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Apostolic Covenant Theological Seminary, the Revolution starts here.

Welcome to Kingdom Now, the podcast featuring faith with an edge, as we celebrate the Kingdom of God within you.

I am your host, Dr.

Lee Ann Marino, apostle, author, podcaster, professor, and theologian, and founder of Spitfire Apostolic Ministries and all the works that go along with it.

I am excited to share this program with you, as we explore the ins and outs of counter-culture Christianity present as you live out the Kingdom of God in your everyday life.

Want to learn more?

Visit my website at www.kingdompowernow.org And now, our program, which features a variety of formats here, just for you.

Interviews on a variety of relevant topics, teaching and preaching proclaimed everywhere from my North Carolina studio to sanctuary and beyond.

And powerful insights here for now as we turn the world upside down everywhere we go.

[Applause] Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

Happy whatever time of day is wherever you are.

And to our listeners in Columbia and all of our different Spanish-speaking countries, we say, "Hola" We hope that whatever time of day, when you were listening, that you were having a good one.

And I welcome you to this edition of the Kingdom Now podcast.

And I am your host, Apostle Dr.

Lee Ann Marino here as the Spitfire serving as the Voice of Counter-Culture Christianity, where we feature the theme of "Face with an Edge." And if you'd like to learn more about the world of counter-culture Christianity, feel free to visit my website at www.kingdompowernow.org This special episode of Kingdom Now is titled, "So you think you want to be a leader?" and was recorded live at Sanctuary International Fellowship Tabernacle in Charlotte, North Carolina in January of 2025.

If you are interested in the work of Sanctuary, feel free to visit our website at welcomeinthisplace.org.

Okay, well, let's begin with prayer and so Father and Jesus name, we thank you for this time where we're able to come together and worship and also share ideas and thoughts that we're having about our faith and different things related to that and to grow just as believers.

And we ask that you would be with us as we enter this new year and that we would take the words of the prophet to heart that we don't like about making a lot from a little and working wonders with what we have and what you give to us and so we ask all this in Jesus' name and then.

So we are good, yep, I see the live things, so we are good.

So my message today is so you think you want to be a leader.

And I don't have a cute story.

Usually I have a story or something inspired the message.

I don't really have one with this this time.

I was not listening to Epic the musical so that was not my inspiration for this message which we are just teasing you out.

I don't have anything special that was going on or I don't have any special experience or I was just here and God just kind of gave it to me and here we are.

So I think that if we're going to be really honest about leadership and we're going to talk about it I think that like a lot of things one of the things that's happening a lot at sanctuary which if you're not here you're missing out one of the things that's happening a lot about sanctuary especially as we explore our faith on a regular basis we're really kind of coming to the conclusion and we're seeing that we hear about the Bible we kind of know a little bit about it but we really don't know that much about it and that means we really don't know a lot about the foundations of our faith it means that we really don't know a lot about understanding faith and the importance of it and things that relate to it we're just kind of coasting and when we're coasting we kind of can get lost easily and I think that people often talk about stuff like heresies or getting caught up in false religion or stuff like that of that nature.

Well I think that if we really look at scripture we really look at salvation history there's a lot to offer that we're not teaching and that we're missing and one of the major places where we're missing really really good education is on leadership and the reason I say that is because I came up in a time where it really wasn't that common to be a leader where leadership was reserved for certain people and we kind of thought that they were special and for that reason they were almost untouchable.

