Know yourself!

Successful churches need two elements. They need a leadership gift and a teaching gift – these two together give balance and if the church is to excel then both need to be done well. Theological grounding - knowing the truth about God -is essential for a teaching gift, while to develop as a leader it’s vital to know yourself!




I’m a person who gives 100% to what I do – the end of each day sees me physically drained. I’m not only committed, I’m intense (so I’m told!) So when in my early twenties I was at a meeting in Manchester and heard a guy speaking from the call of God to Isaiah and Jeremiah, I went to him after the meeting and told him, ‘I felt God call me today.’ Some time later Gerald Coates came to the church and picked me out from among the elders. He prophesied that I would be doing what he was doing in about 10 years’ time. He told me I would have a platform ministry. Doug McBain also prophesied that I would be involved in evangelism. The challenge of all that was how to handle big prophetic statements about my life – character will be crucial at this point. But the value of outside confirmation by recognized leaders gives inner confidence to believe that God has called you to lead. Then when the internal struggles come – standing before the people thinking, ‘Can I do this? Can I lead this people through, for example, a massive building project?’ – at that moment those external encouragements can help. Prophetic words of this type can give you backbone in such a situation. But you also have to learn that you can’t do it all yourself.