163- Life Stages of the Christian Leader (with Dr. Richard Clinton)

163- Life Stages of the Christian Leader

Host: Welcome to podcast 163 of Strength for Today's Pastor. We are again with Dr. Richard Clinton. He helped us so much in the last podcast episode as he talked about finishing well.

How does the pastor finish well? And if you haven't seen or listened to that podcast, go back because there are six characteristics that are typical and very well researched of a leader who finishes well and then eight characteristics of the leader who does not finish well and a lot of deep diving and 35,000 feet overview of that particular subject. But today we're gonna be talking about another part of leadership development and mostly about the leader himself, the leader herself. And in the book that Richard's father had written, The Making of a Leader, Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development, he in that book, J. Robert Clinton, identified six stages, at least five stages and then the sixth is rare of the development of a leader over the course of his lifetime.

So this is a very important subject and again we welcome Richard Clinton to our podcast. Thanks again for joining us. Richard.

Guest: It's great to be here. Look forward to it. 

Host: Yeah, and this is such an important subject and you having worked with leaders for so many years, worked with your father, worked independently of your father now that he's retired from active ministry and you are Clinton Leadership 2.0. And so as Clinton Leadership 2.0 and all that you've experienced and all that you've seen and all the leaders you've worked with over many years, why is this important? This idea of recognizing the stages of leadership, why is it important to me or to any leader for that matter? 

Guest: Well, just the reason it's important, well one, there's a biblical mandate in Hebrews 13, seven and eight, which tells us, the writer of Hebrews says, hey, go back and look at the leaders who have gone before you and learn from them.

Learn from their example. And then verse eight says, and this is the more popular verse most people know, for, and that's the connector in the Greek there, for Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. So we call that in Clintonese, the leadership mandate.

So that's how the whole research into personal leadership development started. We just started looking at leaders and saying, what can we learn from their lives about how God develops a leader? And that's what that book you referenced, the making of a leader was my dad's first attempt at articulating what he was learning by looking at leaders who have gone before. So we began to study biblical leaders.

We studied historical leaders through their biographies and materials. And then we started researching personal case studies with students at Fuller. And I don't even know, we quit counting after 5,000.

We had 5,000 case studies. We studied every biblical leader. We studied lots of historical leaders and lots of personal case studies.

So when you put all that together, my dad's brain, the way it worked, he was an electrical engineer by training, and he was kind of a systems thinker. And so if you read the making of a leader, it can be a little tough because that's the way he functioned. He began to see patterns.

He began to see phases. He began to see things that would give the rest of us perspective on the process that God uses to develop leaders. So that's what the making of a leader is all about.

And that's the kind of the niche of leadership that we work in primarily. We've done lots of stuff in leadership, but that's where we most love to work is helping leaders get perspective on what God's doing in their lives. And so when you've studied that many leaders and you've identified the things God does in a leader's life to develop their leadership, you begin to see how God uses time, for example.

This is one of the basic elements. It's over a lifetime. None of us ever graduates, we like to always say that, from God's school of development.

It goes from beginning, actually before the beginning, and all the way to the end. That's one of the main elements. Another big element is the process that God uses to shape us.

So if you read the book, you'll find there's a lot of what my dad called process items. And we've identified, I don't know how many of them there are now, but 60 or 70 or something specific process items that God uses to shape different aspects of leadership. And then the third major element is the leader's response.

How do we respond to what God's doing and what kind of things can happen? So you put all that together, and you can see the process that God uses, and the methodology we used was simply a, this comes out of social science, comparison model, comparing leader A to leader B, leader A and B to leader C, leader A, B, and C to D, and so forth and so on. Now, when you look at that many leaders, you begin to see the bigger picture. And that's what this book captures, is the bigger picture, these development phases.

And because there seems to be a process that God uses that you can see these development phases over a lifetime. Now, you gotta remember, every leader's unique. And these phases aren't like, okay, you're in this phase, now you're in this phase, now you're in this phase.

They kind of flow all together across a lifetime. But generally speaking, this is the pattern. So that's what I wanna share with you now.

And that's what you referenced in the book, are these six development phases. What happens in them, and what kind of stuff is going on, and why is it important to know anything about this? Okay, good, well, I can't wait. And so that's kind of where I'll jump in.

Host: Okay, this is gonna be great. So as you're talking and you're giving the lead-in to the thing, I'm thinking what I think now. I mean, at 25, when I started my first church, I had energy, I had zeal, I had physicality, I had all those things.

I had a little bit of knowledge. And I don't know how God did anything with it all, but he did. And now I'm a lot older than that, and I don't have the physicality, and I don't have the energy I used to have.

And it's easy to look back and say, why did God waste all that zeal on someone so young? And then why did he wait so long for me to gain the wisdom that gives me the perspective to where I can say, like a lot of leaders say, I wish I knew then what I know now. Yeah. So, this is gonna kinda help with all that, right? 

