How To Live Lifestyle of Feasting
I love that place in the Gospels where Jesus described His kingdom as a wedding feast (Matthew 22:2).
Jesus did the most important work for the world and led the most successful movement in the history of the world, and yet His leadership felt like a feast He had prepared and to which everyone was invited.
How many of us could describe our leadership sphere in such hospitable terms?
What if our leadership domain felt like a feast to our followers, to our children and congregants and communities?
If we hope to create a welcoming environment that feels like a feast to our followers, we must learn to feast first.
As hospitable leaders who believe in drawing people into the feast, we first need to “live” a feast.
Leaders create the environmental conditions in whatever organization they are leading, whether family, team, business, or church. We must own this.
For good or for bad what is happening with us and in us has an inordinate effect on what the people we are leading are feeling and experiencing. So we have to pay careful attention to everything about ourselves.
We must constantly cultivate health in our spiritual life and relational life and emotional life and physical life.
We must order our lives to make sure we are actually enjoying it!
Leaders who are fundamentally hopeful and happy exude faith and positivity and infect the atmosphere of whatever they are leading with a pandemic of goodness. Now as never before we must care for ourselves. We must live a feast to throw a feast.
During the COVID-19 crisis, people need good shepherds more than ever before in our lifetimes. Hospitable leaders are good shepherds. At The Life Christian Church in West Orange and Paramus New Jersey, where I serve as Lead Pastor, I am reminded of this daily. I want the people I lead to experience what David expressed when he said that The Good Shepherd prepared a feast for him in the presence of his enemies (Psalm 3).
I believe we can lead hospitably, and when we do, we prepare a feast for the people we serve. Even in the presence of a pandemic.
We need leaders like Jesus to throw a feast and invite everyone.