[00:00:00] Hello again. You know, I really believe, uh, you don’t ever really learn something until you have to teach it like that’s the best way to learn is when you teach it. So I feel like the Lord is bent on teaching me as much as anyone at this workshop. You know, there are a lot of high performing leaders in this room and the Lord is inviting us to make a shift from a leader to a kingdom leader and a kingdom leader.

Establishes God’s kingdom as a highest priority for your company or church or nonprofit or organization. Kingdom Leader establishes the kingdom as the highest priority. Did you know that out of the first 108 colleges established in America, [00:01:00] 106 of them were established as Bible colleges? Like they were for equipping people academically, but also biblically for life outside of the school.

And how many of those do you think are still, that’s the highest priority? It’s very close to zero. So what happened at one point there was a kingdom leader who established that as a highest priority, but then they. stepped back or sat down or fell down and something else found its way as the highest priority above God.

You know, I don’t, what was that? Was it academics? Was it beautiful buildings? Was it tolerance? Or maybe a desire to grow and attract more students? So the first truth of this is a kingdom leader is committed to God’s kingdom being the highest priority in their territory that they have authority and responsibility over.

[00:02:00] So why does your organization exist? Why? I didn’t say what, what does your company do? Why, why does it exist?

You know, for a long time, uh, a big part. And maybe this is just the way it is for a bunch of businesses, is it gets confusing that profit is why it exists. And then you, we thought, you know, we’re good at making profit. We said this out loud sometimes. We’re good at making profit. And so that’s one of our gifts in the kingdom, and we will use that to fund people who do work over there.

But the Lord has a different vision of all that. We still do that. We still give money away. You should do that. That’s a good thing. Uh, but it’s just, it’s bigger than that. Um, You know, here’s how we think about profit. It’s not wrong or evil. In fact, there’s some parables where it kind of sounds like Jesus is saying in the kingdom, a return is expected, but we see profit [00:03:00] as if it’s the end pursuit.

It’s not a good thing. It’s more like breathing like we all have to breathe. In fact, if you don’t think breathing is important, just Stop breathing for a little while and all of a sudden it becomes really important. You need it for life, but if, if it is the focus, if it is like your purpose in life to breathe, that’s a pretty pointless existence, right?

Same way with profit and a business. It just doesn’t have to be the highest priority. Um, in the kingdom, we also can’t be tribal. God’s kingdom is bigger than our business or all of our organizations. The kingdom must be a higher priority than me or my family or my business or my team or really anything.

You know, just a couple of years ago, this home builder, uh, called DR Horton came here to Lubbock. We actually heard rumors they were planning to come. And if you aren’t aware, uh, DR Horton is the largest home builder in America. Uh, at over 90, 000 homes per [00:04:00] year within the first five days of this year.

They closed more homes than we will all year within the first five days. Um, the company is worth 50 billion. I don’t really even understand that number. Um, They’re based out of Fort Worth and they build virtually in every city in the U. S. They’d come to Lubbock for a short period, like 2006, 2007, I think.

But then they, they left, uh, but in 2021, Don Horton himself, yes, that is the founder, Donald R. Horton, really got Lubbock in his sights and wanted to Come back to Lubbock and said they would make it this time personally. Uh, and, uh, DR has a little over 6 billion in cash on hand. So if they want to make it somewhere, they can, um, we’d heard they were coming and they’d even started talking to some other developers about buying lots.

But then one day, Cory Sisko, one of those guys back there, one of our senior leaders in Beatonville Homes, walked into [00:05:00] my office and said, Hey, I wanted to let you know that Brock is resigning and he’s taking the job as division president at D. R. Horton here in Lubbock. Brock was our most veteran GM, uh, for our largest operation here in Lubbock.

He’d been with us for 13 years. He knew all of our secrets. He knew our costs. He knew our pricing, our strategy. He had personal relationships with all of our trades and suppliers. Uh, in fact, if your goal was to take market share from the biggest builder in a certain city, I would say. Hiring Brock was like the smartest thing you could do.