Guest: Yeah, it does. And you'll see how God puts it all together, you know? Just know that there's hundreds of millions of leaders that have lived without knowing any of this. Yeah. And they're in heaven and God's celebrating their life, so just take it with a grain of salt.

But perspective does help. And that's where I think the power of this is. Because having this perspective allows you to look back and see God's hand tracing through your life.

And there's a lot of healing that happens when you do that. 

Host: There's another area where I'm thinking this is hugely important. It's for those in the five-fold ministry that are equipping.

Their role is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building of the body of Christ. If I understand this as an equipper, I'm gonna be helping people arrive at where they're supposed to get to. And that's huge too.

Like this young woman that was part of the church that we attend here in Nevada. She was an intern on staff and she really didn't know what her ministry was. And she had a general idea of what her gifts were.

But she was struggling with some relational things and struggling some other things. And she didn't know how to figure out where she was at. But I had read the book and I knew exactly where she was at.

She was in the phase of inner life growth. And explaining that to her kind of turned the light on. And she thought, okay.

So I think it helped her to relax a lot more and just allow the Lord to do that work within her and not be so focused on output, but be focused on the inner life of development. And the Lord will take care of the output later. 

Guest: That's a wonderful example. We call those the aha moments. And when we teach leaders and give them perspective, this happens all the time. They go, oh, I didn't know there was so many other people just like me going through very similar things.

Yes. When I go teach this stuff in places that don't believe in the Holy Spirit or prophecy or anything like that, I kind of can weird them out because I go, now I'm gonna get all prophetic on you. And I just start describing stuff that I know happens in the lives of leaders.

But it's, and I go, here's probably what's happening. I said, I'm gonna ask you three questions. And based on your answer of these three questions, I'll be able to tell you what's going on in your life.

And they all, oh, he's getting all weird. And it's just because I know the development phases and I know what happens about when it happens and how God uses it. And that's just comes from looking at thousands of leaders case studies and putting it all together.

So it's kind of fun to play around like that sometimes, but probably not very nice. Well, you got their attention, that's for sure. Yeah, so the, these over time, the way God uses time is he's working on certain things, points of emphasis, you could call it in certain phases.

So we outlined these phases. The first one simply, we call it foundations. It's the sovereign foundations.

It's the context into which you were born. It's the family unit you're a part of. It's the cultural setting around you.

It's the, it's all of those kinds of things that shape. And what happens in terms of God's point of emphasis in foundations is God is building up and building into us the basic essentials of who we are and who we will be and how we operate. And so there's things like worldview and stuff.

And it's amazing if you ever traveled into other parts of the world, you'll see that we think very differently than other people. Our starting point in certain issues are very different. And that was shaped into us.

And there's good parts of that and bad parts of that. And what God wants to do is use those things in us and through us. And so that foundations, it's all about who we are.

It's our families, you know, and there's a lot of things as you look back, you can see the finger of God tracing through your foundations. I mean, it's no accident, the family that God put you into. Not all family systems and situations are good.

Some many times they're negative, but God uses those things and can, you know, and you'll see this in the biblical examples. Like Jephthah, one of the judges came from a horrendous background and God used him right at that moment to do something that probably no other leader could have done in that moment, in that context, because he had learned how to have that inner resolve because he had to, to survive. And so you see all these kinds of things.

And so we help leaders look back at the Sovereign Foundation. Who is it that God shaped you to be? Who is it that God, you know, what did you learn out of that context? What was it, the underlying values and philosophy, for example, a lot of those things are embedded in us, in our foundations. Many times before we even know anything about Jesus or ministry or life, you know, they're there.

And God builds those into us as you look back through his eyes in our histories. That's foundations. And then inner life growth is the second development phase.

And that one, you know, big picture is God is forming our leadership character in inner life growth. You know, we're learning how to connect to him. We're learning who we are.

We're learning who we're supposed to be. We're learning what God expects. And it's all of those things that create within us a capacity for leadership.

That's what inner life growth is all about. It's like, that's where you have to learn oftentimes a lot of tough lessons about our character, our authority, how to really, because usually when you're in inner life growth, you don't have any authority. You're having to learn to submit to authority and follow someone else's, you know, leading or whatever.

And that's not always very positive. And so inner life growth has a lot of lessons, but all of those are designed in terms of God's point of emphasis on developing our capacity as leaders. And there'll be things that we'll begin to discover in that time of inner life growth.

But that's the emphasis from God, who we are as opposed to what we can do. And then as we shift into the third one, we call that simply ministry maturing. What happens to move us from inner life growth to ministry maturing is usually some kind of leadership commitment.

We make a decision to take on leadership responsibility. You know, sometimes it's responding to a call. Sometimes it's, you know, taking a certain job.

