All right, we're already standing, so let's go ahead and take our Bibles and turn to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 13, and we're going to look at a couple of verses in the book of Hebrews, then we'll begin this morning. Hebrews chapter 13, and I want to call your attention especially to verse number 7, and then to verse number 17. Hebrews chapter 13, we'll look at verse 7, and then we'll look at verse number 17. Hebrews chapter 13 and verse number 7 says this, Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follows, considering the end of their conversation. And then verse number 17, Obey them that have the rule over you. And submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls as they must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you. I want to preach on this thought this morning, a look at leadership. I want to take a look at leadership this morning. I believe it's a very important area to focus on in any church. And especially in our church, because the leadership of this church has a lot to do with where this church is going and what it's going to do for the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, with God's help, I'll be preaching message number six of the series I began six Sundays ago entitled, Why Churches Die. Most of you have been here for the last several Sundays, and you know that As I told you, I got this idea for preaching this series by reading a book by Dr. Thomas Rainer entitled Autopsy of a Deceased Church. I told you that Dr. Rainer, after years as a pastor and a church consultant, wrote this book about churches that he knew of that had dried up and died and shut their doors. And so the sixth message we're going to look at this morning is the problem with leadership. Leadership. has a lot to do with what a church is going to do, where a church is going to go, and if that church is going to stay alive. But I want to say this, and I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself this morning. It doesn't matter how good that leadership is if people won't follow it. There is a responsibility between the leaders and the followers, and both have to do their part. for god to do something in a church brother russell would you pray for us and then everybody can be stated will get on the message yes yes please Amen. Amen. Yes. Yes. Amen. Amen. Yes. One of the things that Dr. Rainer talked about in this book was the pastor's leadership. And then he talked about how important it was and how it correlated with the churches that were dying about the average tenure of a pastor and how it related to the dying church. And we'll speak a little bit more about that later. I want to go a little bit farther, though, this morning than Dr. Rainer did in his book. And I want to look at the importance of leadership and its responsibilities to the church and also the church's responsibilities to leadership. This is what I believe this morning, church. I believe years of bad leadership will kill a church. Any of you believe that? I mean, years after year after year of a church not having the right kind of pastor and the right kind of leaders will kill a church. I do not believe in most cases, if not all cases, that the church will rise above its leadership. If the leadership is lousy, the church ain't going to do much better. I believe that. However, listen to me this morning, church. Good leadership cannot help a bad church. If a church doesn't want to follow the leadership and doesn't want to go into the battle and fight the devil, fight the world, fight the flesh, do something for the Lord Jesus Christ, it won't matter. Both those who lead and those who follow have certain responsibilities. I want to look at that this morning. Now, I want you to notice these couple of verses we just read. The passages that we just read tell us that local churches have rulers. You have a pastor here. You have an associate pastor here. We have folks in different positions of leadership. Now, according to these verses we just read, and by the way, I didn't write the Bible, OK? So don't say, well, Brother Dennis is just interjecting this. This is Brother Dennis's opinion. You just read it if you paid attention to what you were reading. According to this what we just read, in the local church, we are to submit to and obey our leaders. Amen. I hope you folks will wake up. So far, this just ain't interacting with me too much this morning. Come on now. Wake up. Let's get in this. Those rulers watch for the souls of the people. We just read that. Those rulers will give an account to God for how they led. We just read that. You are to follow your leaders as they follow Christ. Those leaders are to be good, godly, biblical leaders, and the people in the church are to follow their leadership. If this isn't carried out, the church will eventually die. It's important. Now, what you have here, unfortunately, is that we live in a time in You know, there's all kind of Baptists. I don't know if you know this or not. There's many different kinds of Baptists. Probably the main two types of Baptists are Southern Baptists and Independent Baptists. And both of them seem to go in