(Teaching 1 taken from the book by Cesar Castellanos D, 52 Teachings for the G12 Meetings)
The Vision relates to a LEADERSHIP or MINISTRY whose purpose is to win souls, make disciples, have permanent fruit, and make a leader of each member. This is based on the model of 12. The number 12 symbolizes Government, and is used for Administration, Restoration, Reconcilation and Structuring the nation of Israel.
There are 4 Key issues mentioned in this teaching by Pastor Cesar, our great great great Grand Father. They are:
1. The Sight placed on Each Person
Throughout Jesus’ Ministerial Life, He believed in people, not for who they were, but for the potential that He knew existed in them. This potential came from God’s divine breath… Though Jesus could have poured out His life onto the multitudes, He chose, instead, to form the character of only 12 disciples.2. An Intense Work on Each Individual
True Leadership requires INTENSE WORK, deep in the inner sanctum of each individual… The first thing we must do is work on their personal character, knowing that God will make them into great leaders.3. Renewing the Mind
When a leader renews his or her mind, he or she begins to think like a winner… “A negative thought tends to be counteracted by ten positive thoughts”.4. A Balanced Family Life
A stable marriage is as powerful as a walled city, where everyone living in it is safe. The leader must understand that HIS FIRST PRIORITY must be his family… When God established the marriage covenant, he delegated very specific functions to the man and his spouse…. What is it worth to a man if he achieves success in his business and ministry, and allows his home to be in ruins?… The other aspect in having a balanced
family is the relationship and time shared with our children…. It is necessary to spend time with our children so they can know that they can count on us for their protection and care. The Lord has given the children to us to care for and to develop them. Many leaders of flourishing ministries have neglected their families; their children can’t count on them
because the church activities absorb all their time.Conclusion
If being a pastor is your calling, you must understand that the mighty men you need are within your congregation. Maybe you have not noticed them because they lived in hardship, with debt or bitterness of spirit.
The above words are extracts from Pastor Cesar’s book itself… Now I shall add my suggestions of how we can apply the teaching in our context:
What Should we FOCUS on in the Development of our Disciples?
1. Focus on your 12
2. Focus in Developing their Character
3. Focus in Developing their Confidence in the Lord and in Themselves
4. Focus in Developing their Care for their Family
1. Focus on your 12
Our Focus should be on our 12!!! In the development of our Disciples, we need to understand the Vision of the 12!!! It all started with Jesus standing before the CROWDS and when He looked at them, He had compassion on them (Matthew 9:35 – 10:1). What shall we do? We should ask the Lord of Harvest to send out the workers… The very next verse after Jesus said ask the Lord of Harvest, immediately He called His 12 disciples to Him and He sent them out.
The vision of the 12 is about God having compassion on the crowds, who were harassed and helpless and God want to reach out to them. While the OBJECTIVE is on the Lost at large, the AIM is on the crowds, the means of achieving that AIM is to FOCUS on our 12!!! We hear God’s objective, but we need to know the Lord’s STRATEGY: Disciple your 12 and SEND your 12 out to the harvest field.
We limit ourselves to 12 because that is the maximum capacity we can do if we really focus all our energy in Discipling our disciples. With so much to do and so little time, we cannot afford to miss the focus. Our FOCUS should be on our 12. Focus in developing them as a CHILD of God!!! Focus on each of our 12 as a SON, as a DAUGHTER, as a PERSON.
To all my spiritual sons and daughters in the Lord, we need to DO the RIGHT things and not just do the things right. You may improve all your processes in the way we do things, etc., but if we are not doing the right things, no matter how right the way we do it, we may miss the point. The focus is simple, FOCUS on your 12.
Throughout Jesus’ Ministerial Life, He believed in people, not for who they were, but for the potential that He knew existed in them. This potential came from God’s divine breath… Though Jesus could have poured out His life onto the multitudes, He chose, instead, to form the character of only 12 disciples.
2. Focus in Developing their Character
So what does it mean to focus on the person?
