Kingdom Mindset: Leadership Ambition

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the Student of Life podcast. Listen, we're going to get into so many transferable truths throughout the content of these episodes that I believe God is going to use to help you apply, because he's going to reveal what's already been there the entire time. Enjoy. Yo, what's up? So this Tim Pratt Jr. and we're gonna drop episode 8 today. We're still going to be in our Kingdom Mindset series. And we're going to talk about leadership ambition. Leadership ambition. So, uh, the first one of this, of this, uh, Kingdom Mindset series was, uh, leadership development. And, uh, this one, like I said, we're going to switch to the leadership ambition. Now, we do have a foundational text today, and I know ambition, usually within the context of the local church, always gets a bad rap. Uh, people look at the, you know, the, the negative side of it. And but when you really look at this thing in the context of scripture, maybe you might want to use another their word. But I truly believe that Paul was very ambitious, but that ambition was submitted to the Lord. Uh, when you read about Paul, you can point other people to— like, you can look into other people in the gospels, but I just want to focus on Paul here because one of the foundation texts is going to come from the book of Colossians when Paul was talking about slavery. And, you know, I'm gonna take this verse out, but we know in that time frame this wasn't the same context as slaves or how we think about it over here in the United States or in America, kind of when we had just racist people basically beating Black people and on and on and on. A part of basically a lot of history and Black history. So it's not that. And once again, totally evil, totally bad. It's just nothing, just pure evil. And took the Bible out of context and they used these scriptures when it was not even talking about that. Slavery in biblical time versus slavery then were totally two different worlds. People were actually like, they were educated and some not, but people would sell themselves as slaves, uh, back in that time, you know, basically in, in order to earn a wage. And we can even look at that today, you know, a lot of people teach it from the context of kind of how, um, we work today, you know, work for employers and so on and so on. So it's kind of like, you know, if you're the owner, the business owner, the top gun, or, you know, if you're the employer, you know, it's basically like this is how you should kind of, you know, basically navigate those relationships and use your power and serve and so on and so on. So that's a whole nother episode to unpack that. But the main point I want to say, this is when I'm taking this verse out, in case you go back and read the whole context, hit me up. It's not slavery as we, uh, have basically come to know it over here and how it happened in America. That being said, the foundational text today we're going to use is Colossians 3:23, and I'll be reading from the New King James Version, but it's going to be from Colossians 3:23, and then we're going to unpack this leadership ambition. So the verse reads, and whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to man. And whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men. Now when I talk about Paul for a second here, uh, I believe Paul was an effective leader. He was a great leader. He was a servant leader. He was a transformational leader. Uh, some will even say he was, you know, charismatic. Now I'm not gonna— I don't know, I, you know, and I know that word gets a, it gets a, a negative tone too, but at the end of the day, whatever you know, um, connotations that you want to associate with Paul, at the end of the day, he was a submitted leader. Now, I know his life didn't start like that when he was considered Saul, but that zeal, that ambition that he had before he was saved, man, it was reckless. Like, when you really examine the text, this guy was reckless, man. But the zeal, I mean, just to persecute Christians, and then we know on the road to Damascus and on and things like that But this is the beauty in it. When he became a believer, when he, when he accepted Christ, when he truly accepted Christ and accepted Jesus, and he had that encounter with Christ and that, that like instant transformation, the zeal didn't go away, the ambition didn't go away. It just became submitted. And I truly believe as leaders, man, we should have that same ambition, like we should have that same drive but we shouldn't let that ambition get ahead of us. We shouldn't be governed by our ambition and our just self-driven ambition and things like that. Ambition shouldn't come at the expense of others. Ambition should not come at the expense of others, but we should use it to help propel others in Christ, in the things that God desires us to do. And if you're in a business world, just serve other people. If you say, man, I'm not with all of that faith-based stuff, okay, listen, that's Like, I'm not gonna say it's cool because I wish you would, you know, wish you— I hope you accept Christ. But if you're not, man, I truly believe that you still don't have to let your ambition come at the expense of others. It can, it can work in order to help serve others and to help propel others, and you will win too. You will win, man, if you truly take a servant heart. And that's not to say that you just basically do everything people want you to do. That's not serving leadership. That's not like true ambition. I mean, you're meeting the needs of people, you're— but you're still challenging people, you're, you're helping people grow, you're coaching people, you're helping transform lives, and so on and so on. And your ambition, uh, should basically drive you, should motivate you to basically want to do those things. And like our foundational texts say, you want to do it as unto the Lord and not unto man. So how can we— how can we look at this from a practical standpoint when we talk about ambition and kingdom mindset. Mindset, leadership, ambition. Well, like I said, ambition most of the time is a double-edged sword because it's morphed into a sense of entitlement. It's like, oh man, uh, that ambition word— if someone's ambition all