← City Light Church Las Vegas | Jabin Chavez
City Light Church Las Vegas | Jabin Chavez
UNITY: The Super Power of Your Organization | Jabin Chavez Leadership Podcast
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UNITY: The Super Power of Your Organization | Jab…
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What's up, friend? And welcome to this week's Jabe and Chavez Leadership Podcast. I am so excited to help you with one of the missing keys to the blessing of God in your organization, in your ministry. And that key is unity. When you can get a group of people unified around the things that really matter, I am telling you, everything in your organization will begin to move forward. Jump into it. Well, welcome again to Jabe and Chavez Leadership Podcast right here on the City Light Vegas page. Make sure that you like and subscribe and follow and do all the things, because they tell me that helps with the algorithm, whatever that is. I know that would be a blessing to my team and praying that today will strengthen you. This is really one of those messages that I believe would be so important for the whole team to listen to. So I hope that every everybody will jump in. I hope that as a senior pastor, you'll let your team in on this. This would be perfect for a staff meeting. I think it's going to be a huge blessing to you and to your group. And I want to talk about unity. This is Psalm 133. How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. It is like the precious oil poured on the beard, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's beard, running down the collar of his robe. It is as the dew of Hermon falling on Mount Zion. So notice that it's like oil. It's refreshing, like dew. For there the Lord bestows blessings, and we have blessing, even life forevermore. So we have oil, which is flow, grace, ease, anointing. We have dew, which is refreshing, which is rain, which is springtime, which is life. We have blessing, which is God's Amen and breath on the ministry. And then, of course, we have a life forevermore. When the ministry feels alive and vibrant and powerful, all of these things happen. Where in unity, to be unified is to be together. It's to be joined not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and around the vision in Acts Chapter two. Remember, they were in one place, in one accord. Two different things. It's one thing to be in the same place. It's another thing to be in one accord. Our church during COVID met in a strip mall. It was us. It was Buffalo Wild Wings. It was a Lee's Liquor. It was an insurance company, it was a dentist, it was a pizza parlor, it was a sushi restaurant. All of these different organizations all under the same roof. And we were all in competition. We were all fighting for parking. We were all Fighting for signage. We were all fighting for access. What is my point? We were under the same roof, but we were not unified. And so you can have a church that is under the same roof but is not unified around the same mission. And I want to help you with that. So instead of thinking like a plaza, we need to think like a department store where we are all in unity. And you could take a men's shirt and you could buy it up in the kids space and you could take kids shoes and you could buy them in the women's space and on and on. Why? Because it's one store, one mission, one place, one accord. Now there's some requirements for unity, and here's a few of them. Number one, you need a strong why. A strong why. Why are we doing what we're doing? That's the vision. What is our vision at City Light? It's to build a house for the next generation. But what is your vision? You've got to constantly bring people back to the vision and we can unite around the vision. Building a house for the next generation. You need a clear who. Who are we reaching? Who are we ministering to? These are the people that we love and the people that God is bringing to us. Never forget this. We are in the people business, not just the God business. See, if I was just in the God business, then this laptop in front of me and this camera in front of me and these 1, 2, 3 lights would be enough. And I could just drop podcasts and I could just drop teachings and I could just do live streams. But. But I'm not just in the God business. I'm not just in the Bible teaching business. I'm in the people business. And so you can never lose a clear who. We are here to minister to people. By the way, the people don't serve the vision. The vision serves the people. And anytime the vision is no longer reaching and serving people, it is time to redefine the vision. Never forget that dying churches always make the vision more important than the people. So you need a strong why, you need a clear who. And then you need a now what. And this is where it really matters as it pertains to vision. Because what does this look like? What? What. What is this actually going to look like? And, and, and to me, my favorite thing about this thought would come from Acts chapter six, where you have a need in the church. There's the Hellenistic and the Hebraic Jews. They have a need. And the apostles say, okay, our role is to teach and to pray. So we've got to raise up leaders to minister to these women. And I'm saying that, to say this, that the leadership team ministers to the people. The senior pastor, their number one role is to minister to the Lord in prayer, worship, and the word. This will really help the unity of your culture and the