Firstly, we need to focus in developing the character of your 12. Character development is different from skills development. You need to go beyond what your 12 can do and ask yourself who they are… To do that, we need to know our people deeper and understand their mindset and heartbeat. By observing their actions over time will tell us certain pattern of behavior and we will then know what are the things that we need to work on in their character.
Of course we need to recognize that it is God who will shape and mould our characters. However, we need to also recognize that God want to do it through us too. As disciple makers, we need to partner with the Holy Spirit and speak the word of God into the lives of the people. Hence, we need to spend more time praying for our 12 to ask God for His will for them. To ask God, how should we direct our spiritual sons and daughters to walk in the obedience of Christ.
To shape a character is very difficult task. It takes a lot of effort, tears and pain before we can see any changes in the lives of our 12. But the effort is worthwhile because it is God’s calling for us to do that. It is following Christ’s example of how He makes disciples of His 12. Many a times, it is through times of disagreement and argument, times of trials, time when the people struggle with certain issues that when we helped them to overcome that we see breakthroughs in their lives. Hence, while there will be times of encouragements, there will also be times of confrontations. We need to be prepared for such times in order to bring out the best in the lives of our 12.
True Leadership requires INTENSE WORK, deep in the inner sanctum of each individual… The first thing we must do is work on their personal character, knowing that God will make them into great leaders.
3. Focus in Developing their Confidence in the Lord and in Themselves
Besides focusing in the Character development of our 12, we need to FOCUS in Developing their Confidence in the Lord and in themselves. It is so easy for one to feel that he is nobody, that he is not performing or that he is a failure. While we are create in the image of God as a conqueror, redeemed by Christ as a victor, the evil one is constantly trying to attack our minds to break that confidence in us. We need to overcome the devil and many of these spiritual battles are fought in our minds.
When a leader renews his or her mind, he or she begins to think like a winner… We need to seek the help of the Holy Spirit to renew the mind of our 12 so that we can defeat the schemes of the devil who tries so hard to make us feel lousy about ourselves. We need to be careful with our words so that we can speak encouragement into the lives of our people. Yes, we need to speak the truth, but we need to speak it in Grace so that it will edify and build up the person. Most importantly, we need to believe in them… When the world tells them that they cannot, we believe in them and groom them… We encourage them that if they are willing, God will help them succeed. So we will constantly getting the people to try doing certain things, and helping them succeed in those things.
Remember this: “A negative thought tends to be counteracted by ten positive thoughts”…. Learn to speak positively into the lives of the people… Proverbs 12:18 says: “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
4. Focus in Developing their Care for their Family
I cannot emphasize on this more. I like to repeat what Pastor Cesar says: “A stable marriage is as powerful as a walled city, where everyone living in it is safe. The leader must understand that HIS FIRST PRIORITY must be his family… What is it worth to a man if he achieves success in his business and ministry, and allows his home to be in ruins?… It is necessary to spend time with our children so they can know that they can count on us for their protection and care. The Lord has given the children to us to care for and to develop them. Many leaders of flourishing ministries have neglected their families; their children can’t count on them because the church activities absorb all their time.”
Be convinced, my children… You need to first take care of your family before you can be trusted to manage God’s Family (1 Tim 3:5). The first ministry that the Lord gave to us is to manage our family. We need to learn to be good natural fathers/mothers as we learn to be good spiritual fathers/mothers. We also need to learn to be good spiritual children as we learn to be good natural children to our parents. Only when we do well in our natural families, then we can set an example to our spiritual family members. Then we have a life story to tell…
This issue is totally self-explanatory. We just need to place enough emphasis to remind ourselves not to neglect our care for our families and use church activities as our excuses. However, in my own life, I have always learned to balance this, because it can happen the other way round too. We also need to be careful of not to live in our own paneled house while the house of God lies in ruins (Haggai 1:4). Balance is the word, not extremes.
May you be blessed richly by the Lord this week!
Pastor William