Someone asks us to do it. There's all different ways that we go into ministry or begin to take leadership responsibility. Because I'm not just talking about positional leadership.

Does that make sense? I'm talking about just taking on leadership responsibility. Yeah. So then we, you know, we enter this development phase where the emphasis on God is on, you know, training us, teaching us, shaping us to do leadership.

So the emphasis becomes not as much on inner life. We never get out of inner life growth. We're always, He's always working in our character and all these things.

But now the emphasis from God is on teaching us and developing in us the skills that we need to do ministry. And so usually in early ministry maturing, there's all kinds of people skills we need. You know, how many times have you talked to people who come out of Bible school or training or something and they go, wow, this ministry is not exactly what I expected.

Right. It's all about people. Yeah.

I just wanted to teach the Bible. Yeah, the ministry is wonderful if it wasn't for people. Yeah, you hear that a lot from people coming out of specially formal training.

Host: Well, let me ask you a question at this point, Richard. So we're in phase three, phase one, sovereign foundations, phase two, inner life growth, phase three, ministry maturing. How important is it and what place does this have in all of this for the leader, where the leader suddenly has a realization, I am a leader, I self-identify as a leader.

This is something God has called me to do. How important is that? 

Guest: I think it's important because what that does is it changes your sense of accountability to God. Once you have a sense, hey, I'm gonna have to answer to God for what I'm doing with what he's challenging me with.

That, it kind of steepens the learning posture. It makes us wanna grow. It makes, we realize we need to grow.

And those things, that's where it's important. When I was working in Europe, I had a 12-year section where I was working in Europe. And especially as you go into more Northern European countries, there was a real reluctance to take on leadership responsibility, and I couldn't figure it out.

It was one of those worldview things. For lots of historical reasons and cultural reasons and all these things, leaders found it hard to take. And it was really hard to work with leaders to develop them when they were hesitant to take any responsibility for it, or they didn't wanna take responsibility for it.

That was really tough. And so that's, I remember learning what is going on here. And it was really this issue of leader, we call this leadership commitment.

It's a process item called leadership commitment. It's where the leader themselves take as a response to what God is doing in their lives, not as a response to what other people expect, although it may have come through other people. And so that's really important because that changes the whole nature of growth and development.

When you have a sense of internally, I've got an answer for this and I need to learn because I wanna be more effective or I wanna be more successful or I wanna be whatever, that changes the game. 

Host: So there's a fear involved in making a person reticent to take on the leadership self-identity. They're afraid of something.

And in US culture, of course, we're more pioneer, self-starters, we can do it, we'll get her done, that kind of thing. But I'm thinking of Germany, for example, they have a Fuhrer complex. They just are afraid of that happening again.

They don't want it to happen through them especially. And I'm thinking of Moses as a biblical example. Here's a man who very much wanted the leadership mantle and saw himself as the deliverer, but it backfired.

He had spent 40 years in the wilderness and then he was reticent and so he's afraid to be a leader and the Lord had to overcome his reticence with a supernatural visitation. 

Guest: Yeah, and even that supernatural visitation didn't exactly stick, he was still hesitant a lot of times. Right, right, right.

Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's part of that ministry maturing phase. It's accepting that this is who God has made me to be and this is what God, you're becoming aware through what we call destiny processing, what it is that God's actually called you to do.

And God has a way of kind of giving us pieces of that along the way, he doesn't tell us everything all at once because we'd probably be overwhelmed. But he leads us into this is who I've made you to be and this is what I want you to do. And so part of ministry maturing is taking responsibility for that and saying yes, saying yes to God.

Host: Right, I remember when I was about 10 or 11 years old, we had a neighborhood in Southern California and I had the idea, let's do something for the March of Dimes and then later, let's do something for muscular dystrophy. So we created a circus for the first one and we created a carnival for the second one in people's backyards and raised significant amount of money and I was, but I didn't know what that was, I didn't know that there was any kind of a inclination towards leadership, I just wanted to do it, there was a goal here. And then when I was 14, I was playing baseball on my Pony League team and the first coach I ever had that he pulled me aside, that felt this way about me, he pulled me aside, apparently he saw something and he said, Bill, you're the leader of this team, I'm gonna make you the captain.

And he put me in a really highly regarded position in my mind, he gave me a position on that team and I thought that's amazing and then when the Lord called me into ministry, I looked back on that and this is what you're talking about, I looked back on that and I said, look what the Lord did. Because that encounter with that coach at 14 set the stage for the rest of my athletic career up through college and now I'm seeing that this is what really the Lord has made me to be. So form it, Lord, the way you want it to be in Christ.

Guest: You got it, that is the shaping, processing hand of God. Incredible. And often we can't see it until we look back.

