Are You Serving or Training?

The above represents one of my favorite diagrams (I linked to my dear friend who gave it to me Justin Gravitt). It illustrates how Jesus spent His time, versus who He spent His time with. The solid triangle represents the who, and the inverted dotted-line triangle represents the time spent with.

The middle line is what is really important. The middle line is called the serving/training line, and what I want to encourage today is that this is a line you should focus on as a leader.

Jesus, by all accounts, spent 80% of his time (roughly) training the 12 and the 3. He then spent the remainder of His time - let’s call it 20% for the sake of simplicity - serving the masses.

Most leaders I encounter have the opposite reality. They serve at the whim of the masses and spend very little time training.

Why does this happen?

Well, honestly, hard to know for sure, but in my life it happened because I wanted the masses to like me. I wanted to be “loved” as a leader. I can look back on that and realize it now, I often pandered to the crowd, because the crowd felt important.

The difference between doing it Jesus’ way versus the way most leaders do it today is that Jesus was setting up the movement for when He wouldn’t be there. He was training because He cared about the future.

I wonder if it is worth exploring how you could shift your time. How can you begin to train with more intention to a select few, versus serving the crowds?

It may not be easy, but I bet it changes your organization.