Um, but when Corey told me Brock is going to be the new division president for DR Horton here in Lubbock, I can honestly say in less than five seconds, I sincerely responded good for him. That is probably a really good opportunity for him. Now, I admit, the first thought that went through my head is, [00:06:00] What?

How dare he, like, reject us? You know, there’s like some rejection in it, uh, Oh, man, but the Lord has taught us so much over the years that I don’t have to take offense. And the goal shouldn’t be to keep everyone here. The kingdom is bigger than beating Bo Holmes. And while it might look like something is being taken from us, the Lord withholds no good things from His kids.

And that’s why I quickly arrived at good for Him, and I could really say that. Those were the first words out of my mouth. Here’s the truth. It was a great opportunity for Brock. It really was. In fact, come to find out later, they actually had reached out to several of our senior leaders. Our old purchasing manager had gone to work for him, so he had all of their phone numbers and knew who to call.

And the first guy they reached out to was Corey Sisko, and when he told them he wasn’t interested in the opportunity, he did say, I think I [00:07:00] know your guy, though. And he actually suggested Brock to them.

You know, Corey had been leading Brock and, and honestly, there was a few wounds here from struggles in the past because we aren’t perfect, and we make mistakes at times, and I was in on that one, and it, we messed up, fumbled around, and Corey was trying to help Brock heal and grow, but when he heard about this opportunity, he genuinely thought, uh, it was the best thing for Brock, he could see him growing more in that role than he would be able to do if he stayed here, and Corey wanted the best thing for him.

And it might not be the best thing for Beaton Bo Holmes, but it was the best thing for Brock. And if we’re really about the people and not just ourselves, then we’d want that for him, regardless of what it meant for us. So it wasn’t just me that thought good for him, it’s the way we have learned to think about [00:08:00] this around here.

It’s a kingdom view. And think about this, Brock is a kingdom leader. He’s sat in dozens of these workshops and been a table coach, uh, and was a practitioner himself. Honestly, when he first came to us in 2008, he was a truck driver. And he had applied to be a construction, construction superintendent, and really we helped him stand up in his gifts as a leader, helped him develop over the years, and, uh, really also opened his eyes to God’s kingdom and his role in calling in it.

And now Brock is a division president of a massive company. What could the Lord do with that? In fact, you know what the Lord asked me to do within one hour of hearing that news that he was going to be a division president? He asked me to start praying for his early success. Oh my gosh. Okay. So it is one thing to be happy for the guy, [00:09:00] but to start praying for a fierce competitor, a fierce competitor who is coming.

To your hometown in your own backyard, you’re praying for their success. Oh, so, but that’s exactly what a kingdom leader would do. So that’s what I did. In fact, in the very next meeting I had with my vice president and senior directors, I started the meeting by sharing what I felt like the Lord had pressed on me.

And I said, I would like us together to pray for that, to pray for Brock and for his early success in this market. What if Brock used what he learned here about being a kingdom leader in D. R. Horton, and they noticed in his territory everything seemed to be healthier and higher performing, and they came and said, hey, what’s it, what, what exactly are you doing?

And this spread through their organization. Would we not want that? Well, if we’re about God’s kingdom, we would want that. But if we’re [00:10:00] about our kingdom, Better watch out about that one, because what does that mean for us? And you know what? They’ve been building in Lubbock now for three years, and today we are selling more homes in Lubbock than we have in the past 32 years.

In fact, before they came, uh, five years ago, we were selling about 500 homes a year in Lubbock, and I think we’ll sell 1, 000 this year. The Lord didn’t take anything from us, and they’re doing well here too. There was enough for everybody, but it’s hard to see that back then. Uh, and you know what else? Uh, While Brock was our most veteran GM, and we didn’t have anyone, we thought that, we didn’t have anyone that could slip into that role with his experience.

The craziest thing happened. We actually didn’t know who we would promote in the spot that he just left. So, uh, Corey Lusk became the interim GM there. And while we figured this thing out, and the Lord started showing him things as he was praying, Lord, show me who this should be. If it’s someone from the outside or from the inside, the Lord did just that.