And that's why this perspective I'm sharing is important, to be able to go back and go, oh, those were touches of God, I didn't realize it at the time, but now I see. Because what he built in you, if you look at what did I walk away with that still is there? Your desire, these muscular dystrophy things and your desire to help people, your willingness to take responsibility to see something get done, try to reach that goal, those were attitudes and values that you had that probably shaped a big part of your pastoral ministry as well down the line. So that's how God works.

And that's what ministry maturing is all about. There's so many different aspects. We have to learn so many things, so many skills involved in people, with communication, with inner attitudes, with values, with vision, how do you learn to get vision? How do you cast vision? I mean, there's so many different aspects of leadership that you have to learn along the way.

And we don't learn them all fast. And as you know, learning, you're learning and all of our learnings, it wasn't a matter of someone telling us, okay, here's the steps, one, two, three, four. How many seminars or workshops have we gone to in our lifetime where someone told us that? You know, they get up on the platform, because this is how it worked for me.

And here's how it can work for you. One, two, three, four. We go home and we go, all right, one, two, three, four.

That didn't exactly work the same way. I gotta figure this out. You know, and so those kinds of things.

And so when you look at just, if I mentioned time, you know, of course we have the average amounts of time people are in these phases. You know, sovereign foundations usually, it depends on when they start, of course, in terms of responding to God. But if say someone generally respond, sovereign foundations, you know, runs all the way up into our early 20s, usually.

And then inner life growth will begin sometime in our teens where it becomes a point of emphasis and can run anywhere for the first, you know, seven to 10 years, you know. Even up in ministry, where God is saying, hey, this is more important who you are and who you're becoming than what you're actually doing. That's a shock to most of us who started ministry because we think it's all about results.

And God goes, no, my emphasis is really on forming you. And then ministry maturing and life maturing, the third and the fourth phases are the bulk that they can run up to 30 years. You're talking about on average.

Ministry maturing is, you know, 10 to 15 years. The first 10 to 15 years of ministry involves a lot of those kinds of things. And then you start to go through this fourth phase is we just called it life maturing.

And that's where God takes us deeper. Now, often going deeper involves pain. It involves handling situations that are not easy.

And, you know, we realize we have to grow and we need to go deeper. I don't know, you could probably, it would come to mind rather quickly. When were those moments in those first 15 to 20 years where you went, you know, I'm not sure I want to do this anymore.

Because of some crisis or some pressure or some, it can be things internal or things external. You know, a conflict in a church, personality challenge or something, you know, or a sickness or a disease or what, it can be lots of things. But in all those moments, God is trying to take us deeper.

And that's what life maturing is all about. And it comes down at the end of the day, life maturing is all about our resolve. Are we gonna stay faithful? Are we gonna keep plotting? Are we gonna stay in the game? And, you know, that's where a lot of people, if you study what happens to leaders, and I remember hearing these stats, and I don't think the stats have gotten a lot better since I heard them 20 or 30 years ago, because they started tracking what happens to students that leave seminary and go into ministry.

You know, and it's staggering. I remember sitting in his class with a guy named Dr. Altrabalt Hart, and he was studying the phenomena of burnout and depression. And he was a professor at Fuller, wrote lots of very popular books.

But he gave these stats, and I was sitting there listening to him, and he was saying, you know, on average, when someone leaves their Bible school training or their thing, and they go into ministry, only about one in five make it out of the first five years. Wow. Most of them drop out for different reasons, all different kinds of things.

And of the ones who make it through the first five years, half of them drop out by year 10. And these are just the initial stats they were looking at. And he goes, now, there's all kinds of reasons why that happens.

Maybe they shouldn't have gone to Bible training or seminary, or they, you know, and they discovered somewhere, hey, this isn't what I thought it was, and, you know, things, but what he said was, he said, when we looked at those who had made it past 10 years, and you ask them why, what were the keys to you staying in the game, to making it? All of them, and this is what caught my attention. He says, the number one thing is, everyone says the grace of God first. You know, that's the right answer.

But the next answer was, because I had a mentor, someone came alongside me in the pivotal moments and helped me. And that caught my attention. And they gave me perspective, was the second thing he said.

They got perspective on their situation. They took a, they stepped back and took a bigger view of what was going on, and it enabled them to kind of battle through, or make it, or it strengthened their resolve. And I'll never forget that, you know, and I thought, wow, that is so true.

And now, some 40 years later, and I'm looking back, I'm going, wow, that was really, that's pretty accurate. There's, because I go back and I, I remember the first pastor group I was in, back in the vineyard at those days, I was in an area, we didn't, weren't very organized, and it was kind of haphazard and chaotic in the early days. But a group of us would get together and talk about, you know, our churches and all this kind of stuff, and church growth, and this and that and other.

And I remember back to those first, that first group of 10 that I was in, I think only two of us made it. Out of the, we're still in ministry 10 years later. It was very few, I mean, and these were, these were people that I was said were gifted and anointed, and, you know, they had, they were doing better than I was, but the only reason I made it out of the first 10 years, I can tell you, I had two mentors who came alongside me and said, hey, that hurts.

