Archives For klampert

Self serving leadership: The platform is not your throne

July 11, 2011 — 12 Comments

I recently watched a worship experience video with Brian Doerksen called “level ground”. What I loved about the video was not the music actually. It was that the entire service/event had the band and leaders on the floor with the congregants. The stage was empty. No body was raised higher than another and everybody was pointed towards the same place. There was only one person that was lifted up that day. Only one being who could claim the glory. That person was God alone. Brian says in his lyrics “none of us are worthy on our own.”

It seems over the years that I have been in ministry I have seen an ebb and flow in that dynamic. I find the higher the stage gets the more separated and disconnected leaders get. This is not always their doing. Congregants love to take their leaders and put them at a higher level. They are perfect, know best, and infallible. This inevitably sets leaders up for a hard fail, an affair, frustration, bitterness, and other things. They constantly have to be aware of how others are seeing them and live up to that standard. Sadly they are not perfect regardless of what some may think. Many leaders are forced to put on their mask or jump into the phonebooth before a service and change into their super hero costume to make sure no one sees their secret identity.

Another dynamic I have seen is leaders who truly believe they are greater than others. Everything they do is out of selfish gain. They “leverage” the platform and turn it into their personal throne where they can judge others according to their standard instead of the Bibles. I have seen leaders claim that if they are not using their gifts the way they want or are not getting enough “facetime” then the church or event is sinning against God.

Let me put something in perspective here. You know you are a leader if people are following you. You can either lead them to Christ or you can lead them to you. Jesus even said there are two types of spiritual leaders: ministers who care about the people under their charge, and those who are self-serving.

Quite frankly I am tired of childish leaders who think it is all about them. They take their egos into ministry and make sure that they are catered to like divas who need the green mm’s picked out.

The crux of leadership is being a servant. Jesus was our example in this. The platform is a privilege that has been given to us by God so we can teach others to love HIM more. The altar is HIS throne, Not ours.

Ice Cube said it pretty good “You better check yo self before you wreck yo self”

Philippians 2:3-11 says it better

3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.

4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

6 Though he was God,t
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.

7 Instead, he gave up his divine privilegest;
he took the humble position of a slavet
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,t

8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

In klampert, Random chatter , , , ,
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Backseat pastors: it’s not your vision!

July 9, 2011 — 5 Comments

Have you ever gone driving with somebody where they are in the passenger seat? As you are moving along you notice them frantically pushing the brakes hoping that you will stop when they think you should. They check the mirror and look out the window to make sure that you are in the clear to move to another lane or make a turn. I am always amazed at how that constant nagging and sporadic freakouts from the passenger make my driving even worse. Then I turn to them and say:

“It’s my car! I am the one driving..not you. You are along for the ride” The least they could do is encourage me or support me, but instead they want to passive aggressively prove that they could do it better, that they know the way better, and that you are doing it wrong.

This also happens in the church all the time. I like to call people like this, backseat pastors. These are the people who constantly say they could do it better. They frantically pull the imaginary emergency break to put a halt to the forward motion of the leadership. They are always checking to make sure that any sharp turns we make are “safe”.

These people are usually not people who are invested into the vision. I have always believed that if you are not invested and are not serving the vision then you don’t get a say in what is being done.

This is crucial. God gave the vision to the church leadership. It is their job to preach the vision, maintain the vision and own the vision. That is not the congregations job. The congregations job is to serve the vision. The backseat pastors create an atmosphere where the leadership is on edge and they are not able to do their job as affectively.

Let me say this. Have you ever met a back seat pastor? Was that disruptive or helpful.

There is a difference between discernment and sabotage. You could have discernment and go to the leadership and say “I don’t think this is what God wants us to be doing” and it is the Holy spirit at work in you. On the flip side, you could be sabotaging the great ministry your church has just because you don’t agree with the leadership.

If you are a Backseat pastor: STOP THAT!

Is the vision going against the word? If it is not and you just don’t like it, be prepared to either support the vision and hold your pastors’ arms up when he can’t or leave the church and go to one you can jump in head first. The third option is you can stay as a backseat pastor and tear apart from the inside out the vision that God has given that church.

Which do you think is the best option? stay and support, leave for a church you are in line with, or stay and boycott? thoughts?

In klampert, Random chatter , ,
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Google Plus (+) is not attractive to your momma

July 8, 2011 — 3 Comments

Google plus (google+) has been out for I think a week now and I have had a good time playing around with it’s features. I have a love hate relationship with it right now as I do with most social media platforms because they work great up until a point. What I mean by that is they are always missing features I would love and Google + is no exception to that.