the wrong direction about this thing about pastoral authority and leadership. The Independent Baptists over the years have sort of looked at their pastor as a dictator. He's an old Baptist Pope and he wants to crack the whip and he wants to tell everybody. And by the way, You don't drive sheep, you lead sheep. And he wants to put his finger on everybody and get in their business and act like, you know, before you go to the bathroom and blow your nose, you better call your pastor and see if he'll give you permission to do it. I don't believe in that. We're not going to have a dictatorship here. I'm not getting in your personal life. I have a hard enough time trying to take care of my personal business. You need to pray to God and see about your own stuff. I'm not running you down to try to lord over your life. I hope Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life. And then you've got the Southern Baptists. They're on the other end of the spectrum where the pastor has no authority. They're run by a deacon board or by the deacon's wives that put the deacons in the deacons meeting up to get on to the pastor. And they think the church ought to vote on every cotton-picking thing and the pastor ought not to have no authority. That's just as unbiblical as that other bunch. When you have a fellow in a church, the Bible says, did you just pay attention to what you just read to? That Bible there told you that you're to submit to that fellow. You're to do what that fellow says because he is the leader of that church. Listen, listen, listen. As long as he's following that Bible, you ought to follow him. So see, we've got two different ideas and both of them's wrong. We need to get the right balance on it this morning. Amen? And get the right balance on this leadership thing. But I'm telling you, if the leadership ain't right and the people's response to the leadership ain't right, the church ain't going to go any farther. We just sort of at a very still, stagnant place right now in our church. I mean, any of you ever been out on the boat and the wind's blowing and you keep going and all of a sudden the wind stops and you just sort of sit there for a while? That's sort of where we are. And what I believe right now, we had a very important message last week on prayer. I believe we're going to have to pray and ask God to move our hearts and stir us up again and blow on that boat and get it going again. The Holy Ghost will just blow on us, brother, and we can do something. But I think we need to take it a step farther. We need to look at the leadership in this church and we need to look at ourselves. How are we responding to the leadership? Because it takes all of us in here to move ahead and do something for the Lord. So I just got two points today, not three points and no poem, just two points. I want to look at the leaders and the followers. Let's look at the leaders, first of all. First thing I want to say before I get into this is this. I'm saying leaders and followers, but all people in this church, the pastor, the associate pastor, on down to the babies. I mean, because a baby will lead you. All people in the church lead and follow. Hey, all serve and all are served in the church. That's the way it should be. We're not trying to make some kind of separate distinction and the leaders are up here and everybody else down here. That's wrong. That's not right. If you're going to be a great leader, you need to be a great servant. Jesus Christ was the greatest example of that. All of us lead and we follow. Every man in here, you're a leader of your family. All you women, you ought to be leaders as these young women, these young girls look up to you. You ought to be an example for them. I don't go in the kitchen and start telling them what to do there in the kitchen. They got leaders in the kitchen. I don't go in there and tell Sister Susan what to do around Fall Festival. She's the one that's over that. I put her over that. Listen, just because you're a leader don't mean there's times you don't follow them. Just because you're mostly a follower don't mean there's not some things that God wants you to be a leader about. But we're looking in the church and there's basically four categories that are real important that you have in the leadership of a church. You have teachers. You have deacons, you have elders, and you have pastors. And all these are, that's your main leaders in the church. Now, when you start out with teachers, there's verses about that. Even over in Ephesians chapter 4, we're talking about the qualifications of a teacher and a pastor. He preaches and he teaches. But then it says over in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, it talks about the teachers being a gift. It is a gift. If you are teaching a class in this church, that's a gift that God gave you to be able to teach that and do that. You are a leader in that church. You are a leader in your class that you teach. You are a leader to those folks that you're teaching Sunday after Sunday or maybe on Wednesday nights. You have deacons. You read about their qualifications. First Timothy 3. First Deacons chosen for the local