That's tough. It's rough. Let me, let me walk through this with you.

And my dad was one of those. I'll never forget that. He, he had, I was crying and I was going through a real tough situation.

And I was just, I'd never let down in front of my dad before, just went, I don't think I can do this. And I've social, he had no concept of, he was electrical engineer. He had no concept of how to deal with emotion or relational stuff and all this stuff, but I was his son, so he couldn't turn me away.

Yeah. And I remember we went through, he walked through that with me, and boy, that was powerful. Wow.

And I've had a number of people, you know, now through the years. And that's what life maturing is all about. That's that fourth phase.

Man, it's, and you know, and those things never stop. I mean, they, a lot of these things, we go through them. They're the point of emphasis from God's point of view, but they keep going on in our lives.

Life maturing can happen at any time. 

Host: But you're saying that the key to those that have made it in your studies, a huge key is that somebody showed up as a mentor to help them along the way. And gave them perspective was the second.

Right, that's huge. Like a mentor of mine who, you know, he was in his early 40s, and I was in my mid-20s, and he just wanted to meet me as a new pastor in the community. He was a pastor already.

And I didn't know what to do with this. I mean, here's this guy that's a little bit older that's taking an interest in me. I hadn't had that experience before.

Right. But he quickly started sharing some things that I knew I had to latch onto them. Like one of them was, one of his pet sayings, we are not human doings, we are human beings.

And it was just his cute little way of describing that it's who we are that's more important than the output. That was a new thought to me. And, you know, so those things did really, really help for sure.

I can completely resonate with what you're saying. 

Guest: And every pastor who's been in it for a longer haul has those stories. You know, and as we get toward the end, we want to be those.

We want to be that story. On the other side. Right.

Anyway. So that's what life maturing, I don't know, what are we on? That's number four, I guess. Life maturing.

Number five is convergence. And this is one of the hardest concepts to really communicate. But it's that time in life in which, and of course, my dad being the kind of person he is, he identified, you know, six major factors of convergence and like seven minor factors of convergence.

And, you know, he goes into all, he goes deep, deep. And, but let me say, convergence is a time in which a lot of key factors of who we are and what we do begin to come together in a way that feels like, wow, this, it's like putting your hand into a glove, your own glove that fits. This, I am doing what I'm made to do and I'm doing it well.

And I'm flourishing, so to say, in the word we use today. That is convergence. Now, what we've, and I just want to be quick to say, not very many leaders get to convergence.

And some of it's not their own fault. Some of it's other, there's other factors involved. I mean, some denominations move their, you know, have the rule of moving their leaders every, you know, three or four or five years or something.

Those leaders have a hard time getting into convergence because they're always starting over with relationships and factors and all these things. So, but these factors, and when leaders, you know, most leaders experience mini convergence where maybe three or four of the factors come together. And, you know, they're in the right, like a minor factor is the geographical context that just fits who you are.

You know, you think back to some places you've traveled a lot and been in ministry and there's some that, you know, wow, that geographical, the kind, the way that people were, the way they live life, the way that life happened there, and, you know, go together with, I was able to do my favorite hobbies. You know, it could be all kinds of things that come together. But, you know, convergence is about that sense from God's point of view where he brings major things together.

You have ministry, philosophy, values built into you that you're able to express and are accepted and flourish, you know? And there's, you know, I don't want to go too deep into all the convergence factors, but it's just, that's a time together where, man, you're just there. Now, convergence, when it happens, usually is probably not until your 50s or 60s, to be honest. You know, it takes a while.

And usually that's about the time that it happens. And convergence is just that you're in the right place, doing the right things well, and it works. You're expressing your giftedness.

You're expressing who you are. The structure fits you. It, you know, all those kinds of things.

Host: The book your father wrote includes the idea, and I love this, these words, the gift mix of the leader. And so part of it has to do with that. And I remember he was talking about that in this phase of convergence.

The gift mix matches with other things and comes together and it fits like a glove. So talk about the gift mix a little bit. What does that phrase mean? 

Guest: Yeah, what that means, you know, when you study a leader, you're gonna find what we mean by gift mix is a combination of the natural abilities, spiritual gifts, and your acquired skills blend together and in such a way that it expresses the best of who you are and what you can do.

Excuse me, that's what a gift mix is. It's those things. And so when you come to, you know, the role that you have, the ministry role, for example, the ministry role has to allow you to use your gift mix to the fullest and most mature expression that you have.

And so when you think about your job role, most of us have about, if we're in a good situation, an 80-20 thing where 80% of the time we're doing what we're gifted to do. There's always gonna be some things we have to do as part of the job, part of our role that maybe we're not necessarily the most gifted at or that we love, but someone has to do it, so we do it. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure.