Then what happened is I think systematically this would be an example of where stuff has changed throughout history and where different events have kind of changed things then scandals started happening and the scandals actually probably I'm going to say started in the 80s and they started with Jimmy Swaggart and he got caught with a prostitute in a motel room and then you had the Jim Bakker scandal which that related more to money and then that whole thing kind of fell apart and what happened was they were a part of movement that we're getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So like for example Jim Bakker was going to make a whole theme park in a whole place for Christians to go visit and they were going to do an amusement park I think it was called Heritage Park USA and that wound up tanking and people were sending money and then there was the question of what are you doing with the money when the projects aren't working out because I actually think if I recall correctly and once again you have to remember this was a lot of years ago and I wasn't very old and I have not read about it in a number of years because I did some reading on what happened to me in fact they were actually selling properties like that people could live in like condos at this place that they were creating that was supposed to be Christian themed and what happened is there was some sort of a discrepancy in the money that they were being paid versus the product or something coming to pass and so what happened is then they all wound up in jail and then down the line other stuff happened and now you know ironically enough Jim Bakker is still out there now he's selling doomsday or he was last I knew on some channel you know where they would sell the dehydrated food and you could buy like $600 worth of dehydrated food that's supposed to last for 25 years or you know something or others so you know apocalypse preparation but ridiculous apocalypse preparation but we'll just kind of leave that there then we had the Catholic scandal and I would say that all the ones that really changed the perception of religion in the world and more specifically in America obviously because that's where we live was the scandal in the Catholic church that was brought to light by the Boston Globe and there is a phenomenal movie about that if you ever want to watch something that's very very intelligent but really shows about what they went through was that you had this whole sexual abuse scandal where you had these priests and they had documents of them dating back to the forties and the fifties and they would find out that the priests were abusing children in the parish and instead of pulling them out or making them you know have to go to jail or reporting this they just move them to another parish and they were entire there's an entire trail of it now that movie was called Deliver us from Evil and that was a phenomenal documentary documentary that really showed exactly what they were doing and how they did it in all the different places that they went and as a result how many people were abused because they just kept moving them here and everywhere I grew up in a little tiny church that I grew up in I mean I guess this first church is when it really wasn't that small because when we were there about 2,000 people so for the size of the area that was a pretty sizeable church it does not have that many people now that we had at least two priests go through there that one of which went to jail for child porn and he was eventually laicized which means he lost his credentialing when he got out I think he even went away for like seven or eight years and then we had one by the time it came out the priest was old and it was a very old report it was like from the fifties years and years when he lived in New York I think he was in Brooklyn or something like that he is since deceased but that's in one little tiny church and there were probably others there were others that we encountered somewhere along the way that we're in the diocese but we didn't know them like we knew these priests one of them one with the child porn baptized by nephew I mean you know and so when you start thinking about the ramifications of that it's really kind of overwhelming I mean talk about something coming home and sitting right on your doorstep I mean it was amazing and then we got into later years and now there are scandals in a lot of mega churches and in a lot of really really big places simply because we have placed leaders on pedestals and given them roles that they can't handle that it's not possible for anybody to measure up to and there is not enough balancing act in there to really talk about leadership and what leaders need and how that all kind of goes together you know where are the people today like the Nathan's and the Samuels who called out BS that's basically all that they did they were there and they sat on the doorstep of the leaders of the nations and they called out the stuff that they did that they were doing wrong and that was pretty much their job was they spoke to power I mean they did advise military stuff and they did all that but back in those days they understood all that stuff is connected and now we don't see as many things connected and I think that that's part of the problem but I think we have this idea then I came up and we were really looking to restore leadership that was really kind of a big thing and there was the revival of

