In this video, Matt Blackwell shares how to love the people you lead.
Here are a few main points from Matt’s explanation:
Matt Blackwell: Spirituality is your discipline before the Lord. What does your prayer life look like? What does your time in the Word look like? Are you memorizing Scripture? I’ve never met a minister or a person in the church that has said, “Prayer? Done. Check. Got it. Nailed it. I don’t need to pray anymore.” Every person I’ve ever talked to said, “Yeah, I need to pray more.” I don’t know what that measure is for you, but how often do you pray for the people that you lead?
One of the ways that you love people and lead them well is when nobody’s watching, you get on your knees and beg that God would reach into their souls through these lyrics to bring them to a place of worship. This isn’t to stroke your ego, but because you care about their worship. You care about God’s worthiness of their worship. So you pray, God would you grab their souls so that they might become worshippers of you.
Let me ask you a question. This is a self-diagnosis sort of question. Do you love to lead worship more than you love the people that you lead in worship? That’s a pastoral question. Do you love to lead them in worship or do you love them? And because you love them, you love to lead them in worship? That’s just a different way of thinking about how we lead. If you only love to lead, then you use those people for your own selfish gain. But, if you love them, when they engage in worship, you know why that does something in your soul? Not because everyone in the room is raising their hands so you must be doing a great job. It’s everybody raising their hands, I love that they’re loving our savior together because I love them and I know that they need this. It’s a different perspective, but your devotion to the Lord, your spirituality, has to lead out first. You have to be before the Lord. You have to be in the Word. You have to be praying for the people of God before you lead out the people of God. Otherwise, they’re just widgets in your world.
