was just really neat to me. ⁓ and so we the the Bible study, by God's grace, grew and we ended up getting a ⁓ like a s ⁓ office suites for the church. And ⁓ again, by God's grace, it outgrew that and we made the the decision or the the leadership made the decision to ⁓ move from those office suites to a local high school. ⁓ and so ⁓ what I got to see during that transition and even before that was the pastors and elders of and the deacons of our church serving like nobody's business. And so as we moved from the office suite where the church was set up, we had, you know, office space and everything to a mobile church. ⁓ the pastors, the elders, the leaders, the deacons, they all served their butts off. And so ⁓ we used to get there at five in the morning and we'd pray from five to five thirty, and then we'd set up from s ⁓ five thirty to eight o'clock or not nine o'clock, and our service was at nine. And so you were thinking, that's crazy. I mean, it's like several hours of bringing in steel deck stage, assembling it, putting up screens, flying speakers. We had the normal church padded chairs. We didn't even do foldable chairs. We brought those in from a connex box across the way. We did pipe and drape. We had a whole children's ministry set up. And what I watched was our pastors serving. And that really stuck out to me. ⁓ it ministered to me. It convicted me. And it challenged me. And so within Calvary Chapel, I just kind of assumed that churches functioned like Calvary did, because that was my only context for ⁓ for the church. And what what I've noticed as time has gone by and I've gotten older and more experienced in ministry, that not every church functions ⁓ the way that that Calvary Chapel functions. And we were Very fortunate, or we are very fortunate, to have great men who have ⁓ started this movement by the inspiration and the power of the Holy Spirit. ⁓ and what they have embodied is servant leadership. And so what I'm gonna do today is I got some some notes here that I've taken from the book, and there's five things that I want to talk about this morning. ⁓ and the first thing is servant leadership ⁓ is a lifestyle, it's not a strategy. And so Mark chapter ten, verse forty-five says this the Son of Man came not to be served, but he came to serve and to give his life his life as a ransom for many. So Jesus redefines what it is to lead right out of the gate, where he kind of flips the script up on its head and he says, Look, the leader, the pastor, they are not above service. In fact, their responsibility and job is to serve. And not to be served. But what we've seen in culture, what we've seen in some churches, is this celebrity mentality where the pastors are the celebrities, they are on the platform, and that is what we look to for leadership. We say, well, if I can just get a stage, then I can have influence. If I just get a microphone, a little cool, or no, the handheld mic, that's the cool one. Now, if I could just get a handheld microphone. Then I'm important. Then people will listen to what I have to say. But for me personally, what I saw was my pastor, Pastor Ted Leavenworth, serve. He was there from five in the morning to two in the afternoon every single week. Now, did he neglect the preaching and the teaching of the word? No. But did he did he did he despise service? Absolutely not. And so for us We see Jesus redefining right out of the gate what it means to be a servant leader. And that's you come and you serve. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work. And if that attitude and that that mentality was good enough for King Jesus, then it's certainly good enough for myself. And so a servant led church learns from the top. If we want to embody culture that says Here am I, send me, I'll do the work. Then it must come from its leaders. And so it's really important for you and I to not ever think that we are above the service, above getting the work done. And number two, so first one is servant leadership. It's not, or it's lifestyle, it's not a strategy. Number two is greatness in Jesus' kingdom is measured by our service. So the world it celebrates these these celebrities, these platformed leaders. And you know, many of them they're they're they're they're solid men and we shouldn't fault them for having a platform, but what that the signal that that that potentially sends is that that is what it means to serve. Is if we have a microphone, if we have ⁓ our own following on social media, that's what it means to be great. And Jesus would say no, that greatness in the kingdom of God begins with service. And so greatness is not about rising higher, but it's about stooping lower. And it's found in those unseen moments where we go to the hospital in the middle of the night. It's where we vacuum after church, where we pick up the trash. See, there's a something that happened to my wife and I just a few weeks ago after church. What we ⁓ do in our church is we have ⁓ pastries and donuts and things like that that people from the congregation bring in and ⁓ we get