understanding in the Ephesians 4:11 ministries and a lot of people felt called to the apostolic I being one who was called to it before all this even started but you know at that particular time there was a lot going on and we talked a lot about it and everybody was now a leader in some capacity everybody was an apostle or a prophet and there wasn't anything else in the church and you had people with five titles in front of their names and we kind of went to this place where leadership got out of control and we thought it was a bunch of think tanks and super interesting energy and we're all going to sit around and you know be wonderful and wear our fancy clothes and be on TV and be known everywhere in the world and what can I say I have not found leadership to be that exciting or that interesting it's a lot of accountability it's a lot of counseling it's a lot of taking a lot of personal time with people and it's a lot of things that you never thought you would have to say so in honor of this particular message I have put together things I never thought I'd have to say in ministry but I have I have said all of the things that we're going to look at right now starting with stop playing touchy feeling with your girlfriend at church didn't think I was gonna have to say that to anybody wasn't you know wasn't something you know is I'm kind of sitting there and you know writing about pastoral care at the end of life that one day I'm going to have to have that conversation with somebody who was a minister okay okay don't wear hoop earrings in a face full of makeup to administer an in-pool baptism let's not out of it okay when I'm sitting there I'm oh well you know I want to look good to do a baptism okay first of all you can't wear all that in the pool then go let's you in the pool okay okay and I'm sitting there and I got off the phone and I went where because didn't think we had had that conversation had to have it stop entertaining that minister who's against your leader now let's just make the record show that this was my own person who was a part of my ministry who were going to say at the time and you know God loved me for this phrase and we're probably going to get letters about it was a church whore and what I mean by that is that anybody who came along with a gift or thought could advance her or thought she was going to move up she started chasing now she ain't chasing nobody but that's you know interesting how God worked stuff out but you know this woman didn't like me woman had no regard for me we were all a part of the same organization is running a Bible study I can't get this individual to come on my own stuff and is out chasing after her and I had to say why are you doing this okay I was Hosea for a lot of years probably why I identified within so much okay keep it in your pants another thing never thought I'd have to say I've had to say it more than once two more than one person okay some things are not a good idea being a literal church or is one of them that's not a good idea okay put the money you took back in the bank account also said to a minister or day and a couple times over and she's now out doing the same thing again some of us don't learn anyway no you cannot bring your chihuahua to church you laughing I wasn't I'm like oh you're serious I'll keep it in I'll keep it in my purse no okay and probably my favorite which literally when I posted it that I had this conversation on social media literally got an um never mind Robin Hood was not a biblical character and I literally said it was not Abraham Moses Joshua Robin Hood Samuel David okay also said to a minister so like I say this hasn't been a lot of fun it has not been glamorous it has certainly not been a giant think tank and it's certainly not been us all out there looking cute thinking about all sorts of godly things as we were white and we sit on a cloud and we all join in the Hallelujah Chorus every morning and it's been a really really interesting stretch and I think part of the reason why we don't understand leadership like we shared is because of stuff like this because we think people can preach we think people sound good we think that they look the part and we put them up there in leadership capacities and we don't stop and consider do they know who's in the Bible and who's not or can they keep it in their pants or do they act right at church and sometimes things come up and circumstances change which did with some of these circumstances that we never imagined they weren't things when we might have even met the person or we knew them or we worked them for years that there was gonna come a time when we're happy to say stop playing with your girlfriend at church or here you go sit in between the two of them like we're in school never with stuff I ever thought about never with things I ever imagined but they rose up and they were there and we had to deal with them and that's ultimately what a lot of leadership is so if I was going to summarize Christian leadership because there are a lot of ways that people can leave there's a lot of ways that people can be in leadership there's a lot of ways that people can be directed as far as you know this sort of thing goes and they might be leading with their own compasses they might be leading with their own positive thinking and a lot of that has overlapped in church and we have to take a really deep breath as Christian leaders and take all that out I don't think that there's anything wrong okay let me say with thinking positive I don't think that there's anything wrong with trying to have a good attitude with stuff but sometimes we can't positive think our way out of stuff and sometimes in leadership we have to come to a place where we accept the way that things are and we confront them as they are so the summary of Christian leadership as far as I am concerned is what the apostle Paul said at first Corinthians 11 now the way I remember it is follow me as I follow Christ and that's a different translation that I have up there I could not find the translation that I had it in I want to say