And so in convergence, you're hitting a situation where most of the time you're doing the very things that God has created and designed you to do. And your gift mix delivers the ministry and captures the best of who you are and what you can do. And it's a combination of natural abilities, acquired skills, and spiritual gifts.

Host: And there are so many challenges that force growth in areas that we're not expecting. I'm thinking of the pastor who starts a church or takes over an existing church as the leader, and it starts to grow. And maybe it was 100 people, and then it becomes 250 people, and then it becomes 500 people.

And so the stages of a church's development require a different gift mix or application of it. And if I'm not ready for that, I can't adjust to it, and my leadership will be ineffective. If I continue just to do what I did when it was 100 people, then it's gonna be like running the 7-Eleven that became a supermarket.

I'm gonna be running a corner store, but it's really a supermarket. I mean, just so many challenges that come that way just in pastoral ministry, that form of leadership. My goodness.

Guest: And that's why most of us don't have the capacity to shape our roles. But if you go along and you hang in there long enough, oftentimes you're able to say to your team around you or whatever, you build a team that takes up the slack on the areas you don't wanna do. And they're gifted to do it.

Like for me, there's a certain amount of administration, for example, that just is required. And I'm not good at administration, but you do it because you have to. But man, if you had a team member who was gifted to do it, that is manna from heaven, so to say.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, then just let me do what I do best. And that's what we want to get to.

Now, that's the ideal picture of teamwork. But very few leaders can get to that place, especially when you're in a local church. And sometimes you don't have the resources that you wish you had or whatever, in terms of people and giftedness and stuff like that.

I went through an assessment not too long ago in terms of this guy's assessment. He says to me, Richard, he goes, you're really good at this. What you need is a team that can do that.

And I went, boy, I couldn't agree with you more. Do you have any recommendations? Well, you just need to get them. And I'm like, very helpful.

You know, often that's the situation we're all in. So you think, okay, well, I don't have that team member yet. So I got to do something in that area.

You know, it has to be done. So I'll do the best I can. And so that's what gift mix is all.

Gift mix is really all about who God has designed us to be, you know? So for example, let me talk about, I'll give you one little thing. Knowing that, you know, when you take preaching, for example, in preaching, as you study gift mix stuff, look at giftedness. Most preachers, you know, will have to find, they need to learn what is at the core of their giftedness, spiritual gifts in order to, you know, is it teaching? Is it exhortation? Because most of us will go on either side of, you know, what's more important to us.

For a teacher who is in a preaching role, what's most important is do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Do you get it? Do you understand it? For an exhorter, they're like, what are you going to do with this? If you don't do anything with it, then I've failed. You know, and understanding it completely is not as important as doing something with it. It took me a long time for me as a preacher to figure out how my giftedness impacted my preaching.

And, you know, I tend to be an exhorter. So for me, once I accepted that's who I was as a preacher, then I said, okay, I've got to learn teaching skills enough that I can communicate the information so that I can exhort. That was the, you know, so it changed the whole structure of my sermons in terms of how I delivered them because I thought the best of who I am is as an exhorter.

And I need to get people to apply this because that would just kill me to know that I did spend all this time and energy communicating and no one does anything with it, which, you know, sometimes that is their end result, but, you know, I had to change. And so what I had to do is I realized, oh, I've got to create, for example, a response culture in the church that I'm working. I want them to know that it's okay to respond.

It's okay to ask questions. It's okay to interact. It's okay to, you know, so people who come and watch me preach, they go, that guy just spoke right out while you were talking.

I said, yeah, it took us a long time to create a learning culture where we could be interactive. And they're like, but that's not preaching. And I said, well, look at how Jesus preached.

It was almost total interaction, people asking questions and stuff like that. And I don't know, there's so many things. I don't know if that gives you a little feeling, but trying to find out who you really are and who God has designed you to be and what is your gifts? You know, when I work with people on developing their giftedness, I say, what does this look like fully matured? Yeah.

Can you paint a picture up for me of what it looks like fully matured? And that really helps people get an idea of, oh, that's where I need to work. I need to work on getting that thing fully matured. Okay.

Whether, you know, take the gift of helps, you know, take something that's not some spirit. You know, you can really help in ways that are not helpful. Have you ever had people try to help you in ways that are just not helpful? For sure, yeah.

You can use that. Thanks for the thought. Yeah, the impulse of that gift is pretty strong.

Sometimes helping doesn't mean doing it for them or whatever. So there's a lot of stuff involved. So assuming that in a person's gift mix, just talking about the spiritual gifts side of the gift mix, how important is it to identify the dominant gifts or the prominent gifts that the Lord has given me? How important is that in a leader's life? I think it's pretty important in a couple of aspects.

