SHOW NOTES
Show and Tell, pt1
Leadership in Context with Keith Tucci
Episode 213
On September 18th, Bridge City Church celebrated its 40th anniversary. I was the founding pastor of that church in 1982. Pastor Rick Paladin has done a great job leading the church for a number of years now.
I spoke there for their anniversary service. Pastor Rick asked me to specifically speak on 2 Timothy 2:2, “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
That was our founding verse and is still on the letterhead today.
We started with about 7 people in an old funeral home. In that group, the couple that led worship would later become part of a church plant and lead worship there. There was a young couple that 8 years later became our second church plant. During the 2nd week, we had a visitor, Gary Paladin, that stayed with us, and 6 years later he became our first church plant. Later that first month, an 18-year-old young man was hungry for God and came, and that was Pastor Rick Paladin. We had maybe 20 people at this point.
We had a small group of people, and who would have ever imagined the richness of what was in that room?
We built a discipleship culture where we were involved with people in the day-to-day affairs of life. It was the show and tell principle from 2 Timothy 2:2. We did life together.
Discipleship is not just a classroom. Discipleship is when you share your life.
We found faithful people, and we empowered them to be able. Character and relationship are more important than gifting. There are a lot of churches that can’t grow because gifted people keep blowing through there like a storm and tearing things up without building anything. In God’s economy, faithfulness is very important.
Faithfulness is more than just a heart attitude. Faithfulness is being faithful to their walk with God. People are watching you. Your model is more critical than your message. Faithful to our conviction. Faithful to our doctrine. Faithful to the principles that we have decided we would lead by. Faithful to our relationships. Faithful to share the gospel. Faithful in our serving. Faithful in our giving. Those are all measurable things that were a big deal.
We never promoted people who were not faithful. For example, we didn’t promote someone if they weren’t giving. If a person would rob God, they will rob you. We would sit down with them and get to the heart issues. It’s not about money. It’s about them trusting God, giving the first fruits of their life. How are they going to give the 90% of their life if they can’t give the first fruits of their life?
Define what faithfulness looks like. This helps you when you are raising people up and plugging people in. You can apply that definition to yourself as well. While you are waiting for God to do something else, are you being faithful to your core convictions, faithful to disciple people around you, being a faithful disciple and reaching out to the person you look to to disciple you?
These are principles that we built on, and here we are 40 years later, celebrating a growing, active church that is raising people up, doing mission work, and training and empowering people. It’s the show and tell principle–everyone should be imparting into someone and someone imparting in them, and faithfulness is critical.
Join us next week as Keith Tucci continues to put leadership truth in the context of the local church. And as always, please like, share, rate/review, and invite others to listen. See you next week!
