29 Leadership Lessons From Matt Adair

In an effort to add value to church leaders, The Rocket Company attended the Velocity 2014 Conference.  This was an incredible conference and should be on every church planter’s list for 2015.

Matt Adair, Lead Pastor of Christ Community Church in Athens, GA and Director of Operations for the Acts 29 Network, conducted a ministry-changing session entitled “Shhhh!  The Dirty Little Secret About Church Planting” based on the life of Gideon.  I am honored to share his thoughts with you.

 

The following are 29 leadership lessons on God being with you from Matt Adair – Velocity 2014:

1. One thing I notice about church planters and church planting families is that you’re angry and depressed.  I know this because of how much you yell on social media.
2. There is this depression on church planters because you thought you’d be more successful.
3. There is depression because you didn’t think it would be this hard.
4. There is depression because you thought you were better than this.
5. There is anger and depression because we’re struggling with your ordinariness.
6. What is so hard is not what’s going on out there but what’s going on in my soul.  There are extraordinary people in the Kingdom and you’re not one of them.
7. The secret to church planting is God is with you.  This is first thing Gideon hears in Judges 12:6.
8. One of things I’ve noticed is we don’t handle the Old Testament well.
9. God chooses weak people to take on an overwhelming enemy to show out His strength through our weakness.

10. Most of our messages are self-reliance with a little-bit of Christian spin.

11. If you want to bless your city you must recover your prophetic voice in preaching…You must help people know what’s going on.

12. Gideon had no strength and neither do you, me or the clans we lead.

13. He is calling us to lead in a time where there is a hole in holiness.

14. In leadership, in the strength of The Lord, is loving people enough to deal with the high places that need to come down.

15. Our desire for peace and prosperity will be met by strife and difficulties and pain.  And God has brought this into our life because He loves us.

16. Your preaching isn’t going to win very many battles in your neighborhood unless there’s a purpose to it.

17. It’s funny how we take isolated bits of the Bible and tell stories and forget the big picture.

18. I believe in miracle but the main part of my life is called to just be obedient to what’s right in front of me.

19. You do not have to trust in yourself because the dirty little secret is He’s with you.

20. God uses unlikely people in unlikely times.

21. The issue is not whether you’re the right person to plant a church.  You’re God’s choice to plant a church and He is with you.

22. If God is with you, hell cannot stand against you.

23. Don’t be terrified when the odds are stacked against you.

24. Why are we so obsessed with being impressive?

25. God is not just in charge of your church.  He is in charge of your city.

26. Church planting is not easy…But there is not better people out there and there is no better place to be because God is with you.

27. Your job is glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

28. We can get so fixated on finding the next thing we will pick 20 things because we’re so desperate to be successful.  In the name of missional we are running our people into a brick wall.

We have become so drunk on our self-reliance that we’ve forgotten God’s plan.