And, [00:11:00] uh, honestly, we started seeing things in Brian Box, this quiet, introverted, task oriented construction manager who is sitting right there. And he loves the attention. So everybody turn and look, uh, Honestly, I’ve never seen someone grow as quickly as I did box in terms of spiritual leadership in that season.

I asked him like the dumbest question one day. I said, buddy, can you like, it’s so much growth. Can you feel it? Like, you know? And he turned it to me. You remember what you said? Yeah, I can. It was crazy. And. It was actually supernatural and it quickly became obvious that the Lord had already provided the person to step into that GM role And he is amazing at it and the Lord took nothing from us.

In fact, he gave us something amazing We didn’t even know that we had but if we wouldn’t have Encourage Brock to take that [00:12:00] opportunity, been happy for him. It would have, we would have never seen the fruit of all that. And that’s what can happen in the kingdom. Now, when we heard the news, we didn’t know any of that.

Okay. This is a retrospect, like, like I’m in retrospect. We can say, yes, that was a good thing. Wasn’t it? And in the moment it felt like we were losing something, but here’s what we believe. The Lord withholds no good things from us. So while it might seem like something’s being taken from us, he’s not taking anything from us.

We just can’t see how this is going to work. And so we’re going to step into it anyway. That’s where the faith comes in. So this is the question. Is this really God’s stuff or your stuff? Are these God’s people or your people? You know, and how, how we thought about it for a long time was, man, we use this stuff to glorify God.

But it’s ours. But that isn’t a kingdom mindset. What we’re really talking about here is spiritual leadership. [00:13:00] Does that sound scary? What if I told you that you were designated by God to be the spiritual leader in the territory you’ve been given? You know, often when we talk to other leaders about being a spiritual leader, they usually say something like, What?

Me? No. I don’t know enough Bible, or I’m still a mess myself. Yeah. And? You know, those are the exact kind of people God constantly picked through the Bible. I want to communicate really clearly, you are a spiritual leader. And actually, all leadership is spiritual.

Watch this. Uh, Adolf Hitler was a pretty powerful leader. Extremely effective. You know, he had everything. He had opportunity and resources. He had an aligned leadership team. And he was a really [00:14:00] effective leader. The problem was, he was led by evil spirits. And they had their way with him, killed 6 million Jews and millions of others.

He himself had a terrible death. They had their way in him. His leadership was spiritual. Sometimes when we’re leading, you know, the spirit leading us may not be as evil as murder or domination, but it could be greed or a lust for more, or really even just worshiping work. You know, sometimes Some of us have elevated work above the kingdom.

And maybe we didn’t say that out loud, but we did model it and promote it quietly. And as kingdom leaders, we must be led by God’s spirit. Listen, y’all, nobody does this perfectly. I don’t do it perfectly. We don’t do it perfectly, you won’t do it [00:15:00] perfectly, but what Rick always said is we need to keep those seasons where we’re being led by another spirit short.

And you know,

here’s a key to stay more focused and allow the Lord to fill you up. Spending time with the king. How can we lead in his kingdom? If we don’t spend time with the king, this could be the primary message God wants to remind you of this week. Maybe you’ve lost track of spending quality time with God and he’s inviting you back to that.

How can you have a relationship with someone if you don’t spend time with them? It’s critical for every kingdom leader to find time every single day to where you could just sit from the Lord and hear from him so that you can be led by his spirit as you go. If you’re not spending time with the Lord, if you’re not hearing from the Lord, then whose kingdom are you building?[00:16:00]

There are a lot of different backgrounds and religious traditions represented in this room, but one thing we can probably all agree on is Jesus is King. And we believe that if you believe, believe anything Jesus said, you have to believe all of it, or he was a crazy person. Uh, here is what he says in a few verses in John.

The Holy Spirit is given to us to help. Help us, teach us, to counsel us. If you’ve accepted Jesus, the Spirit of God is in you and works through you. And we’re gonna help equip you to hear from God at this workshop, which is a powerful thing. He is speaking, but often we can’t hear Him because we aren’t listening for Him, watching for Him.

But He’s speaking to you and me all the time. But many of us might not have a hearing problem, we might have an obeying problem. Most Christians are educated beyond their level of obedience. [00:17:00] Fundamentally, a kingdom leader listens to and then obeys the king. Okay, let me take you back to March 2020. Y’all remember what was going on then?

