By Rachel Oke
The Regional Secretary of Christ Apostolic Church Youth Fellowship (CACYOF), Akinyele Region, Pastor Doyin Adeyemi has urged leaders to be responsible and pass down the leadership baton of responsibility to the coming generation.
Pastor Doyin said this while addressing leaders during the first lecture session at the Akinyele’s first executive leadership retreat tagged “Count the Cost” held at Christ Family Zonal headquarters, Ketu, Lagos, on Saturday, July 9th, 2022.
Speaking from 1 Corinthians 11:1 on the topic “Discipleship for Transformational Leadership” he stated that transformational leadership in its ideal form creates valuable and positive change in the followers with the end goal of developing followers into leaders.
He added that leaders need to emulate Christ and must be diligent in ensuring that followers are trained to become responsible leaders.
“God is expecting us to raise responsible people. Jesus showed example; He had crowd following Him but He selected some people who He invested in to take the work beyond where He could go.” He said.
“Christianity is not a room for laziness. Jesus Himself said let’s pray that God will send labourers, but there are some people who will have to work effectively and raise these labourers. Those who do not give excuses, people who are responsible, people who do not shift blames on the followers”, He added.
According to him, for transformation to take place in the fellowship, leaders must play their parts as God will always play His own part.
“There are three people planting – the first person is the one who plants, the second is the one who waters and God gives increase.”
“However, when we ask for showers of blessing and there is no seed on the ground, what will come forth is weed. We have been saying we want to build a standard church and God will always do His part; those who have something on the ground are the ones who should expect something reasonable while those who have nothing on the ground should expect nothing," he said.
He stated further that, as the fathers were responsible enough to impact in their generation, leadership spirits, likewise leaders in this generation should not be afraid of assigning responsibilities to their followers.
“Our leaders were not afraid to encourage and engage us at those times when they needed to; that is why we are where we are today. Many of us are afraid to give our followers assignments today so that they will not take our positions"
He added that unlike Jesus said in the scripture that His sheep hear His voice, most followers do not listen to their leaders today because those leaders have lost their place and do not know what they stand for again.
Stressing on traits of transformational leadership, he advised leaders to let go of pride and live a life of sacrifice.
"Let coordinators drop their pride. We should be ready to sacrifice and lead by example; motivate our youths and bring out creativity in them." he said.
He added that leaders need to go back home and do everything necessary to raise youths who will be agents of transformation.
"Call your youths and start training them, let them know the church’s vision and the gospel; If we do not open their eyes, they will go elsewhere. Our youths are expecting our counsel; let us go back home and raise youths like Joseph who will not want to sin against God; youths like Daniel who did not defile himself and the three Hebrews who were ready to die for what they believed," he said.
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