it's probably a mix of modern NIV and King James that I merged in my mind because it says in the King James to be the imitator of me as I am of Christ so follow my example or follow me as I follow Christ that to me is the summary of biblical leadership as we need to understand it and Christian leadership we should be as leaders pointing people to something not to ourselves because we're cute or because we sound good or because we can preach the part or do the part but we should be pointing them to Christ because that's the ultimate goal the ultimate goal is that people find Christ because they follow us and so they're interested in us they're drawn to us by something and we never draws them whatever mystical experience that is I can explain it it can be as simple as we meet people and we have interests that are common interests like you were talking about with somebody that we met that's a clerk at the store and that y'all had anime in common and then somehow you know I really want to go to a conversation sometime about forgiveness because I don't feel like I understand it so that's one of those things where you use something that you had in common that you're able to talk about literally at the drop of a hat which you know some people might side eye but there's nothing wrong with that I think that we should be able to talk to people of the drop of the hat or like we always talk to you and we tease you about certain things at times and we're not going to get into how we tease you about that but that you literally can start a conversation with anybody about anything and then there's me who wants to go and hide in the underwear department because I don't know how to have a conversation about all this stuff and that in my instance I know how to lead people once they get here okay I'm a good once y'all get here but I don't have enough interests and I am not current enough in interests to have a conversation with anybody about anything okay I'm sitting there and you know I want to talk about the Bible in the store and you know let's just be real that ain't happening okay that's so like part right we're going to stay there and have a conversation about oh well look this thing is plaid that's really great oh do you all know the different types of plaid I mean that's not an interesting conversation to have in the store so you know I am and I'm very admittedly not upon TV y'all are my my pipeline for current events you know if y'all didn't make me watch stuff I probably would have no idea of anything that's going on but you know that I'm fine once you get here I don't know how to get you from here there but that's also we have different gifts and we have different abilities and we have different calls and that brings me to the point that there are different types of leadership and I don't mean fivefold okay fivefold is different types of leadership I'm not talking about those today we had wonderful teaching on the prophetic we don't need to get into a whole lot of things I'm not getting into a whole segue on fivefold there are different ways to be a leader a parent is a type of a leader now it's a very limited scope but you have to lead your kids what happens when you don't lead your kids okay we see I watched an episode of Judy Justice last night where the kid one led and he went and he vandalized some women's house with a bunch of cans of paint that he stole from another house that we were working on that's what happens when we don't lead our kids and the answer is well you know this was the mother's answer was yeah he was wrong and he shouldn't have done it but I think your estimate is too high and you know I feel that his story collaborates with the evidence and I'm sitting there going I told mama said I would have killed him I said I would have been in jail I said I wouldn't have been before this judge Judy I would have killed him because he wasn't being led but that's the product of that we're mad at him and he's basically the one kind of on the carpet but the reason why his parents are the one responsible for it is because they're not leading him so parents are leaders of sorts and if you don't want to be a leader don't be a parent I mean you know that's really really simple there's a lot of ways to not do that today I mean you know if you don't really feel that you can handle the responsibility of leading a kid because it is a job and it is a 24 hour job and it is a 365 day a year job and you don't get a break from it I'm sorry if you can't handle that then don't be a parent but it is a form of leadership we can lead people on our jobs and I don't just mean in management I mean management would be an obvious example but you know sometimes people come to us with questions or they need help with things or we wind up answering all their spiritual questions when they find out that what we are I used to say on one I had that you know I needed a shirt that said you know I'm a minister asking you a question because everybody came and they suddenly wanted advice and they had questions and they had needs and they had interest and so there's another example of leadership we can lead people in different ways you know in my job that I do my day job as I call it I basically lead in a couple of ways I lead through editing in other words do you really want to publish this the way that this sounds that is a leadership perspective now maybe it's not a leadership position that we think of but when we are editing documents we are leading people in a certain sense to better grammar and to better presentation and to better ideas and then I have them what the job I do with the government I have to go and I have to find people and I have to do surveys and I'm pretty much independent in this job I'm not a supervisor but my supervisor she does not stand over me and watch everything that I do and so I have to take the initiative and do the research and lead people to give the information that the government needs in order to produce the information that comes from it and so it is a leadership perspective there's government which is an