The whole world to see seem to be coming apart. And I’m not talking about back in COVID times. I’m talking, I’m saying right at the very start of it, schools shut down, businesses had to close. There was more uncertainty worldwide than any time in recent history. Mayors and the presidents were having like press conferences multiple times a day.

You remember that? We were trying to keep up with all the cities. We’re in multiple cities. And it’s like all we did was watch mayors like, Oh, did you see the one last night? Oh, I did not know they did another one last night. Okay. Got to see what they’re saying now. Uh, for us at Beatonville homes, we also faced like.

The same uncertainty other businesses did. We weren’t sure if we’d be forced to shut down for months or if we’d be considered what became known as an essential business. [00:18:00] Uh, but here is what we did know. Here are cancellations over time, which skyrocketed. Uh, many of our customers were losing their job or being put on furlough and could no longer qualify for a mortgage and others, the fear of the unknown just made them not want to conserve cash and not make a big.

financial decision in the middle of so much uncertainty. Most people felt like they shouldn’t, they should conserve cash or invest in toilet paper. I was talking with somebody the other night. Y’all remember that weird, that was, that was a strange season. You know, I’ve been praying for God’s leading in our business for years, but I’ll say my prayers got a little more intense in that season.

Um, however, I can honestly say that I didn’t feel anxious or worried. Um, I had a sense of peace. You know what actually happened? Uh, It felt like when I was going through that season straight out of jail when I first met God, and I [00:19:00] was, I had addiction withdrawals, and I was wondering if I was going to stay sober today, like there was so much uncertainty, and I was so dependent on him, Lord, please help me today.

If you don’t show up today, I’m lost. I’m going to die. And it felt so similar to that season. It was like a warm, like that broken in sweater from, from college. That sweatshirt that’s so comfortable. Like, it felt like that to me. Um, I remember first praying for our team. I saw so much fear and worry in our team members because of all the change.

Many of their friends were losing their jobs or their spouse lost their job. I personally hope we could give them like some kind of reassurance. Uh, Uh, really to try to give them peace to, to help them not be as fearful. But I didn’t want to just say that without asking the Lord, I figured it was his heart.

to help provide for people, but he knew the future, not me. So I went and started praying about it. And after a couple of days, I felt prompted that he did say we could say that. So I took that to the rest [00:20:00] of our board and I said, what do you guys think? We all had peace with it. So on March 30th, I sent out a video that said, Hey, even if we don’t have closings.

For six months in a row, we have to shut down. We would continue paying all of you people as if we did. Um, but the truth is we continue to have more cancellations than sales. And so the big question became, should we continue to start homes? The largest and smartest home builders in the country had already pulled back or completely stopped starting new homes, but we believe the Lord is the answer.

So we went to him and said, what should we do? And I asked the senior leaders on my team, which was Corey Lusk and Gina Roach at the time, to join me in praying for direction. I didn’t want to pull back out of fear from our own ideas of what was best. Uh, and all three of us had peace that we were supposed to continue starting homes.

You know, I will say that made me feel a little crazy. Uh, seriously, all of the smartest home builders I knew were in conserved cash mode, but we felt the Lord’s prompting [00:21:00] for that. But by the end of April, the U. S. housing starts were down, uh, 35 percent compared to 60 days prior. The homes other builders were starting were virtually all sold or already well on their way before COVID happened.

Um, by the end of April, uh, our spec home inventory at Beaton Bow homes had grown to over 18 million because of all the cancellations and the fact that we were starting another 40 homes every week, a couple of the top 10 builders. in the U. S. had stopped, stopped starting homes for a month already. And some of them continued that for three months in a row.

And you know, I’m not being critical of them. That’s actually what a Harvard business professor would say is the right move with such uncertainty in the market. At the very least, don’t continue blindly into the darkness, right? So we continue to pray, Lord, are you sure about this? And I actually admit, here’s what my prayer sounded like.

