First Priority is a community-wide and community-owned movement. As a First Priority leader, this means you will most likely go from leading followers to leading leaders in your arena. One of the first steps in developing a new First Priority is putting together a team to help get the clubs off the ground. From teachers to parents, from church leaders to business leaders, your team will be filled with people who are overseeing others as well. This is a time for 2 Timothy 2:2 to come into effect in your life if it hasn’t already: and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. If this is a little intimidating, that is a good thing. You are on the edge of a God ordained call for your community. Your role is to help leaders see the crisis (students haven’t heard the gospel of Jesus – and sometimes what they have heard on the news has caused them to distrust Christians), understand the solution (working together as the body of Christ in our community makes us stronger), and how to fulfill the call (networks working together – each playing their role).
As you build those networks, I’d like to give you a tool to help put the right people on your team using the S.W.O.T. analogy. S.W.O.T. helps you and your team to know your individual and corporate Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Everyone is different, which is why we have various roles to get a club started. A business leader generally needs a different set of strengths than a mom or a teacher or a youth pastor and vise versa. Different Network leaders have different opportunities as well. Youth Pastors have the opportunity to invest in student leaders’ spiritual development alongside the parents, where the teacher does not. But the teacher is with the students for eight hours a day, which makes their consistency and influence key. EVERYONE plays a role and is important to the launch, health and success of a First Priority Movement.
Have open conversations with your new and growing team about what each person can bring to the table (prayer, accounting, influence, school leadership, community grants, etc). Whatever it is, everyone has strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat.
Notice, I did not speak on the threats. But know that spiritually the threat you face is the battle against darkness not flesh and blood.
Ephesians 6:12 So be sure that a prayer warrior is present and utilizing his or her strengths from the beginning.