there, they're just hooked on success. They're hooked on success for themselves. They're hooked on self-driven success. They're hooked on self-help. They just want all about self, self, self, self, self. Furthest from the truth. Now, you do have people like that, same way you can have a pastor in a local church. He cannot have any ambition, but he can still be a deceiver. He can still say all the right things. He can still be a manipulator. He can still line his pockets with your money. So this is a pastor. Then you can take a pastor that has ambition, but it's none of those things. Like, his ambition is like, literally like, man, I am trying to use the gifts that God has given me and what he has empowered me to do through the Holy Spirit. I want to be very ambitious about this, to see people grow, to see lives saved through the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to win souls for Christ. There is a zeal in that pastor that he is so ambitious about it that his whole thing is like, man, while I'm breathing, while I'm here, pretty much everything about me— you know, it's a time for everything, but for the most part, everything about me is eternal. So I am going to be ambitious about it because because I will rest when I'm with my Lord and Savior. This is— so we just can't look at that term and always say, oh, it's a negative connotation, you know, ambition is not of God, because you cannot show me in scripture that Paul's zeal and ambition went away. You can't show me that. So we first, we have to stop morphing it into basically like it's just somebody hooked on like a, a negative connotation, just hooked on self. No, there's a positive side to ambition. It's not always a bad thing. But, but this is the thing with ambition: we have to keep it checked. We have to, we have to keep it submitted unto the Lord. And so one of the ways to do that is like we see right there in Colossians 3:23. And whatever you do, whatever we do, we do it heartily. What does that mean? Like, we do it with our heart. We serve well. We do it with a heart posture as is to the Lord and not to men. So what are some things that you can list in your leadership ambitions that you hold? Well, one ambition that I have about myself, and I strive to do this, and sometimes I don't, I get it wrong and I have to repent, but I will tell you my heart posture is to serve well, is to serve people well, whether I agree with them disagree with them, whether I'm aligned with their vision or not, whether there's things that just irritates me or things I love about them. At the end of the day, my thing, as long as it's not anything contradictive to the word of God, uh, I'm going to submit. Now I might share, sometimes I speak, sometimes I don't, you know. But like I said, you've heard me say this time and time again, I'm a firm believer that when it's my leader and even other leaders in the organization. I understand there's a proper way to challenge people, especially like in certain formats and things like that. But for the most part, depending on the sensitivity of the subject at hand, sometimes I might say, and I'd rather have that conversation offline. I— that's just something I live by. Some people disagree, and you know, some people are very open about it, and everybody's wired different. But I'm a person where I truly believe in the model you champion in public, You challenge in private. Now, there are some times where you do have to challenge in public, but you want to make sure that you have been thoughtful, and at the end of the day, you are very considerate of your leader. Because you don't want to become a cancer. You don't want your— you don't want your ambition to get in the way where you start to undermine that leader and things like that. Because I've seen it, and truthfully, I even— I see people with good intentions, man, but you— their ambition get in the way, and it's just like attack, attack, attack. And they're very passionate, that zeal is there. But I'm like, man, this is not healthy for this group. I've seen it in the secular, and I've also seen it in a lot of local churches. And like I said, I've seen it in a lot of teams, you know, especially doing this whole agile, this agile leadership and coaching as Agile Senior Delivery Manager. So one of mine is to serve well. It's to truly serve well and make sure that I'm day by day, I'm learning how to truly serve well. I've never arrived, but that's something that I want to have a zeal about, and I want to remain ambitious in my leadership. Another one in mind is to coach. It's to coach, to facilitate and coach. It's something I'm very passionate, something that I'm very ambitious about. Like, I, you know, have somewhat of a counseling background within seminary Uh, but I also, uh, have, I have went, you know, through certain facilitating and coaching training certifications, and I'm looking at others and so on and so on. But, uh, the point is that this is something I'm very ambitious about. Like, I love spending time coaching people, more so one-on-one or like a small group setting. Uh, I, it takes time. It's not an overnight process. This is something that you really have to work at because you're dealing with people. And so this is something, once again, a part of my leadership ambition that I hold to. I want to help basically facilitate and coach. Uh, next, another one of mine, and this is probably the third one— I can go into 5, 6, or 7, but just the last one— um, cultivating a conducive environment for growth. Cultivating a conducive environment for growth. Now, this is something that I'm very passionate about because you've heard it time and time again, uh, you know, basically what is the saying, uh, culture eats strategy for breakfast. So if the culture is not conducive for growth, for new ideas, for challenging ideas, for, um, just expanding and building and just going in a direction that's pleasing to God or pleasing to their organization, if that environment, that culture is not conducive, I mean, it's going to choke that seed out every single time, or it's going to be— people's hearts are going to be so hardened that the seed doesn't even have time to penetrate. Or they're just going to be distracted in a way where it's like, man, like, you can't— it's just like you think the