obvious form of leadership that we all know people do really really badly in this country there are other examples of people leading doctors lead people nurses lead people they give advice they tell them things that they need to do these are all different examples of leadership so apostles prophets evangelist pastors teachers bishops deacons elders are not the only leaders in the entire world and when we get into church leadership and we start giving the impression that that is the only place that you can lead we're misleading people then we get into all these people who want to cross over with church ministries in leadership and put them in the world leadership and that doesn't always work either and I think that it's important to say we could get on a whole other tangent with that I'm not going to today I actually am going to do that on the podcast I already have the script ready but we are not here if we are in church leadership to be turning it specifically for profit the Bible does say that the hirling is worthy of his wages and that when we are in ministry we should be paid when we can be that's not always a situation that it appoints itself sometimes we got to do things for free for a while if there is the option there we should be it's not always the case and we should not be taking God's gifts and pimping them for the world so we shouldn't be church-whoring in the world and thinking that it's going to bring us a million dollars and then ignore the church which is exactly what's happened so because nobody wants to take less money and see to it that the churches needs are met all these leaders are going out there trying to turn a profit on Gods gifts and that's not working either all they're doing is becoming more worldly like Haggai at points out filth rubs off holiness doesn't nobody becomes holy because you rubbed against them all these politicians aren't becoming more holy because of all these Christian leaders that want favors from them it's just these Christian leaders are becoming more worldly so we have to consider all of this different stuff when we talk about leadership where is our sphere of leadership if we feel that we're supposed to be a leader where do we belong in it i'm sorry to all the church leaders in this room you're stuck in church i don't know what else to tell you about that but a lot of us do in different ways work in leadership in other areas of our lives you know then there's me who's been a leadership forever and i don't know how to not do it but i might have been editor in chief of my school paper as a kid i might have taught all my friends how to play the piano i might have done all kinds of different things but i was also a theater kid who had to learn how to take direction and how to follow instructions and how to memorize lyrics as a theater kid so i don't just lead i follow and there is something to be said for the best leaders are also really really good followers i have not found many people in church who want to be led properly they just want to lead and it makes for a bad situation all those leaders i talked about when we started most of them are not in leadership anymore very very very few some of them went to leadership positions in the world because they had to make money some of them you know did what they did for a while and it might have even seemed like they did really really good but then at some point in time everything started to tank because they didn't get the follow my example as i follow christ part they didn't follow christ and if we aren't being discipled we're not leaders discipleship students of the lord starts somewhere and if we're not willing to do that then we're not willing to be leaders like we need to be so in saying that we're going to go to i believe we're going to second Corinthians six because everybody wants to be a leader until they actually have to get into it and think about all this stuff they don't know where they're supposed to lead they don't know what they want to do and it's also entirely possible i forgot to add this that you might be called to leadership in church that's not fivefold the bible identifies leadership as a charismatic gift which means that people can have it and not be in the fivefold ministry maybe they're called to lead Sunday school or to lead something in their church or their community or oversee some aspect that's not necessarily the quote unquote high and mighty leadership that we see in the fivefold which quite frankly isn't really that higher that mighty but if we're not properly discipled like i say and if we don't really understand things then we don't ever get to the point where we figure out where we belong and in second Corinthians we'll come back to Romans in a minute because it's not really that long but in second Corinthians one yeah in the NIV we have as god's fellow workers we urge you not to receive god's grace in vain for he says in the time of my favor i heard you and in the day of salvation i helped you i tell you now is the time of god's favor now is the day of salvation we put no stumbling block in anyone's path so that our ministry will not be discredited rather as servants of god we commend ourselves in every way in great endurance in troubles hardships and distresses in beatings in prison mints and rides in hard work sleepless nights and hunger in purity understanding patience and kindness in the holy spirit and in sincere love in true speech and in the power of god with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left through glory and dishonor bad report and good report genuine yet regarded as imposter's known yet regarded as unknown dying and yet we live on beaten and yet not killed sorrowful yet always rejoicing poor yet making many rich having nothing and yet possessing everything so anyway don't deal with all that stuff in our modern times no one's getting beaten for being a church leader today no one's getting to deal with a riot but i can tell you there's been an awful lot of times where there were sleepless nights hard work and hunger and you have to have an awful lot of