Lord, are you [00:22:00] sure about this? I know, uh, you’re in control. Right? And I feel like you’ve given me direction and peace, but if this doesn’t work, this could sink the ship and everybody is gonna turn and look at me. Not you. Are you sure? I know you’re faithful and trustworthy. You’ve proven that in the past and I’m gonna believe that right now.

I’m gonna try to. So just show me what I’m supposed to do next. What’s the right next step this week? And it felt like walking in the dark and he continued to give us peace that we’re supposed to start homes to spot what the market was saying. So we did that, but that also means every day we were continuing to cut checks to trade partners, doing works on work on those homes, but we weren’t closing the homes.

So cash is going out, but not in, and our cash reserve started to dwindle and over several, several weeks we ate it down to where, to the point where we could no longer fulfill our promise. That we had made to employees that we’d continue to pay them, [00:23:00] even if we didn’t have closings for six months. So we went back to the Lord and said, Hey, you didn’t forget about us, right?

Uh, Hey, remember, I, I did ask you about this. I just wanted to remind you, I did ask you about this. Like back there, you said we could make that commitment. And the only thing we heard back was that we should continue to start homes. It’s like he was a broken record. Uh, so honestly, we couldn’t understand how both those things could be true.

But we actually chose to be obedient and surrender to whatever his last word was. And I want to show you a chart of hard data, because I know there’s a lot of business people in here, but I also want you to know this isn’t a preacher’s story. So this chart right here, the green is U. S. housing starts. All the U.

S., single family, privately owned housing, from, from Fred, economic data. And then I overlaid the black line, that’s Beatonville Homes starts. And you can actually see over time, We’ve largely followed the national trend, uh, except for right there at the end. Look at that [00:24:00] line just kind of hanging out into nowhere, and that looks like a really short line.

That’s three months. That is 90 days in the desert. That is us trying to hold onto our peace and say, Lord, didn’t you say, is this what you want us to do?

By the end of May, our cash reserve was extremely low. We are a very cash intensive business. Up to this point, we typically averaged around, uh, 15 to 20 million in cash because our payroll in a single week to all our trades and suppliers could be like 4 to 6 million. Uh, so that was pretty smart, but in, in May, our cash balance dropped below 5 million a couple times.

That meant if some of the homes didn’t close that were scheduled to, we might not be able to pay people working on the homes, much less our people. It got so real that I remember a board conversation where we said, this week, if somebody doesn’t get paid, it’ll be us. We’ll be the first to get cut. That’s how real this got.

It wasn’t theoretical. [00:25:00] My prayers in that season were, Lord, we’ve been trying to follow your plan. We’ve been trying to be faithful to that, even though it’s not what I would do. I would like to remind you of that. And I know you have a lot of things going on right now with this whole pandemic thing, but you haven’t forgotten about us, have you?

At this point, we don’t have a plan B. We’ve gone too far to pull the parachute. We need a miracle. And today, of course, we know the rest of the story. And here’s what happened over the next couple of months. And it looked like we called it.

We entered, we entered into the largest. Housing boom in U. S. history. And guess who was one of the only builders in the country who had a ton of inventory ready to sell.

Within 12 months, our cash balance was over 50 million, which was twice as much as it had ever been. And I didn’t even know what to do with that. Like, I was like, what just happened? [00:26:00] It’s honestly hard to believe. It’s like one of those miracles you read in the Bible. But the truth is, everyone wants to see a miracle, but nobody wants to be in a position to need one.

And that’s exactly where God led us. God made us appear to be the smartest person in the room, but I’ll tell you the truth. Behind the scenes, it felt crazy. And naked most days. Didn’t it, Sisko? Yeah. It was like walking through a dark room blindfolded, and like the Lord would say, Okay, take a step forward.

Stop! Okay, now step with your left foot. And we were just trying to follow it. That’s what that experience felt like to me. We couldn’t have called it. This is 100 percent the direct result of one of the biggest faith walks the Lord has ever asked me to go on. And I say one of, because he’s given us a lot of stories like that.

It was actually hard to narrow down which one to choose. We have so many stories like that. You know, this is what I learned, increased [00:27:00] trust is infinitely more valuable than a divine blueprint. Increased trust is infinitely more valuable than a divine blueprint. I’m sure glad we didn’t just listen but we obeyed even when it was hard.