to enjoy them before and after service which is awesome but you know we have a ton of kids in our church thank you lord but what do kids do they care about messes do they care about taking those crumble muffins and running up the hallway running up and down the hallways with their friends no they love that they think it's fun and so what happened is one Sunday ⁓ the the sanctuary the classrooms everything was just a mess The trashes were overflowing and those people who were tasked with taking care of that left. And they left me and my wife to do all of the work. Now I would love to sit here and tell you that I was like, All right, cool. Thank you, Lord. You know, what an opportunity to to show greatness. What an opportunity to to show that ⁓ I'm such a servant. ⁓ but that's not that's not what happened. ⁓ I vacuumed, I took out the trash, but I grumbled. the entire time. My wife and I were like, what the heck? You know, this is messed up. You know, and I noticed what attitude that crept in was I was above that. I was above having to vacuum. I was above having to to to clean up. I was above having to take out the trash. And those little punk kids, I was like, what the heck? You know? But ⁓ the Lord convicted me. and I I realized that God gave me a great opportunity to serve. Nobody was left in the building, my wife and I. I'm not looking to impress her. I don't care if she knows if I serve or not, right? I want the people of the church. I want I want my my people to see me serve. And I was not afforded that opportunity. I had to serve when nobody was around. And ⁓ again, the Lord convicted me. And I wish I could sit here and tell you that ⁓ I learned the lesson right away, but it wasn't for a few days. I've mo mulling over it, sending some texts like, hey To our deacons, like, hey, you know, what happened? And no, does that neglect their responsibility to do what God's called them to do? No. But it showed me my heart, a little window into my heart in that moment. That I preached that I was that wasn't above these things, but in practice, I certainly felt more entitled than I should have. And so ⁓ the third thing ⁓ that really ties into me serving and having a bad attitude, the third thing that I want to point out is that humility That's the heart of servant leadership, humility. And John the Baptist nails it when he says this. He says, He must increase, but I must decrease. That's in John chapter three, verse thirty. That's not a memory verse for us to, you know, write on the children's ministry classroom wall. That's not a tattoo that we should give. I mean, sure, I don't care. But really, what that is, is it's the DNA of a good leader. The DNA of a good leader says, Lord, I need you to increase. Lord, because I need to decrease. And when we think of ourselves too highly. Then we lose the heart of humility. And when we lose the heart of humility, we lur we lose the opportunity to ⁓ exercise servant leadership. And so Jesus kind of gives us this beautiful picture of what servant leadership looks like in practice. And so we can theorize it all we want. It can be it can be ⁓ something that we teach about the servant leadership. Or it can be something that we practice. In John chapter six or Mark chapter six, we see the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. We know the story. ⁓ Jesus has been preaching and teaching with his disciples. I'm sure they're tired. They had a long Sunday, if you will, and ⁓ it's at the end of the day and the crowds just won't stop. And this time they're hungry and the disciples are like, Lord, just send them away. You know, we we're it's time for us to go and and get our Sunday afternoon nap in. Time for us to go and and get a little retreat in. And we know the story. What does Jesus tell them to do? Feed them. Take care of them. Serve them. And the disciples are like, Are you kidding me? Like, Lord, haven't you seen what we've been doing all day? Aren't you yourself tired? And just want us to feed them? And not only that, but we can't. Like, we can't possibly feed 5,000 men plus the women and children. Maybe there's upwards of 15, 20, I mean, we don't know, 20,000 people. How are we possibly going to be able to feed all of these people? But Jesus says this. If you want servant leadership modeled, then we have to do the work. So Jesus says, I want you to go and feed them. And so you know the story. This little boy brought a couple of fish and a couple of loaves. And Jesus made a miracle happen. He multiplied the fish and the loaves and everyone ate until they were full. And there was enough for the 12 disciples to each have their own basket of food left over. And so what I love in this story is that Jesus didn't ask them to serve in their own ability. He didn't ask them to multiply the fish and the loaves. He just simply asked them to serve. And God did the rest. And so the next thing ⁓ that I want to look at here is how do we build that culture? How do we build the culture that says ⁓ the Son of Man came not to be served, but he came to serve