church. Acts chapter 6. You can read about it. They are important. They are leaders in the church. These are ordained men put in every church to be servants of the church. You have elders. A lot of Baptist churches don't have elders. They sort of group elders in with deacons or whatever. It is a distinction. It's not the same. Brother Steve Doughty is an elder. He's an ordained elder in this church. You read about them in 1 Timothy 5, Titus chapter 1. They're more of a spiritual rule. It doesn't, you know, Brother Steve's a carpenter, so he does some physical things around here. He can fix stuff, but he's mainly in a spiritual rule. He's a teacher. He's a preacher. He's a spiritual leader. Then you have the pastors. And you read about them. You have Brother Russell as the associate pastor. You have me as a pastor. Those are the basic leaders in this church. Now listen, folks, the leaders in this church have some responsibilities that we are to fulfill. So this first part of this message this morning, I want everybody, if you're in one of these categories that I've called out, I want you to listen to me because I'm preaching to you and I'm preaching to me. And what I want to say, first of all, is we have a responsibility as leaders in this church to pray for those people that God's entrusted us with and God's put us in charge of. You have no right teaching a Sunday school class if you're not in constant and consistent prayer for the people in your Sunday school class. You have no right being a pastor. And I want to say, I have failed you. I have not prayed near enough for you. I'm sorry. I can't expect folks to do better if I ain't praying for them hard, individually, often, much. It's my responsibility. It's our responsibility to pray for those people that we're in charge of. You go right on down and let's just take you out of these four categories we discussed. Daddy, you ought to pray for your family. You're in charge of them. Mama, you're in charge of those children. You ought to pray for them. We don't have any business thinking we ought to be some kind of leader. When we don't even pray for those, we're supposed to be leaders. And praying and asking God to help us to be good leaders. Biblical leaders. Next thing we ought to do, we ought to study for those that we teach and preach. The Bible says that me as a pastor, I'm supposed to feed the flock. Now I realize I can't make you eat. But I ought to try to every time I get in this pulpit, serve up something that looks pretty palatable. If it comes out of this King James Bible, it is. But I am to feed the flock and I am to study for those I teach and preach to. Listen, leaders. Listen, teachers. You ought to be prepared. You ought to study. You ought to take it serious as a leader in this church. I believe we're some of the most work done is done in Sunday school. And that's sad because we have many people here. You never come to Sunday school, but Sunday school is where you learn the Bible. Sunday school is where we take books of the Bible and doctrines and truths and we teach them. And there are some things you're never going to learn just because you won't get here an hour earlier. It's worth it. You need to be here and be a part of it. But I ain't preaching on that right now. I'm preaching on the ones of you that are coming and the ones of you that are teaching. We need to take it seriously. We need to be a good example in faith and practice. If you're a leader of a church, you ought to live right. Do you hear me? You ought to live right. It's my responsibility as a pastor and Brother Russell's to live right and to be the same outside of this church as we are in here on Sunday morning. And it's not just us, it's the deacons, it's the elders and the teachers and the leaders of this church. You ought not live a hypocritical life. You ought to be faithful in your service. We ought to be faithful in our service. Listen, folks, when you agree to teach a class and you agree to be a leader, that means you agree to be there. And I know we all get sick. I know sometimes work may come up or I know sometimes we have a vacation. Have a vacation. I believe everybody deserves one. But you don't have a vacation every other Sunday. If you're going to sign up to be a teacher in this church, there's some things you're going to really want to do and some things that may be important, but you shouldn't lay out of church and you shouldn't go out and do it. You have a responsibility to the people in this church that you're teaching. You ought to take it seriously. Amen. I'll tell you something else. I'm preaching us leaders here at first now. Listen, if you're a leader, especially if you're a pastor or Sunday school teacher, whatever, You ought to never expect others to do what you won't do and are not doing. We should never expect others to do. Listen, if you are a teacher, if you are a deacon, if you are a pastor or a preacher, if you're an elder in this church, you ought to read your Bible faithfully. You ought to pray faithfully. You ought to try to win souls. You ought to be a tither. You have, listen, you have no, you have no right to be a leader in this church of any