Be All You Can Be: A Challenge to Stretch Your God-Given Potential (13 page)

How are we going to secure the dream of a life? I would suggest six things:

S
tate dreams

E
xamine motives

C
onsider options

U
tilize resources

R
emove nonessentials

E
mbrace your challenges

The first thing you do is state your dreams. Write them out on a piece of paper. Look at them. Then examine all your motives. You have to ask yourself,
Why am I doing this? Do I have pure, right motives?
If the motive isn’t right, the dream will die. Make sure in the beginning that your motive is right.

Consider all your options. Now that you have stated your dreams and examined your motives, sit down and consider all of your options. How many ways can you reach this goal? There is more than one option. Everybody needs a backup plan; everybody needs a plan B and a plan C and a plan D. Next, utilize your resources. Find people around you who have a similar dream and work with them.

Remove your nonessentials
; get the excess baggage off your back, anything that keeps you from achieving your dream. And finally,
embrace your challenges
. Picture difficulties in front of you and practice reacting positively instead of negatively. Learn to wring out of those challenges the best that God has for you.

In February 1973, when bus ministries were really big, I went to a conference in Lynchburg, Virginia. Jerry Falwell was talking about buses, and he challenged the five thousand of us there to get a dream for a bus ministry. God began to speak to my heart, saying, “John, you could have in one year as many people on buses as what your church was averaging when you came.” Our average attendance had been 418. I didn’t even have a bus. I remember going back to the Holiday Inn and lying on the floor saying, “God, do you really want me to do this?” Falwell had said, “Tomorrow, we’re going to give you a card and you’re going to write down your name and the number you’re going to have on buses within one year. And you’re going to bring them forward and we’re going to read them.” I thought,
Oh, no, they’re going to read this in front of five thousand people from all over the world!
I wrestled with it all night. The next day I took a card and put 418 on that card—and I didn’t have a bus! With fear and trembling I handed in my card, and it was read in front of five thousand people. I thought,
This is the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life
. But I became motivated because I had said it. Falwell wrote a letter to my church board telling them my goal, and I had to go out and raise money for buses before we ever brought it to the board. The great thing is that in one year’s time, literally one year from that day, we had 438 people on buses. Why? Because we went out and seized it.

What do you see God challenging you to do or be in the next year? Whom will you share this dream with in the next two weeks? How will you seize this goal and make it become a reality? Take fifteen minutes right now and write down the answers to these questions on a 3X5" card. Then write down some steps of action you’re going to take to seize that dream. Place your card in a visible location. Read it in the morning, act on it during the day, evaluate it in the evening, and pray about it at night. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. There are many people in this world who see it. There are some people in this world who say it. But there are only a few people in this world who seize it. Filling out this card is the first step toward seizing your dream.

chapter 7

THE 101 PERCENT PRINCIPLE

T
HE EFFECTIVENESS OF OUR LEADERSHIP IS
determined by our ability to relate to others. Leadership is influence. Whether it’s effective, positive leadership or ineffective, negative leadership, when people are leading others, they have influence—what they say, what they think, and what they do influences those who follow them.

Your relationship with others determines how you will influence them. Are they under your care? Are they accountable to you? Are you consistent and approachable? Do you project a positive attitude? Your relationships with the people around you will do more to determine your effectiveness as a leader than anything else. Too often we try to separate leadership from relationships. We look at leadership as position, title, or a name.

John 10 gives us a biblical understanding of relational leadership. Jesus, describing the good shepherd, says
,

The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.… He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. And a stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers. (John 10:3–5)

There are three components of relational leadership in this Scripture passage. The first is that the shepherd knows his sheep intimately. His relationship with them is such that he recognizes them instantly. The sheep know his voice, and he knows their names. He is personally acquainted with each one.

The second component of relational leadership is that the relationship is built on trust. The shepherd not only knows the names of his sheep, but his sheep trust him. They hear his voice and come to him, but they will run from a stranger. From this we can learn that leaders must be worthy of their followers’ trust.

The third component is that relationships are modeled. The shepherd walks ahead of his sheep, and they follow him.