and to give his life? How do we build a culture of servant leadership? Well, I believe that culture is made up of two things. Those things that you create, right? So those are those practices, the things that we preach on, the structures that we implement, those things that we practice, those things that we create, and those things that we allow. And so if we want a culture within our church that rolls up their sleeves and gets to work, then we must first create it. And how do we create that? Well, it starts from the top, right? Starts from the pastors, starts from the leadership of the church. If Jesus Himself said that he came not to be served, but to serve, well, then those are our marching orders. And so we need to cultivate a culture of service. And that begins with us. And so we can preach in a small ⁓ small group context. We can preach from the stage on Sunday morning. We can get our leadership team into the room. And try to drill this into their heads, and those are all good things, but if it's not practiced, then we know that talk is cheap, right? We must put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. And so what our leaders need to do, what our flock needs to see, is they need to see us serving. They need to see us modeling ⁓ what it looks like to actually be great. And that is lowliness, that is humbling ourselves. Jesus in ⁓ in John's gospel, he washes the disciples' feet. We know this story. We've we've preached from this passage many times. But let's not just preach it, let's live it out. So as Jesus was washing the disciples' feet, that was the lowliest of jobs. Now he wasn't doing that to show these guys this is what I want you to do. In theory, only that's who Jesus was. He was a servant of all. This wasn't a leadership lesson. This was him doing what he normally would have done, and then turn that turned into a leadership lesson. And so we can't miss this point. Pastors, leaders, we cannot put together a preaching series and sermon series on servant leadership. And expect that to translate. Expect that. Or expect ⁓ people to get that. It must be our DNA, it must be the culture that we create within our church. And how we create that is by doing it. We show up on Sundays, we preach, when we get off the stage, that's where service begins. That's where people are watching. And if our heart isn't a heart of humility, then what they're gonna see is nothing more than a performance. They're going to see me vacuuming the hallways, and it's and it may look good to them, but it's nothing more than performance. And so servant leadership is culture. Your private life is the engine for your public ministry. And who knows your private life? Better than you. Your wife. Are you serving in your home? Are you loving your children? For those of you with young kids in the home, are you putting the kids to bed? Are you cooking dinner? Are you taking out the trash? Are you mowing the lawn? Are you cleaning the house? Are you helping with the laundry? Are you helping with the drop-off and the pickup? Because that's where humility is born. Humility is born when nobody is around. And when nobody is around, that's who you really are. And so if your service is just on Sundays, if your service is just on ⁓ you know the public gathering of the church, then you're not a servant. And so I don't say that to condemn or shame, but I hopefully to challenge and exhort you that if you want a culture within your church of servant leadership, it begins in the home. And we have a great rich heritage at Calvary Chapel of showing us what it looks like to serve. ⁓ And so yes, you have job to do. Yes, you have to put the message together. Yes, you you've got to do the pastoral counseling. Yes, you've got to do the hospital visits. All those things are part of the job that God has called us to do. But those jobs never, never, never are greater than your greatest ministry in your job at home. To love your wife, to raise your ch your kids, and have that personal relationship with Jesus. And so what I'm gonna do now is as we close, I've got a few questions. For us just to be thinking about maybe we can discuss these. ⁓ I don't know what what Billy and ⁓ Daniel want to do, but ⁓ here's some questions that I have. Where do I need to decrease so that Jesus can increase? So is there any part of your ministry that has become more about you than it is about him? So that's question number one. Question number two Am I serving for recognition or or are you serving for the betterment of the flock and for God's glory? If no one noticed, would you still be doing the things that you're doing? Would you still be the vac doing the vacuuming, the cleaning, the taking out the trash, etc.? And then the question number three is where do I need to pick up the towel again? What practical act of service is Jesus is Jesus inviting us back into this week? So guys, servant leadership is the way. It is the way that Jesus showed us. And so if it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you and I. Amen? All right. See ya.