Dharius Daniels - You're Not A Leader Unless You Have Influence

You don’t go as far as your dream; you go as far as your team. I’m going to say that one more time: you don’t go as far as your dream; you go as far as your team. What I want you to know is your dream is bigger than you, and because your dream is bigger than you, it will require more than you. What you see is going to require a squad. It is the principle of partnership; the power of all of us is greater than the power of any one of us. God incarnate enters the Earth through the womb of a woman named Mary. For 30 years, He does absolutely nothing. For the last three years of His life, He engages in public ministry, and when He engages in public ministry, the very first thing the incarnate, omniscient, and omnipotent One does is pick a team. Before He opened one blind eye, He picked a team. Before He performed any exorcisms, He picked a team. Before He took two fish and five loaves and fed thousands, He picked a team, because we don’t go as far as our dream; we go as far as our team. Therefore, if I’m serious—not just curious—about dreams and visions actually becoming reality, there is a specialty skill that I must develop, and my willingness to develop this skill is an indication of how serious I am about my dream. I’m going to go so far as to say my willingness to develop and improve this skill is actually an indication of whether or not I actually believe in my dream, because if you believe it’s going to rain, you learn how to build an ark. Oh, dearest, I believe God’s going to do great things in my life. No, you don’t. Oh, I believe God’s here all the time. I believe God’s going to do good. No, I don’t. Because what I do in the present is an indication of what I actually believe about my future. If God’s telling me it’s going to rain, it’s time to build an ark. So there’s a skill, and very often—regularly, I’m going to say—whether I am talking to business leaders or I’m talking to the average parishioner as part of our congregation, very often when I make this turn and start talking about this skill, people disengage. That’s not what the elite do; that’s not what the extraordinary do; that’s not what dreamers do. But it’s what the average individual does, because they automatically assume I can never develop that skill. They incorrectly assume this part of the teaching is not for me because I’m not what he’s talking about, not realizing that this is a skill that anyone and everyone who is serious about dreams coming to pass must develop. Many a dream for your family requires this skill; a dream for your marriage requires this skill; a dream for the church requires this skill; a dream for the company requires this skill. What is the skill, Darius? It is the skill of leadership. Yeah, I’m saying it’s used as a noun, but leading is a verb. It’s not just someone I am; it’s something that I do. It’s a skill needed in the home, in the context of marriage, and in the context of ministry. I call it a meta-skill. If you can get this skill, it’s the one domino that knocks a whole lot of other dominoes down. And when I say «leadership, ” the average individual checks out, because they say, „That’s not me.“ When I say „leader, ” they think „boss.“ They have an understanding of leadership that is rooted in culture, but not in a revelation of Christ. This is huge. This is everything. I never looked at it this way until I concocted and came across this definition of leadership. So let me throw this out, because hopefully this gives some clarity to what I’m trying to communicate. Because I’m telling you right now, everyone under the sound of my voice is a leader. We do not have the same leadership roles, but all of us here have leadership responsibilities that must be stewarded well and wisely if the dreams and visions God has given us are going to come to pass. Dreams and visions do not come to pass with specialty skills only. What’s a specialty skill? Speaking. That’s a specialty skill. God’s gifted me with the ability to speak; that’s a specialty skill. But the vision for Change Church cannot come to pass just by me speaking. I have to skill-stack. Bringing a vision to pass requires more than the 40, sometimes 45, sometimes 50, sometimes 55 minutes I’ll speak on Sunday. It depends. It depends. If the 49ers are playing or not—listen. Leadership is influencing individuals or organizations toward their purposes. Set me free. The key word there is influence, because here it is: very often when our understanding of leadership is rooted in culture and not in Christianity, when we think leadership, we think authority. Maybe leaders are in authority, but the operative word here is influence. You see, a leader who is in authority, who always has to wield their authority and assert their authority, is an individual that doesn’t understand the power of influence. Influence is better than authority. Authority gets compliance; influence gets buy-in. And I didn’t learn the power of this by leading our church or our companies. I learned the power of this when my children became teenagers. I need anybody who survived that season to pray for me right now. Stop what you’re doing and pray for me right now. Somebody tell me.