What qualifies you as a leader?

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.

Acts 4:13

• Qualifications: recognizable as having “been with Jesus”

• Education: Unlearned and ignorant

• Key Characteristic: Boldness (the effect of the baptism of the Holy Spirit)

Are you personally capable of these traits?

Who did Jesus choose?

^{Luke 6:12}One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God

^{Mark 3:13}Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.

The disciples were the chosen leaders of His church. Jesus spent the majority of His 3 years of public ministry preparing 12 men and put a primary focus on three of them.

• Vocations: Fishermen, tax collector, political activist (Zealot)

• Occupation: Searching for the Messiah (2 were likely disciples of John the Baptist)

• Common Characteristic: Male

The Commissioning

¹⁸And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

• Most authoritative statement of Christ

• As you go

• Disciples, not converts

• Teaching all that He commanded you- not a short-term ministry

• He is with you!

This is for everyone, male and female that becomes a follower of Jesus Christ

What differentiates the commissioning of men as leaders?

^{1 Cor. 11:3}But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

^{Eph 5:21}Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

 ²²Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

 ²³For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

 ²⁴Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

 ²⁵Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

 ²⁶That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

 ²⁷That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

 ²⁸So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

 ²⁹For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

 ³⁰For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

 ³¹For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

 ³²This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

• A man’s commissioning as a leader is primarily as pastor to his family! Any other leadership granted him is earned from this foundation!

Statistics validating this as God’s order (The Government of God) are overwhelming

A study from Hartford Seminary found that the presence of involved men was statistically correlated with church growth, health, and harmony. Meanwhile, a lack of male participation is strongly associated with congregational decline.

If a child is won to Christ, there is a 25% chance the entire family will be saved

If a mother is won to Christ, there is a 29% chance the entire family will be saved

If a father is won to Christ, there is a 95% chance the entire family will be saved

If a father does not accept responsibility as the spiritual leader in his family (even if his wife does) there is a less than 1% chance that his son will follow Christ.

Where are we in America today?

• In the year 2000, 40% of births were recorded without a father, up from 17% in 1960.

• Over 70 percent of the boys who are being raised in church will abandon it during their teens and twenties. Many of these boys will never return.

• Fewer than 10% of U.S. churches are able to establish or maintain a vibrant men’s ministry.

• Among America's 94 million men, only 26 million attend church, and 85 percent of all currently unchurched men were previously churchgoers

How did we get here?

• Tyrannical Leadership vs. Servant Leadership (rise of feminism)

• Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

• Converts rather than Disciples

• Men refusing to pray- ignoring John 15

Now what?

• Personal repentance

• Connecting to the vine (believing John 15)

• Accepting the pastoral imperative to our families as a product of that connection and as witnessed by that connection

• Taking on other leadership responsibilities as an outgrowth of that pastoral connection

• If there is anything left to give, causing at least one other man to become a disciple of Jesus Christ

Your response?

From “Beyond the Gates of Splendor”, a documentary of the martyrdom of missionary men and subsequent ministry of their surviving wives and children to the Wadani or Auca Tribe, I learned something new that I wish was a part of our language.

The Wadani word “Inye” means: hearing, believing, understanding and obeying. That means taking it in, understanding it and assimilating it into our lives. Through their “inye” of scripture, they went from the most murderous tribe in the jungle to a peaceful people in a matter of months, based on the truth of God’s word. Like them, our hope lies in Christ through our individual decisions to “inye” and become the leaders we are commissioned by Christ to be.