kind if you don't tithe. I'm up here telling folks that we ought to invest in eternity and if the leaders of the church don't invest in eternity, then how in the world can I expect other people to do? I'll tell you something else. I don't put up with this junk. Most of these Baptist churches, they'll have 5 or 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15 deacons in there. Ever happen to have more deacons than they do anybody else? And half of them won't show up on Wednesday night. Half of them don't come back on Sunday night. Many of them don't attend Sunday school. You've got no cotton-picking business being a deacon or a teacher or anything else in a church if you don't support all of the services. If you're a teacher in this church, you ought to be here on Sunday school. You ought to be here on Sunday morning. You ought to be here on Sunday night. You ought to be here on Wednesday night if it is possible. We cannot expect other people to come and participate if we don't. If you're a leader in the church, you ought to put your money where your mouth is. Listen, if you're a leader in this church and they're looking up to you for leadership and you don't even financially support the church, why do you think anybody else ought to? Boy, there ain't a lot of amens this morning. It's just the truth. We ought not expect, listen, and you know what it is, why I think you ought to do it? Because I know of people in this church, they're not a teacher, they're not a deacon, they're not an elder, not a preacher, they don't even have a position like that. But they read their Bible. They pray. They tithe. They reach out to people. They try to win souls. They're faithful. What right do you have to be a leader in this church when they're more faithful than you are? And that happens a lot of times. And that's an indictment. And I tell you, that would kill a church. It would kill a church. We ought to pray for those that lead. Now, I'm going to look at that in a moment. Also, our responsibility is we'll love people, we'll be patient with people, and we'll be long-suffering as leaders. I tell some young folks, I said, let me tell you two things that if you have a problem with, you do not need to get in the ministry, and you do not need to try to be a pastor or preacher because you're going to fail. And I said two things, if you get angry quick, Or if you get your feelings hurt easily, you are not ready to be a pastor. You will drag your wife and your children through it and you'll quit within a year. Because you will get your feelings hurt. You know, that's the thing that kills me. Everybody's off and on leaving the church and sucking their thumbs like little babies. Somebody said this and I got my feelings hurt and they didn't recognize me and they didn't call me and they didn't visit me. How many times do you think I get my feelings hurt? You ought to hear what people say about me and how people treat me and do me. I'm going to suck my thumb and say, I'm quitting too. No. Are you doing it for the Lord? You've got to be patient and you've got to be long suffering with these people. A lot of them ain't going to ever come around and some of them if they do come around, it's going to take a long time. We can't get mad with them. We can't get put out with them. We've got to keep loving them and keep showing them mercy and grace just like Jesus Christ has showed us when we were so hard-headed. Amen? Amen. I know there's some hard-headed people out here. I'm not the only one. Now let's look at the followers. It's not just enough to talk about the leadership being right. It doesn't matter how biblical the leadership is if the followers aren't right. We just read there in Hebrews 13, 17 that you're to submit yourself to pastoral authority. Unless that pastor asks you to do something that's unscriptural and unbiblical, you ought to submit. It doesn't matter if you like to do it or if it's a preference or you don't, you know, if you would do it a different way and you don't think it will work, that doesn't matter. You don't have that option. You don't go to work and tell your boss when he tells you to do something, say, well, you know what? I don't reckon I want to do it that way. I'm going to do this other way. Well, that's fine. If you want to do it the other way, that's fine. But I'm the boss and I tell you, you're going to do it this way. Well, no, I ain't. You're going to do it the other way. You get fired. So listen, listen, when the pastor's leadership is undermined, it kills the church. When the pastor's leadership is undermined, it kills the church. It's not always worth being right just to be right. You may feel that you're right in how you feel about something different between the pastor or Brother Russell and the leadership. When you get to heaven one day, you may actually find out that you were right and I was wrong and Brother Russell was wrong. However, when it's a thing of conscience or when it's a thing of standards or your personal conviction, it's not a clear-cut scripture and that pastor has made a decision and you just simply disagree with that pastor or don't have the same philosophy as that pastor