Lead WellSample

Whose Agenda?

It’s really hard to trust anything that is in the news today. There are more political-opinion-based websites than ever before; each of them desperate to get you to click on them. And why? What’s the purpose of all this punditry? Why write something that is false or just an opinion and then promote it as truth?

Well, it meets their agenda.

It promotes what they want. It feeds into the frenzy of whatever belief system they have. It creates a kind of chaos of promotion that empowers their ideas to go further.

We all have agendas. Personal agendas, professional agendas, secret agendas...

I wonder what would happen if we laid our personal, professional, and secret agendas aside. What if we took a moment to stop worrying about how we would look if our numbers didn’t go up, and actually started caring more about what those numbers represent...people?

We can get confused, maybe even a little over-confident, when it comes to ministry. We really do feel like, “God’s anointed,” and can become convinced that our personal agendas are in sync with God’s agenda. And so, we will name it and claim it; we will push our vision and ideas without ever consulting God or asking Him to guide us.

It’s all about how we define success. Is success having a bigger youth ministry? Is it being invited to speak at camps and retreats? Is it recognition? If you leave, will your students be lost? Is their faith in the great God we proclaim, or is their faith placed in the man or woman on the stage in front of them?

Make sure you are about God’s agenda before your own.

1. THINK ABOUT IT Make a list of differences between man’s agenda and God’s agenda.

2. REFLECT When was the last time you asked God to guide you into a decision and not just bless the one you already made?

3. PRAY Take time and ask God to guide your creativity, not just bless it.