Accept and anticipate criticism in personal life and ministry, and live a life of holiness and model a wise response to criticisms. It assists to take criticism as a third eye into your personal life whether unfair criticism or not, handle it wisely so that you or/and others may gain from it, never stop praying for brothers who criticize us whether they do it out of malice or with a genuine concern for us or our ministry. Perhaps God may assist them to realise their mistakes or wrong if they did the criticism with malice.

Indeed to be successful in our Christian life and ministry we need intimacy with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to emulate our Lord Jesus Christ who related to God as a son and was in prayer with His father now and again during His earthly ministry. In adversity or human unbelief He could always go aside to pray. Ministry emanated from our true being and our being is built by our relationship with God. Adversity can mould us to be better persons if we look unto God. David is a good example of intimacy with God as evidenced by his hunger and thirst for intimacy with God in the Psalms and we should note that David met a lot of adversity and was sometimes overwhelmed but in such situations he would looked to God.We should also clave for intimacy with God day by day as we minister.

If we are faithful in little things we shall also be faithful in much. If we are faithful in the natural we shall be faithful in the spiritual. If we are faithful with someone’s property we shall be faithful if given our own. A powerful principle to live by also affirmed in the Bible by our Lord in Luke 16 vs 10 – 12 which if practised would change us and our ministries for the better.

We learn that we may know God’s call on us through inner witness, past track records, gift analysis and testimony from others, and it is imperative that we accordingly respond to the God’ s call. Process items which may have the goals of our personal development,personal insight, ordinary expansion,pressure expansion,challenge cluster, spiritual insight cluster,sovereign guidance cluster and maturity cluster shape a leader in ministry according to Clinton. We should note the process items at work in our life and use them to our advantage to aid our spiritual growth.It is important that we know and gain from God’s time frame of working on our life and be receptive and not resistant to His working.

We need to move from efficiency to effectiveness by multiplying our effectiveness by training younger leaders and thus reproducing ourselves in the younger leaders. Tailor our training purpose,time,content,resources,cost,delivery mode,control and spiritual formation to particular leadership group from small group leadership to small congregation leadership to big congregation leadership to national international leadership. The most effective mode should be chosen for training,discipling and releasing emergent leaders.

In Titus 1 vs 5-9 and 1 Timothy 3 vs 1-7 narrate the characters of one who can be chosen as a leader among many other attributes also mentioned were without fault and blameless within the church and outside the church, and can be summed up as choose the one who has integrity. The Bishop or overseer must also possess those characters cited above and in addition will also have authority and entrusted with responsibility over the church of God. Non Christian leaders may possess this integrity ,other non Christians can possess this trait,it is a must that Christian leaders possess this trait and non possession of this trait disqualified one from being an effective Christian leader. Those who aspire to be leaders must strive in prayer, being honest with God and acknowledging their sins,vulnerabilities, failures and weaknesses, be in obedience to God accepting process items God make them pass through to grow them and growing in intimacy with God day by day, and by and by God will transform our characters.

Overview chart is a snapshot of ones life at a particular point in time, how you have grown.

Constructing an Overview Chart is a visual summary of events and findings of your life expressed in a timeline and can go a long way to monitoring your progression in your ministry and personal life and discern significant boundaries and different phases of your life and assist you make necessary adjustments were need be and build on your strengths. An Overview Chart will record every area of your timeline and will include Sub phases, Time span, Location, Context of Phases, Key people, Events,Process items,Gift mix Major roles and Biographical overview among others.

We need Christ likeliness to be effective leaders and we need to look at things the way God looks at them. If we take the example of our Lord Jesus Christ it baffles that Christ actually said my food is to do what God sent me to do and to complete the work. He goes on to say now is the time to harvest because the harvest is ripe. If only we would know what time it is according to how God sees things as did our Lord , we would be effective christian leaders. We would do things on the right way and at the right time and not procrastinate. Our Lord Jesus clearly new his calling and obeyed the call and did exactly what God wanted him to do and also asked his followers to pray to God that He may sent a lot of ministers in the field for He noted in spirit that the harvest is plenty and the labourers are few. If we want to be effective leaders to have that connection with God that we know what is on His heart and get all we need to work in His field exactly the way He would have wanted us to do. These are challenges that need us to be Christ like and develop that intimacy with God that in our ministering and leadership roles God manifests through us. It is not easy but is possible if we watch our life through prayer,reading and mediating on the Word, Intimacy with God, living in obedience to God,living in love and things like Overview Chart would be indispensable to help our speed growth and effectiveness.

Preparing for leadership roles is crucial because if we do not have the attributes to be effective leaders God may not send us or if we go without preparation(when lack of attributes disqualify us) we will not be effective. We need to be fruitful. God wants all people to come to repentance and not to perish according to 2 Peter 3 vs 9b and is not pleased with the death of the wicked according to Ezekiel 33 vs 11 seeks that everybody should turn from their wicked ways and live. And Jesus Christ came to seek that which was lost and we as Christ representatives should also do that. We may not do that if we are not prepared or lack the attributes to be effective leaders. We can do that effectively if we are Christ like which takes a lot of processing by God and also abiding in what God wants. God counts on us to go into his vineyard and harvest but also needs us before we go to be prepared and acquire the garments of righteousness and integrity. If we have the attributes let us not procrastinate but promptly answer the Lord call on our life and also teach other potential leaders to also acquire the attributes and answer their callings,and also pray the Lord of harvest to send a lot of labourers into the vineyard.

I learned how to be effective as leader.

I learned how to increase my effectiveness.

I also learned that, as leader I must possess leadership traits that make me unique.

Leader of a small group is also important as the leader of a large group.

I learned a lot from this lecture and I am happy to be part of this life changing platform for learning and to grow my leadership skill in the kingdom.