unity of your team. When you realize that the pastor is important and the team is important, but they do do different things. The team is hands on with the people. The pastor is hands off with the people, but still loves the people, still knows there's issues with the people, still knows there's things that need to be dealt with with the people. But the pastor's focus is on the word in prayer and vision. The team's focus is on the people and making sure that the people are being. The needs of the people are being met. Both of those things are happening at the same time. And see, that's really important as it pertains to unity. Because sometimes you might look at your senior pastor go, what, what are they doing? Because we're, we're at the hospital or we're doing the wedding, or we're this or, you know, we're at the outreach and where's the pastor? I'm just telling you, it's two different roles that are both so important. When you embrace that, there can be unity. Now, when the church embrace that in Act 6, the next thing that happens is the church grows expansively. The church multiplies, leadership multiplies, more people get involved. It all happens in unity. Okay, so how do we, how do we unify? Number one, it requires honor. Cheers to honor. Remember that the anointing flowed from the top down. It started at the head, went down, the beard went down, the clothes all the way down to the bottom. The anointing flows now. And so part of unity is recognizing and honoring the gift and the grace. One, that is on my pastor. Two, the gift and grace that is on the team. Three, the gift and grace that is on the church. And it's having a high sense of honor. Unity is impossible without a high honor system recognizing the gift, the grace, the oil, the anointing that is on my leader that is in this house. And people ask all the time, jamin, how can I pray? Or how can I. Excuse me. How can I honor my pastor? How can I love my pastor? How can I show appreciation my pastor? And there's two ways that every person watching this can honor their pastor. Number one, pray for them. Pray for your pastor. Pray. It is impossible to remain offended with someone you Pray for daily. Pray for your pastor. Pray God's blessing, pray God's protection, pray God's favor. Pray that God would continue to use them and keep them strong and healthy and healed. Pray for your pastor. Number two, speak well of them. Don't feed the negativity. Don't feed what everybody, what people are saying that's negative about your pastor. Well, you know, Pastor well, you know them. Well, you know, you know the pastors. No, no, no. Speak well of your pastors. Speak life over them. You don't have to agree completely to speak life. So if you're having issues, by the way, in your organization and if you're having issues, never forget this. Always process that up. Always process up. Start with God number one, process with God, pray. But then if you're going to process with a person, don't process down. You know, if you're the next gen pastor, executive pastor, you don't go process down to one of the junior high pastors. If you're the kids pastor, you don't process down to one of your assistants. You don't even just, you don't even process horizontally with another pastor. You go up the organizational chart. Always process up. Process issues and disagreement and pain points. See, when the, the women needed to be fed in Acts 6, they went up to the apostles, they saw the need, they saw the issue, they saw what was going on and they immediately took the issue and they went up with it. That's the power of unity. And so in honor, I am seeing who a person is without getting caught up in who they're not. Because they can't be everything for me and they can't be everything to me. I think, I think a lot of times now with, with, with our phones and social media and podcasts, you know, we've got our favorite therapists and our favorite self help people and our favorite mental health people and our favorite physical health people and our favorite spiritual people and our favorite preachers and our favorite Bible teachers and our favorite, you know, evangelists. And, and I think what can happen is you've got all these voices speaking into your. You want your pastor to be all of that to you. And that's not what your pastor is. Your pastor is not your counselor. Your pastor's not your life coach, pastor's not your evangelist. Your pastor's not even your prophet. Your pastor feeds you the word of God week in, week out. That's your pastor. Honor him for that, love him for that. Celebrate that. We're talking about honor. See, true honor is unity. And let me say this. It's not always agreement. I think we think. Well, if we all agree, we must be unified. No, if we're all in agreement, that means we are. We are unified around a thought, not necessarily around a people, but we want to go deeper than just a thought. We just had a couple of families leave our church because we had a woman preach on a weekend. And if. If you would have asked me before they left, I would have thought, man, we're unified, man. They're in our church, man. They honor me, man. They're connected all of a sudden. They bounced. They didn't. And they didn't say goodbye. They didn't. They didn't send me an email saying we're moving on. They just left. There was a false sense of unity around doctrinal agreement. I'm not saying they can't leave. Anybody can leave at any time. My point is in one week, and they said, we're out. No. No honor