Leaders Who Make a Difference: Leadership Lessons from Three Great Bible Leaders by Chappell Paul

Author:Chappell, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Striving Together Publications
Published: 2009-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Revival Is Possible through Synergy

The 1988 centennial celebration in the small town of Bruno, Nebraska, was an incredible display of the power of synergy. Seven years earlier, Herman Ostry had purchased a farm, including a barn, half a mile out of town. In 1988 when spring flooding covered the barn floor with twenty-nine inches of water, Herman decided it was time to move the barn to higher ground.

The $1,500 estimate from professional movers was too steep, so Herman’s son, Mike, devised another plan. He estimated that the barn weighed roughly 17,000 pounds. If 340 people carried fifty pounds each, they could simply carry the barn to its new location!

Mike built a grid of steel tubing around the barn and attached handles for the carriers. On July 30, over four thousand people from eleven different states watched as 344 people carried the barn about 120 feet. Minutes later, the barn was sitting on its new foundation.

What one person could never have accomplished alone, 344 people were able to do together. As someone once said, “teamwork makes the dream work.”

The principle of synergy is that the combined efforts of two or more can produce more than each could produce individually. The Bible explains it this way: “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour” (Ecclesiastes 4:9).

When Jesus commissioned his disciples to preach, He sent them out in groups of two (Mark 6:7). He also promised special power in corporate prayer: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).

During our church’s first building program, we saw firsthand the power of corporate prayer. From the beginning of this project, we encountered a discouraging stream of opposition. Everything, from plans to budgets, seemed to take longer than we had anticipated. When we finally broke ground, we were thrilled!

To create a solid foundation in our desert soil, the construction crew had to first open a sixteen-foot hole and then fill it back in with heavy compactors. Between the times this hole was opened and filled, our area experienced record rainfall. Instead of our eight-inch yearly average rainfall, it seemed we were getting several inches every day! This continued for days and days, further postponing our building progress.

When we finally got the concrete poured and began framing, we encountered another obstacle—dispute between the foreman and the construction company. The foreman angrily left, taking our approved set of drawings to another state. We had to call the Arizona state police to retrieve our drawings!

Soon after the drawings were returned, our general contractor went bankrupt. Now we had plans but no builder. To make matters worse, the bank called and explained that because our loan approval had been contingent on our using that general contractor, they could no longer finance us.

One afternoon, a salesman from a pew company left a small sample pew for me to show our congregation as a money-raising visual. That Sunday night I explained to our church family that I would place the pew and a clipboard in the middle of the new building.

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