So there are two things I want to talk to you about tonight. The first one, Ask God to lead you. There are a couple of ways to ask God to lead you. The big one, um, which I hope everyone in this room has done before is when we say, Lord, would you lead my life? Just in general, right? Lead my life. But really the second one is what I want to spend some time on.

And that’s in that moment on Thursday at 3 p. m. The everyday practical, tactical decision time moments. And that’s where Moses is [00:28:00] right here in Exodus. You know, he’d gone up to the mountain and some crazy stuff happened on up there. God gave him the Ten Commandments. But when he came down, the Israelites were worshiping idols and Moses got pretty upset, but he was not as upset as God was.

Moses went back up to talk to him and God basically said, Moses, take these people of yours and leave right now. Go. Now, I’m still going to give you the promised land because I promised that to your ancestors and I keep my promises, but I’m not going with you because I might kill you on the way. I’m not going with you because I might kill you on the way.

I’ve been pretty upset at my kids. I’ve never said that. You know, Moses was just a shepherd though. That’s where God found him. He wasn’t qualified to lead 2 million people through the desert. So he [00:29:00] fell on his knees, and this is what he said, If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways, so that I may know you and continue to find favor with you.

And later in that same passage, Moses begged God, said if his presence is not going to be with him, please don’t send us away. Let me tell you another quick example of how this is played out in a normal way. on a Thursday at 3 p. m. Uh, you know, there’s a section of land just a few miles from here that I would see every time I drove back from Midland.

There’s a stop sign right there. And when I would stop at that stop sign, I would look at that piece of land and I would go, oh, that’s just such a beautiful place to build homes. How it laid out. I could almost see it. I wasn’t coveting it, but it probably got close. It was like, I had vision for it, maybe.

Something like that. And one day, we were looking at, uh, for our next big piece of land in southwest Lubbock. And someone had listed that property for sale. So. We called them to see if we could make a deal. And honestly, we’ve talked to hundreds of [00:30:00] land overs over over the years, made a deal with a whole whole lot of them.

But this one was different. Honestly, this guy was hard to even figure out. Uh, you know, he throws something out, and even if we agreed to it, he would change his mind or change, put new stipulations in plot in place. And at times it felt like he wasn’t interested in selling it at all. And there would even, but then there’d be life to it, and we’d see progress, and then he wouldn’t answer the phone for two months, and we’d be like, what in the world?

And the realtor who listed it for him was also extremely frustrated with this whole process. And finally, after what I think were, was over 12 months of conversations, Rick, Dustin, and I loaded up in a truck, and we drove out there, and we stood on the land, and we said, Lord, if this is what you have for us, Would you put this deal together?

And if it’s not, would you release us from it? We are tired. Either put it together or release us. That was at nine 30 in the morning before lunch. [00:31:00] Someone called our front desk here at the main office and said they were the landowners there and they wanted to sell it. And we were as confused as you are.

It turns out the person we had been talking to that listed it actually wasn’t one of the owners. His wife was a minority owner. But the person who owned over 50 percent called the front desk out of the blue. So we called him back, when we got here. And we said, well, I mean, could you meet tomorrow? And we met him here and we made a deal on the spot.

I have a lot of those stories. I still Why did we wait so long to ask him? Guys, we don’t even like asking for directions. This is hard for me to remember too, in the middle of this. Gina told a story last night of how we did this in a cafe. What was that, like, last [00:32:00] year? Within the last couple months? Uh, it’s hard to remember, but the Lord wants us to ask Him for help.

You know, my daughter plays volleyball. And after a game, I have, I have so many coaching tips. Great tips that I want to help her with. Here’s what I’ve learned. Don’t give unsolicited advice, uh, every now and then, I think once this season, maybe once in the past six months, she, she has asked for feedback.

And so we, we, we gave it, but the Lord is like that. He is a good dad and he doesn’t want to force himself on us. He wants us to ask, but when we ask, he’ll help us.