One is it gives you an idea of what you need to work on. Because when you look at what does giftedness development, does God give perfect gifts? Well, we would say theologically, yes. But do they come fully developed? No, they don't.

We have to learn how to use them in a way that's mature. You know what I mean? Like take prophecy. Not everyone believes that prophecy is still available today, you know.

But we expect perfection when someone claims to speak a word from the Lord. But we don't have that same expectation on most of the other gifts. You know, when someone starts to use their teaching gift, you know, have you ever heard someone teach for the first time? And you go, oh, I can help them learn how to do that better.

You know, so it's ancient giftedness is a very interesting phenomenology that is involved in it. But how do you, you know, that's where you have to learn. So it helps to know what to work on, to know what your dominant is.

And then the other thing is that it helps you in this thing of you don't have to spend any energy in trying to be what you're not. Amen. You know what I mean? Amen.

That's huge. That's huge. Yeah.

You know, if you keep trying to be or do it like someone else does it or whatever. So just get out of all of that and say, who's, how does this work in me? And what does it look like matured in me? That's very, very helpful. That's huge.

That's why it's important. That's why it's important. That makes sense.

Host: You know, Pastor Chuck Smith, who was the father in the faith of so many of us within Calvary Chapel, he spent 17 years in a denominational church trying to be an evangelist. And so he would give evangelistic sermons to the Sunday night crowd that was supposed to be an evangelistic sermon, but he knew every one of them and he knew that they were all believers. So what do you do when you've prepared an evangelistic message and everybody in the house is already saved? You know, so it took him 17 years to where he understood that the Lord had actually called him to teach.

Yeah. To be a teacher. And you know, of course, the gifts of the Spirit operated through and in his teaching ministry like they do with all of us.

There's prophecy, there's exhortation, there's words of knowledge sometimes, there's other things, but teaching would be the predominant one. Interesting though, how we need to discover this stuff. 

Guest: Giftedness is fascinating because we began to look at giftedness in the lives of people.

You know, they had to identify them. And so we came up with an idea, my dad called it the gifts clusters. Yeah.

That you look at what are the most common clusters of gifting that go together and how do they work? And why is it important to know that? And I mean, it's fascinating. God is so creative in how he puts it all together in a human being. Yeah, wow.

So that's what convergence, yeah, convergence is, it's amazingly exciting to see someone operating in convergence. Yeah, they're confident, they know who they are, they're not trying to figure anything out, they're in the jet stream of the spirit in their life. Exactly, exactly.

They're relaxed. They're giving the best of what God has built into them over their lifetime. Yeah, yeah, we had one of the guys on our team, he called me the other day and he said, you know, I've done this kind of an assignment a bunch of places, you know, and that doors have opened up and I really like this, I really like this.

That's what you wanna hear, isn't it? Yeah, you know, and it was so consistent with what his gift mix is and who he is. Yeah, yeah. And then the very last phase, just to cap it off, is what my dad, he called it Afterglow.

Since then, since he published that book, he had Afterglow and then Post-Afterglow. He's developed about three categories of Afterglow and just because he began to experience that. But Afterglow's really all about celebration.

It's about celebrating a lifetime of God's involvement and giving him glory for it. That's what Afterglow's all about. You don't have, most people in Afterglow don't have a role or a job or a title anymore or, you know, it's mostly you move from formal to informal means of influencing people.

And it's an influence that flows out of a lifetime of ministry. I imagine many on your team there are in this, you know, as a part of who they are, they're beginning to experience this. 

Host: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, there was a guy in East Texas where we lived that was, I mean, so many evangelical pastors of all kinds of different denominations looked to this guy as a significant spiritual person and leader in their lives. I don't know how he did it, but he was very involved in the whole community. But he got to the place where he wasn't pastoring, he wasn't teaching, occasionally he'd show up and be asked to speak at this place or that place, you know, that kind of thing.

But he was the kind of person, all he needed to do is walk in the room and people would get blessed. 

Guest: Isn't that nice? There's just an ambience that travels with them, the Holy Spirit creates around them, it's nice. But Afterglow's very rare apparently, right? Yeah, it's very rare.

And so, but it's, yeah, and there's all kinds of reasons for it. Just remember a few leaders finish well, there's not that many that do. So you need to really celebrate the ones that are finishing well.

And that's part of what my dad and I have committed ourselves to doing over decades now. It's just strengthening as many leaders as we can to give them a better shot at finishing well. I love it.

And we really celebrate those that are. Yeah. So.

Host: So talk to the pastor directly now, Richard, what, you know, we've had this conversation, you've been sharing the six phases of the development of a leader over the course of his lifetime. What comes to your heart right now about what you'd really like to say right now, prophetically to the pastors? 

Guest: I think that there's some points of emphasis, I would love to see them put themselves in, you know, especially I'm talking to pastors who are getting more towards the end. You know, another timeline I use has only three phases, beginning, middle and end.