or don't look at it as that pastor. You are wrong to rebel and you are wrong to run your mouth in that church behind that pastor whether you know that you know that you know that you're right or not. It's not worth being right just for the sake of being right. You wind up doing more damage and hurt to the church. Some of you do that. Go to different people. Make little comments. I hear about them. Well, I know the pastor said this, but I just think. Well, I know our pastors like this, but I just really believe, you know what you're doing? You are going to be instrumentally killing this church. You get little seeds and little thoughts and little undercurrents going on. And nobody, listen, listen, everybody look up here at me. I didn't ask you to agree with every little thing I do and say. My wife don't. My son's home. Sometimes I look back at it and I don't even agree with myself. How many of you go to work every day and you've been at work for 20 and 30 years and every little thing your boss has ever said or done, you agree with them? You're crazy. I ain't never met a preacher in my life that I agree with everything they preach and believe. Never. Not even my favorite ones. It's not a matter of me. Listen, I was just talking to a fellow on the phone earlier this week. And this particular fellow is out of church and the pastor is preaching false doctrine. For a fact, he's preaching false doctrine. He's not doing right in the church. And this fellow right here is going to the pastor and rebuking him and talking to him sharply. And I told him, I just said, you're wrong. You're absolutely 100% wrong. You do not have the right. I said, those people believe what that man believes that most of them do. I said, that pastor, you do not have right to go in that church and stir that stuff up. I said, what you need to do is you take your wife and you take your children and you tell that pastor face to face while you're leaving, you be polite and kind. If he wants to argue or fuss or whatever, you be polite and kind and you leave that church and you leave quietly and you don't try to stir up nothing. Even though I know for a fact that you are right and that pastor is wrong, you don't have the right to stay there and cause trouble. You go somewhere up the road where you can agree with him. I said your only other option is to stay there knowing you're right, knowing he's wrong and keep your mouth shut. But you don't have the right to undermine that fellow. You don't have the right to cause him trouble and you don't have the right to rebuke him and talk to him like you've just told me over the phone you've talked to him. Amen. It's just right. When the pastor, when leadership is undermined, it kills the church. It's not always worth being right. Don't say things to people that gives them the impression that you are not supporting your pastor, you're undermining your pastor. Listen, do not resist change if the change is not unbiblical. It's not about your wants and preferences. Now, here's another thing where people get messed up on. I may preach a few minutes longer than I usually do. Just stay with me now. You've got to be careful when you look at a fellow and say you're unbiblical. That's not in the Bible. You've got to be careful about that because you could be messed up. Let me explain why. There's a lot of things that's not in the Bible that's not wrong. Sunday school is not in the Bible. Nothing wrong with it. Having pizza for your youth is not in the Bible. There's nothing wrong with that as long as that ain't the only thing you do with you. A lot of things in the Bible You better be careful about going up and pointing your finger in front of somebody and saying that's unbiblical. Show me that in the Bible. Show me that in the Bible. Listen, there's a lot of things that are not in the Bible, but if it don't go contrary to the Bible, if it's not anti-Bible, if it's not unscriptural, you have no right to tell a fellow he can't do it. You have no right to challenge his authority on that. You are a troublemaker and you are a problem maker when you do that. Do you understand what I'm saying? And some people just resist change because they say, well, the pastor wants to do this. Show me that in the Bible. Alright, you show me in the Bible where it says it's wrong for me to do it. If you can't show me clear cut in the Bible where it says it's wrong for me to do it, I can show you in the Bible where the Bible says you're supposed to shut your mouth and do what I say. Amen! Now we're waking up a little bit. You bring me a Bible if I tell everybody in here, hey man, we're not going to believe in that you're saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Have an uprising. Kick me out. Vote me out. That's something I need to be able to do. But some little old something, well, I just don't think we'll do it. I'll tell you what, preachers. No, sir. No, sir. Everybody don't get to make the decision. That's even why in your family, God said that man's the leader. I've heard folks say, well, it's 50-50. No, it ain't. It ain't 50-50. Even in baseball, the tie goes to the runner. They had that controversy in that Iron Bowl