GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

What's in Your Hand? "Called to Lead with What God Gave You"

Jermaine Gayle

Garhett Morgan

01 The Staff No Longer Yours

02 The Staff Ignites

03 The Staff vs the Crook

04 The Staff Abused

05 Passing the Staff

We are in the year 2026 and we're grateful, dear Lord, for your presence that is guaranteed to be with us.

We pray, O Father, that you guide us as we process the theme of leadership, this being our last session together.

We pray that the conversation will continue as we study your word and try to glean some of those precious principles that we need to be able to function as good leaders in the society, in the world around us, and in our local churches.

All right, Pastor Garrett, I think you had an experience that is worth sharing with everybody.

Most people don't know this, but you were a pretty arrogant person at 1 point.

You might be able to still tell flashes of that now and then.

But today's message or our seminar is talking about leadership transfer, right?

So training somebody to take your place or, in essence, working yourself out of a job.

1 John mentions that young people have strengths and old people have strengths.

He puts it this way, old people have wisdom, amen?

And that wisdom is often learned through experiences and mistakes and all—I mean, the longer you're alive, the more wisdom that you can glean, right?

So old people have wisdom, but John says that they lack energy.

But lack wisdom that the old people have.

So in essence, what we need when it comes to Church leadership and Churches being successful in leadership is a combination of young and old coming together, despite generational gaps, so that we can lead in a way that is relevant, that is recent, but also has the wisdom of the past bolstering us up on the shoulders.

But there are times when it's hard for older people to trust young people.

And I get why, because the wisdom isn't there.

I have, and I'll tell, I've told the story many times.

He was the Ministerial Director of Michigan Conference, of which both of us now work for.

And I remember I was 18 years old and I had just finished preaching an evangelistic series in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And the pastor there at the time wanted to hire me as an associate pastor.

And so anyway, I went through an interview process, and after the interview I went to the ministerial director who's in charge of hiring, right?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, you said that after the interview?

And he looked at me and said, and I don't know if any of you know Alder Royce Naman, but he's very calm and cool and collected.

He'll tell you bad news and and and it doesn't make you feel agitated.

He's good to go, but and he's seldom blunt, but he was blunt with me.

He looked at me and he said, do you want to know the honest truth?

Because if it would have been good news, he wouldn't have asked me that question.

So he said, do you want to know the honest truth?

And he goes, I will never hire you in the Michigan conference.

And he went on to list all of the reasons.

And I just looked at him and said, I understand.

2 years later, after my wilderness experience, Michigan Conference hired me, and I've been there ever since, right?

Sometimes young people kind of believe, and I've fallen into that before myself, that we're like God's greatest gift.

I don't know if you've ever been that way before.

I mean it's kind of interesting right there sometimes when especially when you're going through the process of learning you start to evaluate people's performance based on what you've learned.

You know, like, if I were in his shoes, I could do it better, right?

You just learn how to preach, for example, and you see someone up front preaching, and you're like, they're doing a horrible job at it.

You're like, if I were given the opportunity to preach, I'll show you, I can do this, Right?

But then you're given the opportunity to preach and then it doesn't work out.

I remember a story I read about a young man who had visited James and Ellen White and he felt called to be a pastor.

Never preached a sermon in his life, couldn't preach to save his life, but he thought he was the best thing that happened to Adventism.

And Ellen White sent him over to a local pastor and said, hey, give him an opportunity to preach, test him, try him, let's see if there's any preacher in him.

The guy gave him some menial tasks, he had to split wood, he had to do a couple other things, and he hated it.

All he wanted to do was preach, and that's all he wanted to do.

And finally they gave him the opportunity to preach and he got into the pulpit, had his notes, and he started to read his notes and then he opened his, I mean, his eyes were open but then he realized that he's in front of people and he hates people.

I don't know if you heard that this morning.

I don't know if you heard, yeah, similar thing.

The brother left his notes, ran off the pulpit, and ran home.

And that was the last that they saw of that preacher.

You know, sometimes we want to rush the process.

But sometimes you and I—and we talked about this earlier in our seminar—you have to be more willing to learn than willing to try.

Often we look for the flash of leadership, right?

But often the ministry that we need to start with learning...

I remember when I was a young pastor, I was put into...

The head pastor at the time looked at me and said, you're going to start ministry in the best evangelistic place in church, which I assumed was the pulpit.

And he said, you're not gonna see the pulpit for the first 6 months of ministry.

You're going to be in kindergarten and cradle roll for the first 6 months of ministry.

Because that's where evangelism happens, and that's where you learn patience, right?

You know, talking about criticism though, there's a poem that I like to go back to often.

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Series

What's in Your Hand? "Called to Lead with What God Gave You"

05 Passing the Staff

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 The Staff No Longer Yours

54m

02 The Staff Ignites

58m

03 The Staff vs the Crook

52m

04 The Staff Abused

44m

05 Passing the Staff

57m

Sound Doctrine