patience kindness and understanding and that you have to be very much guided by the spirit maybe we don't live through all that stuff literally right now but in a certain sense that's a really good summary of what leadership is like you take the heat and you take the role so that other people can find their way and as we can see from experiences we've had in this church and that i've had over my years in ministry not everybody finds it's you know later step principles are the same whether there's two people in a room or there's two hundred people in a room or there's two thousand people in a room and the truth is when you start getting into more and more and more people you need more and more help you need more and more assistance to do it and that's a lot of times what these leaders don't have is the way that they've kind of structured their ministries they don't have the right help but you know it's a lot of doing things that you don't want to do it's getting up and doing ministry when that's the last thing you feel like doing again today it's having to listen to something that maybe you don't want to hear again maybe you've heard it already and you know like we have said sometimes the idea of callouts sometimes we hear the same stories over and over again until we reach the point where it's like look you either need to change this or you need to be quiet because I don't want to hear about this anymore it's really enduring with people to the place where you walk with them instead of walking in front of them we have this idea that leaders make other leaders know they don't they lead people to where they need to be they follow the leader as the leader follows Christ and that means a lot of times we walk alongside it means that we bring people to realization of themselves and that we stand with them through that process and it's not easy and not everybody finds it and not everybody goes through it and not everybody does it the way that they want to but given all these different types of leaders maybe the bottom line of leadership comes down to what we see in Romans 12 I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that she present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service and be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God and that's from the King James I have done I've been what it was from the King James because I decided to do the King James after I had already put NIV there but what's the bottom line of this our acceptable service our reasonable service if we are to lead is to be a leader and we offer that to God for his use wherever we are best to be put whatever we are best to do so if our reasonable service is to lead then that means we're not going to really accomplish much if all we do is sit in the pubic rest of our lives and as we said sit in the pew and take dozens of notes that we're never going to look at and look you're covering your head but I've done it too all the notebooks that we don't even have anymore yep from the little church bulletins so there we go you know we're not going to accomplish anything by sitting there but at the same time we have to ask ourselves are we ready for the difficulties of it for being known in yet regarded as unknown in other words people know who we are sort of but they don't at the same time can we handle sometimes the anonymity of this and the difficulties of this along with the stresses of this can we be people who in season and out we are confronted with the enemies and we are confronted with the friends at the same times and with the frenemies who pose as friends but turn to enemies at some point are we able to stand through that and lead people still to that place I don't know what's going to happen the next few years I've done a lot of thinking about it we all know particularly in the United States that there's a shift that as far as I'm concerned is already happened and if we're really going to be technical it happened starting in 2016 because as I've said without getting into all the details that certain people have a certain following and have been leading them all this time very very badly even though maybe they weren't in office and I don't know what's going to happen in that but I do know that as Christians and I do know that as leaders no matter how many people are in the room no matter how many people watch us on internet no matter how many people listen to the podcast and we know our podcast audience is probably about the equivalent of some of these mega churches worldwide we're really going to be honest that as far as our downloads at the number of people who've listened and that continue to listen and that our audiences keep growing all the time we know of listeners and both Zambia and in Tanzania and in other parts of the world the more that we at Iceland show up I had to learn how to greet in Icelandic in order to do one of the episodes and I was like I hope I said that right if I didn't I'm sorry I meant well but we have to figure out how to lead we have to figure out how to create a lead when people are in different and diverse places we have to think about leading even in the communities that we're in because the reality is that at this point in time people need to stand up to be leaders to stand up and be counted to make it so that instead of following them and their culture personality that they learn how to follow Christ Thank you for joining us on the Kingdom Now podcast today I pray it is proven to be a blessing in your life to learn more about this work ask a question submit feedback advertise with us be a guest or donate to support this work as our podcast is sponsored by listeners like you visit my website which contains essential information projects and looks for other points of contact around the web at kingdompowernow.org also if you are in our area and would like to visit sanctuary international fellowship tabernacle visit welcomeinthis place.org until next time this is apostle dr Lee Ann marino reminding you that the kingdom of God is within you and that means the kingdom is now [BLANK_AUDIO]