last week where the Alabama fella and Auburn fella both catching the ball at the same time and folks arguing and fussing about it. They said, yeah, I gave it to the Auburn fella because the rule is that the offensive fella, if it's a tie and they both got it, the offensive fella gets the ball. That's the rule. And the rule is, in your family, that your husband is the leader, lady. The rule is, children, that the wife rules the children, children. And the rule is that I am the leader in this church. Like it or not. You say, well, you're a pretty sorry leader. Well, what does that say about you? You voted on me. You voted me in. I hear some women sometimes, well, you expect me to submit to that? He's a rascal. He's an idiot. I'm thinking, well, watch out now. You're the one that said I do. You married him. All right, let's go on. This is going over like a lead balloon. Listen, don't resist change just because you don't agree with it or see it. You're a problem in the church when you do that. As a follower, you need to be faithful. You need to come to church. Listen, your presence is needed in this church. Be a person of character and be faithful to church. It discourages leadership when you're not faithful to church. I don't know why our attendance has fallen off the last six months, but it has. And people just got to where they just come when they want to or whatever, just blowing it off. Listen, it is much more encouraging. And listen, this is not just about encouraging me, but it's about our testimony out in the community. It's a much better testimony to those folks we're trying to reach out in the community for us to see that we're adding people or either we're at least stabling our people. Then for those lost people and people out in the community hear about us, you hear about Pleasant Grove down there? Boy, they built that nice new building and had all those people. Now they're leaving. and we lose credibility to the people we're trying to reach. And we need folks to get stirred up about being faithful in this church. Be faithful. Come. Your presence is needed. And you ought to pray for your leadership by all means. You know what Paul said over in Romans 15, 30, Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake and for the love of the Spirit, capital S, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. He said, you need to pray together with me. We need to strive. I mean, this is like a fight. We need to reach God. And Paul said, you need to pray for me. You need to pray for your preacher. You need to pray for those that are in leadership so they'll make good, good choices. I wanted to read just a little bit out of your book. We're getting ready to close this thing down here in a minute. I want you to remember that a pastor, as he was doing the studies of these churches that were dying, the pastors that didn't stay very long, there were the churches that usually would drop and die. Any of you ever known churches that got rid of their preacher every two or three years? You look at them and in ten years they've had five or six preachers. That church don't go nowhere, does it? And they're always wondering, why are we in a mess? Well, you're running the fell off. You don't even give them a chance to establish a ministry. I thought this was important as I was reading this part of this little book. It stuck out to me and it was so true. Now, like Dr. Rainer says, what I'm fixing to give you, it's not the Bible, what I'm fixing to give you, so it's not 100% accurate, but he's close in what he says because he's seen this and he knows what he's talking about. But he says there are different stages in the life of a pastor. And I'm going to shift all this thing to leadership right now to the pastor. I want you to hear my heart. I want you to understand something. He said year one, when a pastor has been there the first year, that's the honeymoon stage. And boy, we all remember our honeymoon. Boy, she's so sweet and he's so sweet and everybody's so kind and nobody's fussing and burping and leaving their dirty socks on the floor and all that kind of stuff. And it says, for a season, for a season, neither can do wrong in the other's eyes. That season does not usually last long. Boy, when you first get to the church that first year, it don't matter what that pastor says. He can say, eat dirt. And we'll say, boy, ain't our pastor precious. He told us to eat dirt this morning. I mean, and you can have some knucklehead in your church causing you problems. Wasn't that good a brother so-and-so said that. He said he'd stab me. At least he didn't say he was going to shoot me. Then you have, after the pastor's been there for two or three years, this is what you have. After two or three years, you have conflicts and challenges. You start getting into knowing the people. They start getting to knowing you. You start seeing where the problems are, and it becomes time for God to lead you to deal with them. And he says, no pastor is perfect. No church is perfect. Each party discovers the imperfections after a few months. Like a newlywed couple, they begin to have their differences after a while. the spiritual health