You know, I believe Moses was on his knees asking the Lord to go with him. And the Lord had mercy on a kingdom leader. Here’s what he said. The Lord replied, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest. That is his [00:33:00] answer every time we ask. About everything y’all. Nothing is off the table. Who should we hire?

Where should we go? What should we do? He wants to be a part of every single one of those conversations, you know And sometimes people ask us like what does that feel like when you hear from the Lord and honestly lots of times It’s like I get an immediate impression, but it’s almost always counterintuitive Like it’s something I wouldn’t have come up with in my own head And often the Lord doesn’t answer immediately He isn’t like some magic 8 ball that you shake when you need the answer.

I’ll say right now, right now I’m waiting for the Lord to answer two different things. I’ve asked you about that. He’s refused to answer about and Really at noon today. I was texting Dustin yesterday We were wondering if we should do something and we both had strong feelings But we said we should ask the Lord what we should do [00:34:00] Let’s sleep on it, we’ll both pray about it, and tomorrow we’ll see, we’ll come back and see what the Lord spoke to us.

And Dustin started by saying, I don’t feel like I heard anything, and I said, I don’t either. And so you know what I said today at noon? I said, this is a multi million dollar deal, by the way. Let’s give it another day. The Lord would make it clear if we’re supposed to do it. In fact, would you also call these other two senior leaders and tell them the situation, ask them to join us in praying because maybe the Lord will, we’ll see what the Lord will say to all of us.

I’ve just learned that’s a better way to do it than kicking down doors, and I am a door kicker. I know y’all, there are door kickers in here. The Lord can show you a better way. What seems obvious, what seems good, Proverbs would say, Sometimes leads to death and so you need to ask him and your dad wants to help.

And if that’s new to you, don’t worry, we’ll take a deep dive into how that works, what that looks like in one of our breakout sessions tomorrow. [00:35:00] The Lord can confirm and speak to you in a variety of ways, but a big way He does that in our experience is through the team around you. And that brings us to our second key, which is this, build an aligned leadership team.

So the first one is ask God to lead you. The second one is build an aligned leadership team around you. And when I say leadership team, uh, lots of people call this different things. I mean, the group of people. Who helped you make a major decision for the organization. Some people might call it a board or an executive team for smaller organizations might be a management team for even smaller organizations.

It might be a husband and wife. A leadership team can just be two people. Uh, when Rick and Ron founded Beat and Bow Homes, it was just the two of them. Today, our board for Beat and Bow Companies consists of five people. Uh, the leadership team that I lead in, in Beat and Bow Homes is eight people. The number doesn’t matter as long as it’s more than one.

[00:36:00] It can’t, the only rule is it can’t be one. The truth is you can’t do this alone. And you shouldn’t. You need a team that can protect you from having to bear all the weight. Rick told me when God first started talking to him about this, he felt like God said, Rick, if you keep going this way, this is going to kill you.

This thing is going to weigh you down and it’s going to kill you. And I don’t want that for you, my son. So it’s better for you. But the second part he told Rick is if you keep going this way, Rick. You’re going to kill my ministry here,

you’re going to kill it, and I can’t let you do that. Having a team will help protect God’s ministry, formerly known as your business, from you. Having a team that is all committed to hear from God creates safety. One day, if God is trying to get in touch with [00:37:00] me, I might not pick up the phone, but he might get in touch with Gina, or Brad, or my wife, and he can get through to me that way.

There’s safety in that. And if you are leading alone, you need someone else to come alongside you to help. Hey, and you might hear us say things like, God told me, blank. You should know, you typically only have that level of clarity and retrospect. What it often looks like in the moment is going to people on my leadership team and saying, I’m getting the impression that God might want us to do this.

Will you join me in praying about that? Uh, Or maybe asking the whole group to commit to praying about this and coming back together and seeing where God brought us all. Uh, that is where we get the confirmation and boldness to take risks in our faith. It is powerful. That’s how, in the middle of that chart, we can continue [00:38:00] going into the nothingness because all of us together felt like we heard from the Lord that was the right thing.

