In a recent article for ChurchCentral.com. Mark Batterson suggests 17 tips for high-impact leaders. Here are three of them:

Be Yourself
Don’t try to be who you’re not. I’m not trying to be a pastor anymore. I’m trying to be myself. I’m certainly trying to grow in maturity and gifting, but I’m not worried about who I’m not. Abraham Lincoln said, “You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all the people all of the time.” Uniformity isn’t the goal—unity is. That also doesn’t mean unanimous. According to the categorization of adopters, 16 percent of the people you lead will be resisters. It doesn’t matter if you come down with stone tablets from Mount Sinai. Even Jesus lost one of Hs disciples.

Don’t Live for the Applause of People
My philosophy of ministry is Matthew 10:16: Be shrewd as a snake and innocent as a dove. You’ve got to beat the enemy at his own game, and that takes creativity. You also need to do the right things for the right reasons, and that takes integrity. Don’t worry about being politically correct. Be biblically correct. Most of my reward has been forfeited because I was more concerned about “my kingdom” than “thy kingdom.” I was living for the applause of people. To get to the point where you genuinely care for people, you have to get to the point where you don’t care how they feel about you. Live for the applause of nail-scarred hands.

I’d Rather Have One God Idea than a Thousand Good Ideas
Let me say it again: Get in the presence of God. Those new ideas are discovered in the context of prayer and fasting and nowhere else. Good ideas are good, but God ideas change the course of history. There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. Here’s a formula: change of pace + change of place = change of perspective. Sometimes, you just need to get out of your routine. (Click here to read the full article.)

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