seed is planted, but it's some spots there that they just truly like— when once the seed, you think it take root, it's like, oh man, I'm hitting these rocky spots. And, and like things like that. So the environment has to be conducive. It has to be conducive in a way, because when we as leaders have an ambition about, man, I'm going to work on the culture through the power of the Holy Spirit, if you're in the context of local church, and even in your secular environment. And I'm trying to slow down in my communication. That's some of the feedback that I get because I do get passionate about these topics. But, uh, the point is, man, I have an ambition to truly say, let me take, take a step back. And what am I doing? Let me look at the system. Because yes, I'm all about people. You know, people to me create culture, especially leadership. But you also want to make sure you have the right systems in place in order to support your leaders and support your people. So it's like you get the right people, but you also build the right systems, and then things end up taking care of themselves. So that's the area that in 2023, from a technology or agile standpoint, uh, I'm gonna dive deeper in and study, uh, basically like systems coaching, to pair up with, you know, basically like I say, team enterprise coaching and things like that. So, uh, and then, you know, taking that in the context of like, man, how do you do this in the context of the church, you know, from an executive standpoint? We can just look at operations and ministry, not to get in the way of the word of God or worship and things, but how do you support it? How do you facilitate and you sustain this output, uh, as you're in your leadership as a leadership ambition of mine. So for me, this is like what I believe God has put in me. This is what I believe that I'm wired and that zeal is. And right now, like, I'm doing it, you know, in the secular as a part of my senior agia delivery. And I'm trying to basically do this as an associate pastor as well as like a leadership coach or facilitator, for lack of better terms. So you just want to make sure, man, that you truly have submitted your ambitions to God. You, you truly want to make sure you submitted your, uh, you, you truly want to make sure that you've submitted your ambitions to God and you're doing it for him, not just man. Because this is like basically what helps us keep a kingdom mindset about things. This is what helps us cultivate and navigate these certain spaces, man, that God has basically instilled in us and say I'm not going to get weary in well-doing. I'm going to bring balance to it. But at the same time, God has called me to it. He has put a fire in me to do it. I'm going to cultivate it. I'm going to stir that fire up. I'm going to stir that gift up. And man, I'm going to work hard because this zeal comes from what God has called and graced me to do, not man. Men are just here. And God, you know, he helps bring people and align us and things like that, and you'll think skills that we have to work on. But the zeal, that fire, I just want to keep it. And I want that ambition a part of this whole kingdom mindset thing to say, man, listen, I'm submit— I have submitted this to God and I'm going to drive this thing home. It's not a— it's not— I'm not going to have this false humility. No, like, I'm— I really have this zeal and this ambition about what God has called me, so I'm not going to hide behind a false humility or anything like that. I'm going to focus on the positive side of ambition. And we got to remember, we got to remember is that we are working hard. We are working hard because ministry is work. We are working hard because God has graced us to do it. We are working hard, man, because we have gifts and talents that God wants to use, man, to, to edify the body, to advance the kingdom of God, whether it's in the local church or the marketplace. He has prepared us to do great things. He is basically— when we accepted Christ, man, we have these gifts and we have these talents and we have these things that we go study and, you know, things that, um, intrigue us. And then we dive deeper and then we develop passions and then making sure we have the skill for it. Because if you— if I have a passion but I don't have the skill, then it's a waste of time. But if I have the skill and I don't have the passion, then what is that? Like, I have the skill for it but I don't have a zeal for it. So you just want to make sure that whatever you do, when you look at this kingdom, kingdom mindset thing, it's just what has God placed in you? What is that ambition, that zeal, that fire that he desires to do through you? So I want to encourage you, man, figure it out and remember Colossians 3:23. And if you have some time, read the whole chapter 3. Reach out to me and we can unpack this. If you disagree, Listen, I'm open for it, but you cannot tell me that Paul, uh, when Saul became Paul, his zeal and ambition went away. No, he just submitted it. And what he was doing that was destructive, basically going against Christ, he started working for Christ, if that makes sense. He started working under the direction of the Holy Spirit and pleasing to the Lord. And that zeal and ambition never went away, it just became submitted unto God. So I love you all, man. Be blessed. And the next one is coming. We're going to continue to rock this Kingdom Mindset series out. Like I say, feel free to hit me up if you want to dive deeper or whatever you want to do, man. I love this area. Leadership is one of my primary passions. I am different. It— I am totally different in this whole technology agile space, uh, but I love studying servant and transformational leadership, and it's only right to just come out and drop this whole Kingdom Mindset series. Uh, so man, be blessed once again. Love you all, praying for you all. Amen. Just continue to level up and just be obedient to what God told you to do. Hey, what's up? I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the Student of Light podcast today. If this content has impacted you in any kind of way, please take some time to share it on your social media feeds. And also, if you want to connect with me or just learn more about me, go over to www.timothypratt.org. Once again, thanks.