I could not have done that myself. If I did not have a team around me that said, I feel like God confirmed the same thing in me. That’s the power of a team. When Rick said the Lord first started giving him the vision of inviting a leadership team to lead alongside him beyond just his, him and his dad, Ron, he said he felt like the Lord gave him a couple of ground rules and here they are.

Number one, the senior leader is accountable to the team. I can honestly say that my team holds me every bit. as, as accountable as they, as I do them. In fact, I genuinely believe that they’ve had more corrective conversations with me than I have with them. And I feel like my relationship with Rick was that same way.

I think I might’ve told him more hard things than he ever challenged me with. [00:39:00] And he allowed it to be that way because it’s the right thing. The more power you have, the more accountable you must be.

Number two, the team is invited to weigh in on all decisions. This even means decisions that aren’t within their area, that they aren’t just directly responsible for. This will lead to more ideas and better decisions. It will. And the last one, y’all, this is critical. This is not a democracy. This is a critical thing here.

Lots of people can take this message of a team and take it to an extreme to where we’re now voting. How we say it is they get a voice, not a vote. You know, uh, God has established you as the leader over a certain territory and you cannot abdicate that, that authority.[00:40:00]

If we see it as the leader’s job is not to come up with all the best ideas to, but to make sure all of the ideas are heard and that the best one wins. So we’re not going to vote on it. That’s how this works for us. Often I might bring an idea and someone else brings another idea and through like open discussion, we end up at a third option.

Did some combination or some something we came up with together and we don’t remember who came up with it. Often it was all of us together. Hey, and we’ll do a breakout session. To do a deeper dive on this in particular, what do we mean by building a team, including what that looked like early on, some of the mistakes we’ve made and some of the maybe hard lessons we’ve learned.

But here is what is really critical for you to understand. You have to get to a place where you are really submitted and accountable to the team that you lead.

It falls to me to be [00:41:00] submitted to the leaders on my team and around me. Without humility, what can we do? Nothing. The Lord said he stands against the proud. He stands against them. Not just he’s not for them, he is against them. He pushes them down. He can’t do anything with someone who is prideful until they choose to set that down.

I think in the kingdom your level of authority can never surpass your level of humility. Or it’s a recipe for disaster. So here are what we believe a kingdom leader does. Number one, ask God to lead you. Number two, build an aligned leadership team. And that third one, commit to relational style. You hear, you’ll hear that from Casey Brewer tomorrow.

You won’t have to hear that one from me.

And you know what? Every single one of those we’ll have a breakout session on too. We think of these as the ABCs. Like these, these are the [00:42:00] fundamentals that we think God has shown us. over the years. There’s lots of things God has shown us that are just the way we should do it, but this is the way we believe the kingdom would be played out in most organizations.

And we don’t just want to talk about it philosophically around here. We’re practitioners. And so there’ll be Q and A, and we’ll try to give you real examples. And we want to have real conversations around this stuff. Okay. Lord, we thank you for inviting us into what you already know in your heart, we can become leaders in your kingdom.

Thank you that you want to help us and that you’ll lead us. We ask for that. I ask, I ask that you lead every single leader in this room and that you open our hearts to asking you for direction and insight more frequently. Help me with that, Lord. Also pray that you knit together, align leadership teams that submit to one another.

that really submit to one another and advance [00:43:00] your kingdom. Lord, help us all on this journey. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

I felt like that was a one, two, three punch knockout from Cal, right? So good. Thank you, Cal, for being obedient to the Lord. Really good. Hey, take a moment and write down what did the Lord speak to you about in your leadership, in the spiritual leadership that you have. So take a moment and do that.

Best on us. Come rest on us. Calm down, spirit. When you move, you make my heart pound. When you feel the moving,[00:44:00]

I’m here and I know you will feel me. Calm down. spirit. When you move, you make my heart when you feel the room. You’re here. I’m here. And I know you will.

Okay, we’re gonna go into our last table talk of the day. And then you’re going to get some really, really great Evie Mae’s barbecue. If you don’t know what that is, just hold on to it and you’ll love it. So, but until then, you got to go to a table talk, but that’s going to be so good too. So go ahead and go to your last table talk and we’ll see you back in here in a little [00:45:00] bit.