GROWTH

STEP FOUR | BUILD

BELIEVE BELONG

BECOME BUILD
WELCOME HOME
Our church loves God and loves people.

Our prayer for you is to:

BELIEVE
Have a relationship with Jesus.

BELONG
Find your place in community through
Connect Groups.

BECOME
Discover your God-designed purpose through
Growth Track.

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Get on Team to start building God’s House.
“...I have come
that they may
have life, and
have it to the full.”

JESUS
JOHN 10:10
 WELCOME

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday,
ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—
and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the
best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture
that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God.
You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from
you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging
you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops
well-formed maturity in you.” | ROMANS 12:2 MSG
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STEP FOUR

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STEP FOUR
PURPOSE. PRACTICE. PEOPLE. 10

CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES 14

NOTES 26

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 PURPOSE. PRACTICE. PEOPLE.
PURPOSE. PRACTICE. PEOPLE

In this final week of Growth Track you’ll meet with a leader

from the Team that you would like to be on.

Today you’ll discover three main functions; Your team’s:

1 PURPOSE
What is the purpose of your area of contribution, and
how does this fit into our greater church picture?

2 PRACTICE
Practically, what will being on your Team look like?
What is the function? What do you actually do?

3 PEOPLE
Who are the people you’ll be building God’s house
with?! Who are you serving, who is on your Team
and who are you reporting to?
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 PURPOSE. PRACTICE. PEOPLE

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 10 CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF
CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

THE HILLSONG LEADERSHIP TEAM

Our Global Senior Pastor wrote the following advice for Pastors
and Leaders around the world.We’ve included it this week to lend
some wisdom to building culture in our own lives, as well as being
on Team at Hillsong.We hope it blesses you – not just while you’re
serving at Church, but in your life as a whole.

Everything has a culture. Your life has a culture, your

marriage, your home, your business, our churches have a
culture… If you’re a leader, it is you who sets that culture.

Over the years I have been repeatedly asked the question,

“How do you guys build such a strong culture?” When
Bobbie and I began Hillsong Church more than 30 years
ago, we didn’t set out to build a particular kind of culture.
Back then, there was no one else to sweep the floor after
the service, or open the door and welcome others or pick
up people to bring them along to our church. We had to BE
the culture.

And that is what I have discovered – You cannot build the

culture unless you are prepared to BE the culture

Any culture is only ever as strong as its lowest common

denominator. It’s not enough to just decide on a particular
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culture you want because if you have people on your team

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 with a different spirit, then that is where the pace and
CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

level of your culture will be set. Build a culture around

faithful people. Faithful people in your organization are
the ‘culture carriers’. They are the ones who will teach
others the collective habits long after you have left. They
will carry the vision and make the changes necessary to
maintain the heart and purposes of your mission.

So, these are the 10 Cultural Responsibilities I ask our

staff to embrace when it comes to setting the tone and
framework for Hillsong Church. If you are leading a
business, then adjust accordingly… it is never too late to
BE the culture you want to see!

BRIAN HOUSTON, 2016

GLOBAL SENIOR PASTOR

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 10 CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES
CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

I WILL EMBRACE:
1. I am a CAN-DO person. I surround myself with can-do
people. It is too easy to be ruled by what can’t be done, what
we can’t afford, don’t have time for, can’t do… there’s always a
reason why not. People are quick to tell you why you can’t do
it, can’t afford it, we don’t have the people or we don’t have the
money, we don’t have the time…

One of the things that hinder building can-do people is when we

live by experience. No innovation, creation or new thing, is ever
born out of experience because experience only tells us what
either has or hasn’t been done. But when you live with a can-do
mindset, it’s amazing how you can find a way.

2. This is not my job, this is my life. 2 Tim 1:9 says, “[God]

has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which
was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began…”

We are saved for a purpose, we are called for a purpose we are

graced for purpose; it’s all about God’s purpose. When we live
called, what we do is a calling, not just a job. Jesus talked about
the spirit of hirelings in John 10:11, 13. He said, “I am the good
shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” He
goes on to say that he who is not the shepherd, one who does not
own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and they are out of there.
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That’s the spirit of a hireling; they are just there to do a job, make
some money, get on to the next thing.

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 If you are a pastor, be careful not to look around the world
CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

for someone who is the best or most skilled. Build from

within – from those who are planted in your church. A
hireling spirit won’t stand with you when tough times come.
But those who live saved and called for a purpose are there in
the good times and the bad times and everything in between.
The same goes for business people. Build INTO your people,
raise them up and give them a vision for the long-term.

3. I Will Serve the Lord with Gladness. Not sadness,

not madness, not badness but GLADNESS! If we don’t serve
the Lord with gladness, then we start to think minimums.
Minimums say, “What time do we have to get there? Do I
have to come? Do I have to bring my wife? Do we have to
stay very long? What time do you want me to go?”

Imagine if Jesus said to God about going to the cross, “Do

I have to? How long do I have to stay up there? Do they
have to use nails?” Aren’t you glad that wasn’t the spirit of
our Savior? If you try to build around people who think in
minimums, that’s what you end up getting.

4. Empowerment Starts with Me. We often think

of empowerment ‘downwards’. My experience is that
empowerment works in every direction. Sometimes if you
want to be empowered, you need to learn how to empower
upwards. If you understand empowerment starts with you,
then you live your life in a way where you are committed to
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empowering your leader or boss upwards. What does that

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 look like? If you are complicated, over sensitive, have to sit and
CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

talk through your latest sensitivities every day, then to me, you are
complicated; and that complication pulls the person you answer
to into your complication, and your world.

