TRANSCRIPT FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE 1

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE JOHN C. MAXWELL 2 A few years ago, I wrote a book called Everyone Communicates, Few Connect. Basically, the book talks about the fact that we may be talking, but a lot of times nobody s home. There used to be a show on television where when somebody was speaking, if you rang the bell, they had to shut up. I ve often thought, Wouldn t it be great if we could get back to that practice, if they re not really connecting? Somebody asked me one time, How long should I speak? I said, How good are you? For some people, five minutes is a stretch. Jesus was a phenomenal connector. In Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, I basically say that People who communicate well find common ground. Everyone Communicates, Few Connect That s the thing I want you to think of throughout this entire lesson. Great communicators find common ground. They connect. They go to where the people are. They don t wait for the people to find them. I teach leadership, and there are times that I ll talk about the expression, It s lonely at the top. We ve all heard that. It is kind of a picture of a leader on top of the mountain looking down at all of his or her people, thinking It s lonely at the top. Let me tell you something, no leader ever said that. Think about it. If you re at the top all alone, no one is following you. If you re at the top of the mountain all alone, you re not a leader; you re a hiker. You ve got a compass and a pup tent and a canteen. You re a hiker. What do leaders do? Leaders don t stay on top, keeping their distance from people. Leaders go down off the top and connect with people. That is the story of Christ, who left all of the privileges of heaven, and said, I m going to come down where man is, where sinfulness is, and I m going to connect with men. Christ the Connector Follow the Gospels. You see Jesus constantly connecting with people. TRANSCRIPT FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE 1

Jesus Initiated relationships. He did that with the woman at the well. In fact, she was surprised that he would even sit down and talk with her. Didn t allow prejudice to affect his relationships. One of the disciples he asked to follow him was Matthew, who the people despised. Jesus was always hanging with the sinners, people that others would be prejudiced against. Showed forgiveness in relationships. When others brought the lady who d been committing adultery to Jesus and had stones in their hands, expecting him to kind of condemn that behavior, he looked at her and said, I don t condemn you. Go and sin no more. He forgave her. He showed forgiveness in relationships. Confirmed that relationships are more important than legalism and tradition. He healed people on the Sabbath. That upset the religious people. Developed relationships in the very last moments of his life. When he s on the cross and the thief says, Remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said, I will. On the cross, as he s dying, he s still connecting with people. How Jesus Connected with People: Matthew 9:35-38 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. (NIV) Jesus went. He connected physically. In other words, he went out to where they were. He didn t wait for them to find him. He could say, Hey, I m the Son of God. I m the Messiah. Let people come to me. No, Jesus went out to where they were. He connected with them physically. The question I have to ask myself, if I m going to be a Christ follower, is very simple, am I going out to where the people who do not know Christ are? Jesus saw. He connected visually. As he walked among the crowd, he saw them, he saw their hurt, he saw their needs. He spoke of them being like sheep without a shepherd. He saw visually. The question is, when I go out and I m with people that are not Christ followers, how do I see them? Do I see them? Am I looking for them? Am I desiring to value them? Jesus felt. He connected emotionally. The question I ask myself is, what am I feeling when I see people lost? What am I feeling when I see people who don t know God? Do I have a sense perhaps of privilege over them, or is my heart reaching out to them? Am I saying, how can I connect with them? 2 FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE TRANSCRIPT

