Sermon Tone Analysis

Working for the Man:

Self Leadership

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

September 18~/20, 2009

 

I’m sure many of you had some kind of family reunion this summer, and I hope it went well.

My guess is that most family reunions have those one or two family members that keep things interesting, that put the fun in dysfunctional, those kind of people that you don’t talk about very often.

I have a cousin-in-law very much like that, and one of the silent battles of a reunion is who gets to the TV clicker first, because that person ends up deciding which sports will be viewed in the main room.

This is a big deal.

The stakes are high.

In our family, this cousin-in-law makes a bee-line for clicker control.

Very good at it.

Unfortunately, he also happens to be a NASCAR fanatic.

Now, I’m from the deep south, but somehow I missed the NASCAR gene in the shallow gene pool of the Southeast.

I just don’t get it, and I’ve tried.

Last summer, at the reunion, I sat with my cousin-in-law determined to get the NASCAR bug.

I watched for a few minutes, and then said to him, “You know, I’m not really getting the thrill of this.

These guys aren’t going anywhere but in circles, and they do it over and over again.

Not much suspense here.

They go in a circle, then in another circle, then another circle.

And we are on lap 30, with a long day to go.”

He tried to explain what was happening, talked about how athletic these guys have to be, how much they have to endure in that long of race, and about how much of the race is about managing that many miles.

You can’t just point your car and push the accelerator.

You have to work with your pit crew and others to manage the race, because you have to stop and re-tire, refuel.

You can’t just go around in circles for 500 miles.

I watched another twenty minutes or so, and can’t say that I caught the NASCAR bug.

In fact, that was a painful twenty minutes.

But I did have the thought that all pastors have from time to time when you are enduring something uncomfortable, whether it is cancer or clinical depression or a NASCAR race, “At least there is a sermon illustration here.”

For us, life is one big search for a sermon illustration.

And here it is.

So many of us in life, in career, simply ride around in circles as fast as we can, not necessarily going anywhere, and not necessarily thinking about how to manage the race.

We are just racing through life, because life is so full, between jobs and bills and chasing kids around and volunteering and churching, it’s so full.

So full that we seldom stop to think about where we are going.

We aren’t really managing the race, we are just racing.

And that doesn’t work very well, which is why most people end up at a destination they regret, why most people never reach their full potential, why most people don’t cross the finish line with a checkered flag waving.

Today we are concluding our series, /Working for the Man, /and today may well be the most significant, life-changing week of the series…because today we are talking about the most important management responsibility that 100% of us in this room have, the responsibility to manage ourselves well, to manage our own race well.

Most of us in business read a lot and think a lot about how to manage others well, but far more important than that is managing ourselves well.

Today we are going to be focusing on a challenge in the Bible from a boss to someone on his team, from the apostle Paul to Timothy.

The challenge is found in

Slide: ____________ ) 1 Timothy 4:13-16 (New American Standard)

and today I’m reading from the New American Standard:  /Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching.

Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery.

Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all.

Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.

/

Now Timothy did for a living what I do for a living.

He was a pastor and a teacher.

He got paid to talk a lot, just like I do.

Quite a gig.

Paul wanted him to focus on his core area of gifting, his unique contribution as a pastor and teacher, and that’s a great sermon right there.

Feel the intensity of the passage.

Paul wanted Timothy to passionately give attention to his job, to his core gift area.

That’s a great message, but we’ve actually already done that one, so today I’m going to focus on what I believe is the most important phrase out of a lot of very important phrases:

Slide: ____________ )

·         Pay close attention to yourself . . .

As much as Paul wanted Timothy to focus on his core contribution, even more significant was what he said first, “/Pay close attention to yourself.”

/Timothy, be sure that you manage your self well.

Today we are going to apply that one challenge, and in life and career it is arguably the most difficult and most important challenge we have.

When Daniel Goleman, author of /Emotional Intelligence, /did his ground-breaking research on what makes really great leaders become really great leaders, he summarized is as people who lead themselves well.

It’s why leadership expert Dee Hock, argues that effective leaders need to spend about 50% of their time and effort on self-management.

The only way to end well is to manage the race well, and this applies to everybody in this room—not just business leaders.

So, let’s talk about self-management, what it means to pay close attention to ourselves.

Notice it is a command, because no one else will do this for us.

We can’t count on other people to watch our lives, to manage our lives.

It’s our job.

We aren’t victims in this world, or in our jobs, and we have choices about how we live our lives.

So today I’m going to break the self-management role into a three slice pie.

The first one I’ll talk about only briefly, the development piece.

Slide: ______________ ) Development

Paul commands Timothy, as we just saw:

Slide: ____________ ) 1 Timothy 4: 14-15

/Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery (elders).

Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all./

Timothy’s progress in the exercise of his gifting, in his case teaching, was his responsibility, and the same is true for you and me.

You and I are the steward of our gifts, no one else is.

Even though, as we saw last week, that good bosses give attention to the development of the people who work for them, you and I can’t count on that.

It is our responsibility.

I can’t complain that nobody cares about my development, because I am the one who should care most.

If I am not developing or growing in my area of gifting, my area of calling, that is my problem, not my boss’s problem.

If my passion is running low, that’s not my boss’s problem, that’s my problem.

If I’m stagnating, that’s not someone else’s problem, that’s my problem.

How many times have you seen people in a stagnant situation, no growth, no joy, no passion, no challenge—just turning the crank, putting in the hours.

If that’s you, then change it.

You are not a victim of a bad boss or company or circumstance, you are a victim of your own bad self-management.

Far too many times people act like a victim.

My company just doesn’t care about me.

That’s a bummer, but it doesn’t mean you can’t grow and develop.

You do what it takes.

I have to discipline myself to read the right books, talk to the right people, and engage the right experiences in order to continue to learn and grow and be stretched.

Nobody else is doing that for me.

In the short run, you can get away with neglecting this, but in the long-run you shrivel up.

It’s like Howard Hendricks says, “I’d rather drink from a flowing stream than a stagnant pond.”

If we aren’t learning and growing, we are just a stagnant pond.

So, let me ask you, “Are you growing?

Are you taking pains to focus on your area of gifting, or are you neglecting it?”

You will never accomplish what God put you on this planet to accomplish until you take responsibility for your own development, until you manage yourself well.

The second piece of the self-development pie is

Slide: _______________ ) Replenishment

doing what is necessary to replenish ourselves.

We can’t escape this need, because it is how we are designed.

We are like this car that can go for a while on one push, but then needs a fresh one.

We’ve talked in this series how we are created to work, and that is true.