Someone asked chief executives of major companies in the United States to name the characteristic they wanted most in potential employees. By far the great majority of these executives said that what they wanted to see more than anything else in people who came into their companies was the ability to work with other people. Of course they want them to have certain abilities and skills, but more than that, they want people who can work well with others. If you can relate well with others, you can survive almost any situation in life. John Rockefeller, the builder of giant corporations, said, “I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”

A survey was sent out to two thousand employers, asking respondents to check the files of the last three persons they dismissed from their jobs and tell why they were fired. In two out of three cases, the answer was the same; the employees could not get along with other people. People did not lose their jobs because they lacked skills; they lost their jobs because they lacked ability to relate effectively with others.

We’re going to deal with two things in this chapter—handling conflicts in relationships, which I find to be the number-one problem of people in leadership positions, and creating effective relationships.

The secret to handling conflicts successfully is to live according to the 101 percent principle. If there is someone under your umbrella of leadership who tends to be obstinate, find the 1 percent on which the two of you agree, and give it all you’ve got—100 percent of your effort and ability. Let that 1 percent shred of agreement be the tie that binds you together.

There’s a tendency for us to generalize and idealize relationships. Remember the parable of the lost sheep? One sheep disobeyed and disappeared; it left the security of the flock to go out and do its own thing. The shepherd could have said, “We’re better off without you—be some lion’s dinner!” But no, the shepherd left the ninety-nine that were secure and went in search of the one that was lost (see Luke 15:4–6). That’s a perfect example of the 101 percent principle. The shepherd looked until he found it; he expended a great deal of energy to develop that relationship with the very one who had not been in kilter with the rest of the gang.

And I want to give you ten commandments for handling conflicts.

I think they’ll be helpful to you because all of us have times when we have to take a relationship that’s not healthy and try to bring healing to it.

Follow the 101 percent principle
. I had a friend in my last church who had caused all kinds of difficulties. He had done the same with the two previous pastors. In fact, I’m pretty sure he was the reason both of them left the church. For months I thought and prayed about ways to develop a relationship with him. I was looking for that 1 percent. He and his wife had adopted two children into their family, and we had adopted two into ours. One Halloween night I took my daughter, Elizabeth, who was then about two years of age, to his house and knocked on the door. I’d already programmed her to go over and give him a big hug and tell him she loved him. She did and he melted. As he stood there crying, I knew I had found the crack in his tough exterior and the 1 percent that we had in common—adopted children. That began to build a relationship that became very successful. That’s the 101 percent principle.

Love people more than opinions
. Anyone who loves his opinions more than he does his friends will defend his opinions and destroy his friends. People who are not effective in relationships usually have a higher regard for their opinions than they do for people. We need to step back and look at what is really important to us. Is it helping or hindering our relationships with people?

Give others the benefit of the doubt
. We usually rule ourselves with our hearts, but we rule others with our heads. We have mercy on ourselves but not on the other person. If you want to build relationships, follow this rule: When working with yourself, use your head; when working with others, use your heart. Give other people the benefit of the doubt.

Learn to be flexible
. Thomas Jefferson once said, “In matters of principle, stand like a rock. In matters of taste, swim with the current.” In my last church. when they were decorating the sanctuary, I really didn’t like what they were doing, but I also realized that it wasn’t that important. If the issue is evangelism, I’m not going to waver for anybody—that’s a matter of principle. But if we’re talking about the color of the carpeting or the stain on the pews, I’ll swim with the current. Learn to be flexible in your life. The greater the man, the more flexible he is. Good leaders learn how to say, “I’m sorry” more quickly than followers. Effective leaders know how to back down; they don’t constantly feel the need to defend their rights; they’ve learned to differentiate between principles and taste; they’ve learned to be flexible.

Provide an escape hatch for the person in conflict
. I have watched people defend their actions, not because they knew they were right, but because their pride kept them from backing down. It takes a strong leader to allow someone who has been defeated to ease out of a situation and save face. Once the point has been made, back off.

Check your own attitude
. Many times wrong leaderships develop because of wrong attitudes. You need to ask yourself questions to help you know whether your attitude is right or wrong. For instance, if you’re having conflicts with several people, there’s a good chance the problem is you, not them. Ask yourself, Am I constantly in conflict, or is this an exception? If it’s an exception, your attitude is probably fine. The attitude with which we view people determines to a large extent our perception of how they feel about us. Check your attitude.