and no unity. There was a. There was a very shallow sense of agreement. When disagreement was brought in, a lot was revealed. So you don't. You don't even know you're unified until you disagree. You don't even know if you're honoring your pastor until you disagree with him. Honor begins when agreement ends. I'm gonna let you chew on that for a second. Another requirement of unity is communication. There has to be communication. If we go Back to Act 6, remember, they communicated up. There has to be communication. Let me say this about your pastor. It's not that your pastor is busy. It's that your pastor is outnumbered. So whether we're talking about a church of a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand, your pastor is outnumbered. It's him and his wife to the congregation. We are outnumbered. I am outnumbered. Me and Shannon are outnumbered. 2 to 5,000. We're outnumbered. We're not busy, but we're outnumbered. So give your pastor grace and continue to communicate with him, understanding that your emergency will not always be his emergency and that he might be putting out fires that are 10 steps ahead of you that you'll never know about. Right. So you're trying to get a hold of your pastor to, you know, buy a piece of equipment, and he's in a lawsuit. Does that make sense? Pastor, we need a. We need a new. You know, we need a new thing for kids, you know, and he's over fighting with the city over something. So just don't. Don't get offended if what you care about is not as urgent as it is for your pastor in the moment, it doesn't mean it's not important. So anything that's important to my team is important to me, but it does not mean it's as urgent. So the apostles were accessible. They listened. They were able to help make decisions. But it may not have been the popular decision. It may not have been the thing that the other disciples wanted. Right? We don't get that side of it. But they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. And then they did it. Communication is the key. Lastly, proximity. Beyond proximity. Excuse me, beyond communication is just proximity. This word proximity means nearness in space, time, and relationship. You could be in a church on a staff and completely isolated. Proximity is your choice to lean in. Your choice to lean in and be social. Lean in and join the conversation, lean in and be a part of what is happening. And wherever there's a lack of proximity, all kinds of issues are going to begin. In Galatians, chapter 4, verse 20, the apostle Paul said, I wish I could change my tone, but I can't change my tone because at this distance, I don't know how else to help you. He said, my. My tone is connected to our distance. We have where there's a distance between us. And I don't think it was just physical distance. There was emotional distance. There was a big pain point happening. There was. There was all this stuff going on in the church. Paul is feeling the distance. So he's. He's in Galatians writing really emotionally, you know, look at these big letters that I'm using. He's just, you know, he's. He's using all caps, right? Anytime there's distance, there's a. There's a change of tone. But the closer we can become, the softer and sweeter our tone can become, the more we can see and feel each other's heart. And I want to challenge teams to mind the gap and to push in. So here's a little phrase that I've used forever a team member. I pursue. And then I allow the pastor to define. I don't define the relationship. My pastor defines the relationship, but I pursue the relationship. So I don't walk up to Jensen Franklin and say, I want you to be my spiritual father. No, I just pursue a relationship. And then he does whatever he's going to do with that. So I. When I. When I worked for him in O.C. i'd, you know, if we had a really good Sunday, it'd be Sunday night. I knew he wasn't leaving till tomorrow. Or till Tuesday. So on Sunday night, I'd go knock on his green room door and say, hey, you want to have dinner tonight? You guys going out to dinner? Can we join you Monday? I knew if he was having a chill day, I'd send him a text. You want to go to a movie tonight? What was that? I was just. I was creating closeness, nearness, proximity. He could now. I'm too busy. No, I've got this thing now. I got to go here now. I got to go there now. I got to. But I was creating closeness. I was just at this thing in Louisiana. I had heard that he might be coming. I sent him a text. Hey, are you going to be in Louisiana? Can't wait to see you. I can't go. I got to go to D.C. i got this thing. Okay. Awesome, man. We're going to miss you. Hope you're doing well. What about. I'm creating nearness now? He will define the relationship, but I will pursue the relationship. This is so powerful for your pastor. This is so powerful for team dynamic. This is so powerful for your co workers. Pursue proximity. Stop being isolated. Stick, pop in a few minutes early and hang. Hang for a few minutes after. Be around. Be accessible. Be a part of what's going on. Don't be the last to show up and the first to leave. Proximity. Honor. Communication. Proximity creates unity. Unity creates oil. Do blessing and life. And I want more of that in my ministry and in your ministry. I love you so much. Remember, we are live streaming every Sunday. New sermon every Sunday night. New leadership podcast every Wednesday, and then a new worship drop every Friday morning. I love you so much. We will see you next week. God bless you.