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Christine Caine’s “Must Haves” to Sustain Your Success in Ministry (Part 2)

This is Part 2 from Christine Caine’s talk to the staff at Celebration Church. You can read Part 1 here.

Submission Isn’t Negative

  • Sub simply means under the mission of the church. Similar to how a submarine goes under water.
  • There is always a bigger picture.

Realizing the bigger picture is a critical point to the idea of submission. Not just realizing your leader/authority has a different perspective than you, but the idea that God is doing something in whatever ministry you’re involved with.

Are you on board with that bigger, God picture? If you are on board, then the peripheral issues of submission and “my leader is doing it all wrong” are pointless.

If you believe your leader is about moving God’s bigger picture forward, then the expression (i.e. how he/she does it) shouldn’t matter. It’s not about submitting to the leader, but to what God is doing within a ministry.

  • Your value to the team has little to do with talent.
    • Has everything to do with heart and spirit of submission.
  • God runs a theocracy not a democracy (i.e. everyone doesn’t get a vote or opinion).
  • You always look better than you are when you are on a champion team.
    • God has blessed it (i.e. the house) and anointing flows from the top, down. Psalm 133:2.
    • When this is understood, you don’t want to get out. You want to stay where the flow is.
  • If it’s not heretical, illegal, immoral or unethical then shut up (i.e. don’t give your opinion).
    • Only give opinion when asked.
    • People voicing opinions without discretion kill churches more than anything else.
  • You don’t sit in leaders shoes or carry the weight of it, so you don’t have the same perspective.
  • Submission is not “we” will do what “they” want.
    • At this level, “we” are “them.”
    • Heart attitude says I’m aligned and I trust and we are advancing this together.

Negative People Suck

  • Negativity killed an entire generation (Numbers 14:1-2 cf. Numbers 14:20-23).
    • Can keep an entire generation out of its destiny with negative reports.
    • Doubt dies unborn if never spoken.
    • Don’t speak into being and feed into people’s minds.

I’ve been exposed to way too much negativity lately. It sucks. I’m over it. I can see why an entire generation was kept out of the promised land because of negativity towards their situation and leaders.

It’s just a vicious cycle. One person shares one thing, then another person decides to share another. Yada, yada, yada until you just want to throw your head through your monitor.

When you’re focused on the negative, you miss God. Period.

The One Testing is God

  • Where is your heart?
  • How much more weight can God put on you?
  • How much of the bigger picture can you carry?
  • Before entering promised land, you must have your own circumcision (cutting away/testing). Joshua 5:1-12.
  • According to ability, not gift (Matthew 25:15).
    • Learning to pay own price. God is building in me.
    • Maybe primary gift isn’t needed at moment but serving somewhere else is.
    • Let God work in and through you.
      • Hard for a lot of people. That’s why they don’t survive in ministry.

About the last bullet point. I wonder how many people have left a ministry because they felt like their primary gifts/skills were not being used? It is true that it is easier to leave a ministry than to persevere through God humbling, molding and growing you.

Again, it all comes down to the bigger picture. Do you get it? It’s not about you.