Jesus prayed. He connected spiritually. In fact, he said, I want you to pray that we will have laborers out in the harvest to reach and touch those people. A few years ago, when I was with my publisher in Nashville, they shared with me that the books I was writing were being picked up and bought by people that were secular. I was a pastor and I was kind of writing for a Christian audience. So I was a little surprised that people that were not Christ followers were reading my material. I can remember the day they shared that with me. I felt in my heart that God was calling me to cross over, that he was calling me to connect with those business people, connect with those people who were not going to go to church. They weren t the choir. They didn t know the good news. So, with great fear and trembling because I was way out of my comfort zone, I began to take biblical values and teach them in businesses and secular settings. I can remember one of my first was with a large lumber broker company. I talked leadership all day long. At the end of the day, one of the senior vice presidents raised his hand and said, John, your leadership material is different than what we re used to hearing. It s really fresh. It s really good. You ve helped us. I m just curious, where did you get your leadership material? I smiled and said, You don t want to know. He said, No, really, serious question, I do want to know. I smiled again and said, Trust me, you don t want to know. By this time, everybody s got their hand raised wanting to know where I get my leadership material. I said, Okay, I m going to tell you, but when I tell you, you re going to be disappointed. I looked at them and said, Everything I taught you today, everything I know about leadership, I learned from the Bible. They just, in an audible Ohhh, groaned. I looked at them and said, I told you, you didn t want to know. Then I said, I noticed that at 7:30 there will be a cocktail hour. I ll be there, over in the corner. If you ve ever had a question about faith or God, just come and see me. I ll just hang with you. I can remember going down to that cocktail hour, thinking, I wonder if anybody will come up and talk to me about God or faith. Much to my surprise as soon as I got there, a couple got around me. Then, for the next hour the line never stopped. I can remember sitting in the corner of that building saying to myself, This is what God wants us to be. He wants us to be salt and light. He wants us to connect. I remember how emotionally I was moved by the hunger of the business people, who you thought would just have their mind perhaps on success and making money, and, yet, they had this great need to know more about God. One of my favorite passages of scripture is in Philippians 2. This is phenomenal. When Paul writes, he starts this passage off by asking some real connecting questions. Philippians 2:1-4 If you ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care (The Message) TRANSCRIPT FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE 3

By the way, all these things he s saying, all have an obvious answer of yes. I m going to ask you questions and every time I pause, you say yes, because that s what he s expecting. He s expecting a bunch of yeses. Connecting Questions 1. Have you gotten anything out of following Christ? 2. Has his love made a difference in your life? 3. Does being in a community of the Spirit mean anything to you? 4. Do you have a heart? 5. Do you care? Philippians 2:4-8.then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don t push your way to the front; don t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death and the worst kind of death at that a crucifixion. (The Message) What s the favor? He wants us to connect, and he gives us these challenges. He says, If all of these things are true in your life, here are the three challenges that would allow you to connect with people that you need to touch for the gospel. Connecting Challenges: 1. Develop strong relationships. Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. I teach in one of my books The 101% Principle: Find the 1% that we agree on and give it 100% of our effort. I love that principle. But I know a lot of Christians who do the exact opposite. They find the 1% they don t agree on, and they give it 100% of their effort. No wonder they re not contagious. No wonder they re not salt and light. No wonder they re not attractive. No wonder they re not magnetic. The most important ability that you have is likeability. 4 FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE TRANSCRIPT

A Christ-like life means that people are attracted to us because people throng to Jesus. Now I know all of us have bad experiences. How many of you know at least one person that s hard to get along with? Come on, let me see those hands. Yeah, that s a hundred percent. Let me ask you another question. How many of you are seated beside that person right now? Don t raise your hand on that one. You don t want to go there. What does Paul say? Paul says, if we re going to connect with people, we have to be likeable. I ve often said, if Christ has changed your life, could he not have changed it for something that would put a smile on your face? I look at some Christians and there s nothing attractive about them. I just want to run. I just want to say, Oh, is that what they mean? I m out of here. See you later. Paul understood this. He said, Look, let me explain something to you. He said, Be agreeable. Be likeable in your life. Develop relationships. That s how to connect with people. 2. Put others first. Serve them. Don t push your way to the front. Don t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside and help others get ahead. Don t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. That s just pretty straightforward, isn t it? He s just basically saying forget yourself. Lose yourself and begin to think of others first. I can remember when Margaret and I lived in Atlanta. We lived on a golf course, and our grandchildren were very small. Madeline and Hannah, our two oldest granddaughters, were five. When they would come to be with us for a week, Maddie and Hannah thought Papa s main responsibility was to make them happy. They would come down every morning with their Papa list. Papa, let s do this and let s do that. I would just hang with them. Whatever their list was, I just made them happy because that s what grandparents do. You understand that. Grandparents just absolutely spoil their grandchildren. They understand. One of the things on the Papa list was that every day at about 2:00 they wanted to go out on the golf course riding the golf cart. So every day Maddie and Hannah and I would pull out of the garage. And sometimes, but not all the time, Hannah would let her younger brother John go along, too. (John was named after me. He s the one that gets the entire inheritance. No, that s not true.) When we would get to the end of the driveway, these little five year olds, the first thing they d say was, Oh Papa, we re hungry. We need a snack, which meant that we would go between the ninth and tenth hole to the snack place. We d pull up and we all got the same thing. We d get a hotdog with some mustard and potato chips and a candy bar and a Diet Coke. I know what you re thinking. You re thinking that s not healthy. I understand that. I was a parent once. I found out giving your kids good food doesn t help. Just doesn t help. Just trust me. We did have one agreement and that is they couldn t tell their parents. There are some things par- TRANSCRIPT FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE 5