of both the pastor and the church will likely determine the severity of the conflicts and challenges." And that's true. Then you get to years four and five. And he said, those were the crossroads years. He said, this period is one of the most critical in a relationship. If the conflict was severe, the pastor will likely leave or be forced out. Indeed, these years four and five were the most common years when a pastor leaves a church. On the other hand, if the pastor and the church manage their relationship well, they can often look forward to some of the best years ahead. And we did. We got through years four and five and then he talks about year six through ten, which has been up to the last six months. They were very fruitful and he calls these years fruit and harvest. Do you see what he's saying after his study that a pastor has to at least be there? I heard this years ago that a pastor has to be at a church at least five years before the folks start trusting them and really consider him their pastor. It takes five years to build a good relationship. And I understand that now as I'm older. I didn't understand it when I was younger. But pastor, years four and five is crossroads. And it says this is a period and one of the most critical in the relationship. If the conflict was severe, the pastor will likely leave or be forced. Oh, that's that's what I just read. Year six through 10. I'm sorry. Fruit and harvest. My research is not complete, but it is is more than here. He goes on, says it's a church is likely to experience some of its best years by almost any metrics during this period of a pastor's tenure. Both parties have worked through the tough times. They now trust each other and love each other more deeply. Wouldn't you say that's where we, you know. I've been here 10 and a half years. I've started on my 11 year. We've worked through, you've seen brother, you know what brother Dennis is by now. I've been here for 10 years. You know the rough edges. You know what I'm about. You know what I stand for. You know my character. You know me. I've got to know you. We both know each other. And then there's one more thing and it's called years 11 and beyond. And that's where I'm at. I've started on my 11 years. It's a weird thing when I started this series and got to this point. I want to read to you what he says here. He says, during this relatively rare tenure beyond 10 years, a lot of pastors don't make it that long, the pastor will go down one or two paths. One path is to be revigorated as a leader and ready to tackle new challenges and cast new visions or the pastor will be resistant to change and then become complacent I have seen both extremes, but I am still struggling to understand why pastors go down one path versus the other. He goes on and says this, most pastors in dying churches have shorter tenure. Now what he's saying is, and the man's got experience, is I'm at a point here right now, I put in the time, and I've got to see do I have the spiritual strength and the emotional strength and the physical strength to hoop it up all up again and keep charging in there. Because what usually happens after you've been there so long, and you put that kind of effort into it, and if God don't get into that man, and he doesn't feel like he's got enough people to keep going, he's going to have to pray about the energy and the strength to keep going. I want you to understand this as we get ready to close this morning. Lousy leadership will kill a church. Good leadership won't save a church unless the people follow. And this chapter Dr. Rainer had in his book was a good prayer. This is what he said. He said this is his prayer. God, please give our pastor a heart and a vision to reach and minister to people beyond our walls. Teach me to be the kind of church member who encourages and supports our pastor so discouragement and disillusionment does not lead to departure. So here it is today. You say, I want my church to stay alive. I don't want my church to drop and die. Well, it's going to have a lot to do with leadership. What kind of leaders we have around here, what our leaders are doing, But then I also want to remind you, church, that the leaders cannot make you do one thing. You must follow. When you read about famous battles in history, all you ever read about is the generals and the colonels and the folks that made the charge and the folks that said, put the cannons over here and the folks that said, follow me. But there's never been a general or a colonel or a captain or a major that ever won a battle by himself. He's one man. He may be the order giver. He may be the mind behind the battle plan. But you can't fight a battle without the army. And an army must be willing to go on that commander's orders. And they must be unified and trust one another and believe in one another. and have a common bond and objective of one another and go. That is the relationship between the leadership and the people in this church. And I'm telling you, if that relationship don't go forward and like God wants us to do it, it'll be part of the reason why this church will decline and possibly die. Ever head down, eye closed.