I spent last week in a leadership practicum with Wayne Cordiero and the New Hope leadership team.  This picture reveals a significant part of the practicum!  New Hope has grown in the last 15 years from a handful to over 10,000.  About 50 pastors from all over the world joined together for six days to rub shoulders and listen to Wayne share about leadership in the local church… a good experience and a great way to wind down my sabbatical.

What was the leadership practicum about?  It wasn’t about how to grow a church to 10,000 people.  It wasn’t about how to lead a staff of 100.  It wasn’t about how to lead a volunteer team of 5000 plus.  It was more about the rhythms of a leader.  In other words, when we look at a leader, we see what they do — up front, but not behind the scenes.  In other words we see the game, we don’t see the training.  We see the concert, we don’t see the rehearsals or the hours of individual lessons.  We see/hear what comes out of the pastor on the weekend, but we don’t see what goes into the sermon during the week.

Every leader — in fact everyone who excels in their calling — has a rythm to their life that brings the fruit that others see.  What are the rhythms of your life?  What are the disciplines you practice behind the scenes — day to day — that will bear fruit?  They should include things like prayer, time to hear God, planning, and exercise.  So every day of the practicum we participated in the rhythms of Wayne Cordiero’s life.  Up at 5:30am, prayer, calisthenics and 2 mile run from 6-7am, (they called me Krispy), breakfast at 8am, and devotions from 8:30am.  After that the day started.

So what are the rythms of your life?  What do you do on a consistent basis that helps you train for the Kingdom race?  What disciplines shape your heart so that you are ready for God’s calling?  It’s got me thinking about mine…