ents should not know that happens between grandparents and grandchildren. I love it. We d have our dinner that night and the kids wouldn t be hungry. The parents would keep saying, I can t understand. They re not hungry. Little Maddie and Hannah, they d be winking at me, thumbs up, and everything was fine. Here s the point. Not one time did Maddie or Hannah come down out of their bedroom in the morning and say, Papa, we ve been thinking. You ve done so much for us. How could we serve you today? Not one time. You know why? They were five years old. They re consumed with themselves. At five, it s okay. I get worried about people, 25, 35, 45, 55. I know, you think that they ll get mature with age. But I found out that maturity doesn t always accompany age. Sometimes age comes alone. The High Road Principle: We go to a higher level when we treat others better than they treat us. When I started off as a leader, I received a piece called High Road Leadership (author unknown) People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you re good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you re successful, you ll win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shut down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for the few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have, and you ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway. 3. Think like Jesus. How did Jesus think? We have it right here. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God, but didn t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave and became human. Having become human, I love this phrase, he stayed human. 6 FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE TRANSCRIPT

I think that would have been hard, wouldn t it? After a couple days being human, wouldn t you say, I think I just want to be God again, I m getting tired of just this humanness around here, I want to start showing some real divinity and deity? It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death, and the worst kind of death at that, a crucifixion. Here s the point: Jesus thought that connecting with people was more important than declaring his rights and claiming his privileges. I love that. Jesus was willing to give up everything. I hear sometimes we as Christians say, Well, it s so hard to give this up. I don t get into give up games, folks. You re going to pale in comparison to what Jesus did. Don t play that game at all. My father is 93. I wish he were here today, because I promise you, you would fall in love with him, because he is a major connector with people. The reason he connects with people so well is he loves people. In fact, we were having a conversation a few years ago and he said, Son, I m about 90. Isn t it amazing that the older we become in life, the more we love people? I said, Dad, that s not necessarily true. That s true in your case, but I know a lot of people getting older and they re not loving people more. Are you with me? Just because you re getting older doesn t mean you re getting better. You re just maybe getting older. I said to him, It s because you value people. You love people. He does. We put him in a senior care village and he s got his own villa. We wanted him to have good medical care if he needed it. It was a new one that was being built. One day he told me, Son, they told me I could be the first one to move in. I said, Well, that s good, dad. Now, why do you want to be the first one to move in? He said, You have to understand, son, old people are going to come to this place. He said, They re nervous and they re fearful and they re leaving their family. I want to be the first one to move in so I can be at the front door. When people come, I can shake their hands and say, Hi, my name is Melvin Maxwell and I m your neighbor and we re going to have a good time and it s going to be fine here. He said, I want to let them know I love them and I want to let them know it s going to be okay. Then a few months after he moved in, he told me, I m the chaplain. Good, dad, you re the chaplain. How d you become the chaplain? He said, Wasn t hard at all, son, just raised my right hand, made myself chaplain. He said they gave him a room for church, and then he said, Oh, my, it s amazing. We filled up the first service. So then we got a second one on Sunday morning and it s filled up. And then we got a third one. We got one on Sunday night now, and it s filled up. I don t know what I m going to do. They just keep coming. They just keep coming. He said, I m looking into satellite right now. He s 93 and he s looking into satellite. Wow. Most people are buying their burial plot. Are you with me? My dad is going to live till he dies and not get the two confused. Here s the point. He s a connector with people because he initiates relationships and he loves peo- TRANSCRIPT FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE 7

ple. That s exactly what Jesus wants us to do. He said, Follow me. Watch me. I will show you how to connect with people. He did, and people loved him and wanted to be around him because they knew that he valued them. [PRAYER] Let s pray. Father, help us to have the same heart for lost people as you did. Help us to find common ground. Help us to initiate. Help us to care so much that we will connect with others. We ll do that because they see in our heart and our life that we truly unconditionally love them. Again, Father, if we just follow your Son, we ll not only value people, we ll learn to connect with people. May we start doing that now in your name, and God s people said Amen. 8 FOLLOW ME AND CONNECT WITH PEOPLE TRANSCRIPT