There is no point in going through all it’s features or even lack of features. What I will say is it does a ton of stuff right that facebook does wrong and has a bunch of shortcomings that facebook doesn’t. In an ideal world the two platforms would merge with twitter and just give us one great social networking site.

Remember when myspace was huge? Then somehow there was a mass exodus to facebook. That was great, but something big happened with that move to facebook. Many people who were never on myspace, including our parents, decided to jump on the facebook bandwagon. This most mostly due to it’s great connecting power, the ability to use it for businesses, it’s amazing use within the church, and because it wasn’t full of miley cyrus glitter pictures like myspace was.

Currently facebook has everybody that myspace had and tons more that it didn’t.

Enter in Google +: In my opinion they are too late in the game. I think it is an amazing platform and will continue to use it to leverage what I do, but it is not attractive to your momma! I can’t see all of the baby boomer generation jumping of Facebook and on to Google +. I was just as amazed as you are that they are even on facebook.

Yes Google+ is pretty and the circles are cool. It integrates some very cool features and from what I understand is introducing business profiles soon as well. In the end though I still can’t see where it fits in with twitter and facebook because social media is only useful if people are using it.

What are your thoughts? obviously it’s not a facebook killer, but is there any worth to it or do we just need to be more patient?

In klampert , ,
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Mighty Warrior (new song)

June 22, 2011 — 1 Comment

Song Story: Once a month my church meets with a few other churches to worship and pray for the spiritual climate to change in RI. We call it 1prayer. It is an amazing time and has been moving towards a harp and bowl model of worship (think IHOP). One night my dad, the pastor of our church, got up to pray and felt like God was saying we need to move into battle. He repeated over and over again “You are a mighty warrior You are our King”. It was actually amazing the spiritual battles that happened that night.

I went back home and could not get the line out of my head. This is the song that I wrote because of it.

This is the live version of it and sadly it was not recorded off the board so the recording sucks but I wanted to at least pop this version because you can hear people crying out to God. It was amazing when we unveiled it.

UPDATE: FOR CLEANED UP VERSION CLICK HERE

Mighty warrior (rough live mix) by Klampert

Mighty Warrior:
by: Joel Klampert & David Klampert

You are a mighty warrior You are our King
You reign victorious we give you everything

Lord heal our city, mend our homes
Break the chains the enemy holds
Break our hearts for what breaks Yours
Remind us that Your love endures
No power of Hell will go unbound
Let the Roar of the army sound

Lord create in us a joyus song
a chant of victory to right the wrong
Make our hands ready for war
peircing darkness with a light so pure
We raise our banners and shout Your name
Our city will never be the same!

In klampert, mp3, Orginal Music, worship , , ,
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Are you a Bird of Prey?

June 21, 2011 — 3 Comments

Last year I went on vacation with my family to the mountains of Vermont. It was beautiful, serene, and very quiet. It was an amazing time of fun, rest and peace.

While on the trip we went to a sanctuary for Birds of prey. They had everything from owls to hawks. They were all injured and some were able to be rehabilitated. We sat in a room with other tourists and bird watchers and listened to a man speak. He had a peregrine falcon on his hand and talked to us about the bird and the facility.

He then told us about the birds injuries. I began to hear how this peaceful and serene area was undergird with the wild and raw world of animal life in the area. It almost mirrored our every day struggles in what seems to be a peaceful and simple world it is actually wild, raw and sometimes brutal.  Overall it was an interesting talk, but at the same time found my mind wandering.
My attention quickly snapped back when he said this:

“we have a hard time diagnosing injuries in these birds because they instinctively fake being well. if injured they will pretend they are not out of fear of being another animals lunch. Only when it is real bad do they not fake it.”

It hit me with a ton of bricks. That is exactly what christians do. They fake being ok with the new Christian F word “I’m Fine” or “I’m blessed” out of fear of being exposed and becoming the lunch of a judgmental brother or sister. We live behind 20 year old bumper stickers that claim everything is perfect.

We work so hard on being “fine” that it begins to destroy us and it is only when we hit rock bottom that we choose to deal with the problem and confess or talk to somebody about it. We hide our imperfections, our battle wounds and scars. We switch churches so we can blend in and not have to get too deep with people. We have learned to wear a mask that seems to get tighter and tighter the longer we hold on to our baggage.

The Bible says “cast all your cares upon me” so why do we only choose certain things to give to God and only certain areas of our life to open up about.

There is freedom in confession. There is peace in opening up to somebody. There is healing when we stop claiming we are fine and expose our wounds.

Are you a bird of prey? Are you hurt and wounded but hide it only until the last second when you can no longer hide it?

In klampert
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