Have you ever faced the tension of growth in your organization – that uncomfortable realization that (1) you are out growing your current resources; (2) that God has stirred your imagination and summoned you to a larger capacity faith and sense of destiny; and (3) that there is no clear way to step from where you are to where you see your organization will be? I have a friend that is in just this situation. His organization has outgrown their current facilities, outstripped their fundraising, and expanded beyond their current administrative structure. It’s what every leader hopes for and then freaks when they see it happen.It is normal to freak out over an expanding sense of destiny – that summons from God to take part in a work that requires God’s participation to carry out. Moses freaked out in Exodus 4:1 after hearing God give him a new sense of destiny, “What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? For they may say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you.'” Joshua doesn’t freak out after the death of Moses although in giving Joshua his destiny vision God repeatedly tells him to be strong and courageous. (Joshua 1:1-9) However, after his defeat at Ai he freaks out, “Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening…And Joshua said, ‘Alas O Lord God, why didst Thou ever bring this people over the Jordan, only to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us?'” Saul freaked out when Samuel told him God had selected him to lead Israel as their first king, “Am I not a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel, and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then do you speak to me in this way?” (1 Samuel 9:21) You get the point.
Somewhere between believing that sense of destiny God instills in the leader and the full evidence of that destiny lie a series of choices that test the leader’s (1) attentiveness to God’s voice; (2) dependency on God’s provision; (3) and recognition of God’s purpose i.e., it’s not about the leader. The question driving this period of development in the leader is, what step of faith do I take? It is easy to run ahead – a problem that ultimately disqualified Saul from being king when he panicked at God’s apparent tardiness. (1 Samuel 15) This is exactly the situation my friend is in. He needs a bigger facility, he doesn’t have the budget, and God has given him a glimpse of a future he feels compelled to act on. He is at a boundary point of development and so wrote me to ask what he should do if the building that seems right (a series of events has led him to this moment) comes open before his board can fully take up the matter. So, I wrote him the following and I share it here in hopes that it will encourage other leaders facing the same developmental boundary.
The situation of the building and its potential is great. I suggest a simple process of discernment when the building comes open – God’s guidance is met with God’s provision.
If the two converge take it. You have guidance – a clear sense that God is expanding the influence of your organization and that influence is both direct and indirect (i.e., meeting your organization’s mission and influencing other organizations to rethink their approach to equipping and release of gifts/talents/strengths). You have made the need known to your prayer network and the board – so let’s watch the provision come in.
If the two don’t converge at the point the investment group drops out – don’t force it. Stay connected with what God is doing. You know that direction often unfolds with events over time and that first loss many times reinforces God’s ownership of God’s agenda (v our agenda) and brings God’s people into alignment with his purposes (think Moses’ initial “failure” to secure deliverance for Israel even with God’s clear guidance).
I’m confident that God’s plan so exceeds our capacity to see and envision that if we saw the thing clearly at the front end we’d run away terrified by our own inadequacies. So, keep paying attention to what God is doing. Realize that the capacity represented in the building is the easy part of the process – to increase the physical capacity requires a corresponding increase in leadership capacity that impacts you, the board, and to a greater degree the national/regional coordinators. God is working on the entire system.
Run forward with joyful confidence that God is – see what God can do.