That's the most simple timeline that we use with people. But as you get towards the end, there's a, it's an unusual time of life and it's an unusual, has some things. So there's some, several ways I challenge pastors.

And here's what I would say. One is consolidate your legacy, identify what your legacy, what are you gonna leave behind? What is it you're leaving behind that is a testimony to the glory of God working in your life across your life? And of course we have lots of material on this. If you're interested, you can always write me an email, but you know, we've identified 13 or 14 major legacy types and what do you do to consolidate them and how do you work on it and stuff like that.

So one is identify what is the legacy you're leaving behind and then consolidate it, make sure that it's, capture it, make sure that it's pass honorable in some form. You know, that's something that I think is important. A second thing is look at your destiny, look at the destiny shaping processing that God's done.

Is there anything left undone? And sometimes people get out of formal roles and they get to the end phases and they go, you know, there's always been this thing that I always felt God gave me a burden for that I feel like I really want, well, look at your destiny shaping, what is left undone? And then go do it, whatever it is, do it, you know, and make it a priority of your time. And then the third thing is this idea of passing the baton. We know that God is a generational God and he, you know, and he wants one generation to bless the next generation and we are commanded in lots of places in the scriptures to tell the next generations and so make a plan, be active.

Who are 10 people that you can right now come alongside like that guy who was in his forties came alongside you? Come alongside and make a, be active, be deliberate, be intentional about who do you wanna bless with what God has blessed you with and how can you give it away to him? Look for opportunities to do that and be deliberate, be intentional, make a plan, make a mentoring plan. And who are you passing the baton to? My dad did this in a way, he was called a Clinton gathering, but he went and bought, I think about 40, you know, those runner batons that you hand off like in the Olympics, the relay race. Exactly.

He bought 40 of those and then he called together people that he wanted to pass the baton to and he had a baton passing official thing and we met and we just celebrated for two or three days and over those two or three days, my dad would call up one of the leaders and he had a baton for him and he wrote up a special blessing for each one, usually had a scripture verse and it had an exhortation in it. And he would say, I wanna officially pass the baton to you and say, I wanna give you everything that I, you know, and in there, of course, in each person's baton was a little, what do you call those sticks with all the in front of the little USB stick? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he gave every one of them, everything he ever wrote and everything he ever had, he gave it to him for free.

Wow. And he said, I'm gonna bless you with this, go and use it, adapt it, rewrite it, do whatever you, and he did this. And, you know, so I have my baton sitting right over here next to me.

He did that, I was one of the people that he passed it on to, you know what I mean? And I watched him do it. He did it with African leaders and Korean leaders and men, women, my dad had a special heart for honoring women and blessing women who were leaders because they've, you know, had to fight a pretty uphill battle in the Christian context. So that would be a third thing, you know, I would say, you know, hey, consolidate your legacy, take on any last challenges God has for you, be like Caleb and say, hey, there's still that hill there.

I know I'm old, but hey, I'm taking that hill, whatever it is. And then pass the baton well. And then the last thing I would say is learn to celebrate, learn to celebrate the accomplishments of a lifetime of walking with God.

Tell stories, you know, celebrate, make sure your kids know, make sure your family knows, make sure, you know, people close to you know. The stories, you know, tell the story. That'd be how I would, I would challenge.

Host: That is golden, it's just so awesome. I love that stuff, that is great, that is so great. Richard, we got to wrap this up, but boy, this has been rich, you know, the six phases or stages of a leader's lifetime.

Very, very practical and helpful. So those of you that are listening to this podcast, the first part, part one of two was on finishing well. And in that, there's a great discovery of why it is that only 13 of 49 studied biblical leaders actually finished well.

What helped them do it well and what were the reasons for the failure? And then this episode, of course, has to do with formation of a leader himself over the course of a lifetime. So you can go to clintonleadership.com and you can find a myriad of leadership-related resources, including ways and opportunities to be coached and so on and so forth. And you can just reach out directly to Richard Clinton.

And it's Richard, what's your email address, Richard? I don't even know. I can look that up. It's on the website, yeah, it's on that website.

Oh, it's on the website, okay. So clintonleadership.com, go there, and you'll be able to find all kinds of episodes. And hopefully, Richard, we can do some significant follow-ups to these and whatever, maybe a Zoom call with those that would like to be involved with a finishing well one or stages of anything.

So I so appreciate your availability. It's been great. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me, and it's wonderful. Yeah. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, me too. Poyman Ministries is all about spiritual health and vitalization or revitalization of churches. If you are a pastor wanting encouragement and help, someone to come alongside of you, we are available for that.

Wait for the announcer to help you with how to get in touch with us. Thanks for listening, and may the Lord bless you and strengthen you in your ministry and in whatever stage or phase of development you are currently in, in Jesus' name. Amen.