Understand that empowerment starts with you and do whatever

you can to live with the kind of initiative that enables your leaders
to lift their head higher and get their eyes looking further down
the road to set the pace and vision.

5. I Am Not On the Gossip Train. Every country has its

Christian gossip mafia. They are the ones who are always on the
phone, “Have you heard the latest? Did you hear about Hillsong,
I don’t know whether you heard…?” I want to pastor the kind of
church where we are the last to know because we don’t get on the
gossip train. If people ring you all the time to tell you the latest
tragedy or rumor, you probably should ask yourself, “Why are
they telling me?”

The Bible says that the mouth of the righteous is a well of life.
Is your mouth a well of life or a sewer of defeat? Scripture also
says that the mouth of the righteous feeds many. So if the people
around you are depending on your words for nourishment – are
they dying of malnutrition or are they thriving?

6. I Am One of Them. I’m thinking about ‘them’ and ‘us’; them

may be THE bosses, us are the workers. Them are upstairs, us are
downstairs. Them and us.
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I wonder in your church, where do you locate yourself? In the

culture of our church, I want people to spiritually, emotionally
and mentally see themselves to be on the same side. We are all
‘us’, we are all a part of the same team.
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CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

7. I Will Bring Those Around Me on my Journey. I’m

talking about your family – your wife and kids; those that are
‘outside’ of your work environment. Take them on the journey.
I’ve seen so many sad mistakes within the normal weekly
dynamics of a church team. People can leave work feeling
offended or aggrieved; they go home to their wife and ‘vomit’
their emotions about all of the stuff that happened.

Then they come to work the next day and during the day they
get that issue worked out and talked through – it’s gone and
everyone moves on – but they don’t resolve the issue at home.
They go back to work and sort it out and the cycle repeats itself
over and over.

The issue is, your spouse loves you, and if you are constantly
bringing home the problems, but not the resolutions, then
you could wake up one day and find your home is full of
resentment. Your family will feel like church is getting too much
of their family time.

I have never been a fan of compartmentalizing our time. It’s

not God-time, then church-time and family time. I don’t
think we need to box our lives like that. If you have wisdom
you can obviously serve God, love the church and bring your
family along on the journey with you. But if you keep dumping
resentment at home, you set them up as enemies of church
time. Use wisdom when it comes to what you ‘bring home’.
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CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

8. What I am Part of is Bigger than the Part I Play.

No matter whom you are, the moment we think our part is bigger
than what we are a part of, it begins to destroy culture and bring
separation. I often think about Barnabus and Paul. They had a bit
of a falling out, and Barnabus left – we literally never hear about
him again.

Don’t forget that God anointed both Paul and Barnabus. If you
are unteachable or can’t easily be told or taught, you will drift
away from what God has for you. The devil loves to get people to
separate from the thing they are part of – often with tragic results.

Is there someone in your life who loves you enough to look you
in the eye and tell you what you need to hear? If you keep a
teachable spirit and understand that what you are part of is bigger
than the part you play, then I believe you can build a beautiful
culture that will build the kind of team, ministry, business or
church that is a magnet to people.

9. I Delegate, but I don’t ‘Dump’. The most difficult

personality to locate when it comes to dynamics on a staff are
the people who are wonderful upwards – nothing is too hard and
there’s nothing they wouldn’t do for their boss. But when it comes
to carrying out their instructions, they just offload it onto others.

Dumping and delegation are not the same. Dumping doesn’t

consider the other person’s world or the other responsibilities
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they may have. This is one of the most caustic things to happen
on a team. Dumping onto others undermines culture and is the
hardest thing for a pastor or boss to recognize. Let’s be respectful
of others’ time and their responsibilities, and know the difference

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 between delegating – which is positive – and dumping.
CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES

10. My Spirituality is Attractive. This is nothing to do

with facial features, but everything to do with our spirit.
Mean-spirited, angry, judgmental and legalistic people; if they
looked at their own spirit, they’d realize these attitudes give
no grace and fail to understand Jesus’ finished work. I cannot
stand that kind of ‘ugly’ Christianity.

As Believers, we need to carry His name well. We are His

hands and feet. Let’s not be pseudo-spiritual, super-spiritual,
opinionated, negative or critical Christians; that is not the kind
of spirit we want in our churches. Stay away from that kind of
thing and let’s agree to focus on loving God, loving people and
loving life. That kind of spirituality is attractive.

Lastly, have a vision that inspires a culture. A leader should

create a culture that produces growth and cultivates longevity
and creativity in others.

Culture is built over time through hard work and diligence.

Know who you are, what you want, where you are going and
identify who is coming with you. Culture is the outworking of
these things and what you allow: Direction and pattern. You
ARE the culture! Take a risk and create a culture that defies
what is ordinary; one that is marked by personal discipline,
a different spirit and a different heart – a culture of love and
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servanthood that prefers others. Keep your habits and those of

your team on track. We can build a church or a business, but if
we don’t build a culture we cannot build anything that lasts.

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 NOTES
NOTES

Today, please take notes, lean in, and ask constructive questions
at the end. If you find your chosen area isn’t the right fit, come
back to Step 4 next month, and try a new Team.

We are honored and grateful that you have chosen to help

BUILD God’s House through this church!

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