There are only two types of people in this world: givers and takers. The question every leader eventually has to answer is, which one are you going to be? Generosity is a huge part of leadership, but it reaches far beyond money. Money may be the first thing we think of when we talk about generosity, but generous leadership also involves our time, our resources, our homes, our vehicles, our opportunities, and even the platforms God has entrusted to us. At its heart, generosity asks a much deeper question: am I willing to be a giver even in the little that I have?

Sometimes generosity requires sacrifice. Healthy boundaries around our lives and our time are important, but Jesus demonstrated a life that was led by the Father rather than simply governed by a schedule. There were moments when He gave above and beyond what might have been convenient. For a leader, that may mean giving an evening to a family, spending additional time with someone, or making room in a busy day because the Holy Spirit is leading us to do so. The challenge is to become generous on all occasions and in all areas of life.

John and Carol Arnott have modeled this kind of generosity in their leadership. They have been generous with their time, their finances, the opportunities they give to others, and even their platform. One of their favorite verses is Luke 12:32: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Generosity grows when we know that our heavenly Father loves us and when we begin to live in the bigness of God. God is a Father who gives. He gave His Son, and through the cross, the resurrection, and the blood of Jesus, we have continuous access to His kingdom. He does not withhold His kingdom from us. As leaders, we have to learn how that kingdom operates, walk in it personally, experience it ourselves, and then create a culture in our leadership where that same generosity is manifested.

John Arnott once shared something his mentor told him when he was first starting in ministry: “There’s only two types of people in this world, John. There’s givers and there’s takers. Which one are you going to be?” That question goes directly to the heart. Do we want to be takers, or do we want to become givers? Generosity carries a sense of otherliness rather than self-centeredness. Our natural tendency can be to focus continually on our own needs: my mental health, my alone time, my self-care, my money, my wallet, my bank account, my family, my home—mine, mine, mine. The flesh continually fights this battle.

Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Him. Our sinful nature wants to keep our attention centered on our own needs, our own sadness, what we do not have, and the goals we have not yet achieved. But when we put our eyes back on Jesus, our focus changes. We begin looking outward. We begin noticing others. We become more focused on Him and on what is possible rather than continually looking at what we lack. Generosity is not determined by how many resources we have, the size of our bank account, our position, or our salary. Generosity asks whether we are willing to give from what we already have.

Sometimes that may simply mean sharing a meal. It does not require taking someone to an expensive restaurant and paying the bill. It could mean making a simple meal and asking how we can demonstrate love and generosity to someone who may never have experienced love in that way before. Our level of generosity can become an expression of our faith in the invisible God.

Jesus demonstrated this when He watched people giving their offerings. Wealthy people were putting large amounts into the offering, but then a widow came and gave two small coins. Jesus told His disciples that she had given more than all the others because, out of her extreme poverty, she had given everything. The others had given out of their riches; she gave out of her lack. Her generosity revealed something about faith. It revealed confidence in the bigness, greatness, and goodness of her heavenly Father and in His ability to replenish what she had given.

His kingdom is infinite. The widow could trust that her heavenly Father would take care of her from His everlasting supply, while others could appear to give much while still operating from their finite supply. We have a generous Father, and because of that, we have everything within us to become generous like Him. But it is a journey of faith. Sometimes generosity requires stepping out on a limb in order to bless someone else.

Carol Arnott modeled this long before she was believing God for large amounts of money or carrying large vision. As a single mother, she returned her tithes and trusted God to take care of both her needs and the needs of her son. She lived with an expectation that God would replenish. Leaders need to teach people that it is more blessed to give than to receive. We need to create an expectation that every believer can develop a testimony of God’s blessing and provision, even when circumstances appear bleak or desperate.

We cannot cultivate a culture of generosity if we ourselves are not generous. When we planted our church after moving from Toronto to Raleigh, we arrived with very little in terms of the ministry and the church. One of the first things we did was make sure that we personally tithed to the church out of our own finances. That became part of the model for Catch the Fire World: returning to the storehouse so that the mission of God could be fulfilled.

Tithing is a foundation, but generosity does not stop there. There is sowing generously with faith for a harvest, and there is also secret giving. Jesus taught about giving in secret, where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. There is a kind of generosity that gives to widows, orphans, the poorest of the poor, students, missions, and individuals in need without seeking recognition. Some leaders hear about a student who wants to attend a school of ministry and quietly pay toward that student’s costs from their own pocket. Students who themselves have very little may give what they have to help fund someone else’s outreach. They enter into the joy of generosity.

Money, however, is only one dimension of generosity. A generous leader is also generous with opportunity. God gives leaders platforms, but those platforms are not given simply for ourselves. They are given so that we can influence others, lead others spiritually, disciple people, and eventually create opportunities for them to do what we are doing. If you are a preacher, you could preach every week, but sometimes we deny ourselves for the sake of raising someone else up.

That requires security. There can be moments when someone else preaches an excellent message and receives praise, and something inside us feels threatened because we were not the person receiving that praise. Those moments reveal how closely generosity is connected to the Father’s love. Someone else’s success can feel threatening when we are operating from an orphan mentality. An orphan holds, hoards, and takes because an orphan does not know where the next meal will come from or what tomorrow will look like.

Leaders face the same battle. The desire to hold on to the platform God has given us, to use it to make our mark, and to become significant is a huge battle that every leader who wants to walk with Jesus must overcome. Jesus Himself modeled something completely different. For three years, He carried His public ministry. Yet during those same three years, He handed authority to the twelve disciples. He laid His hands on them, gave them power and authority, and sent them out. Then He did the same with the seventy-two.

After three years, Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified. He rose from the dead, but rather than remaining physically present and ruling everything Himself, He commissioned His followers. All authority had been given to Him, and then He told them to go and make disciples of all nations. That is the leadership model we are called to follow.

Leadership can easily become centered around one person’s anointing, teaching gift, or personality, but Jesus did something different. He built a team. His twelve disciples were beginners. They had to learn from the ground up. They made mistakes. They did not always communicate well. They argued with one another over who would be the greatest. They were normal people, yet Jesus trained them, developed them, spoke into their character, and addressed their insecurities.

That kind of leadership takes time. The moment someone receives an opportunity on a platform may only be the visible result of many hours behind the scenes making mistakes, receiving correction, developing character, adjusting heart attitudes, and learning how to work as part of a team. Team takes longer to develop. It is a slower pace. It is a slow burn.

A ministry centered around one gifted individual may grow quickly because that person can take off rapidly on the strength of their gift, but that model does not necessarily give others the opportunity to grow alongside the leader and become like them. Jesus demonstrated generosity in leadership because He did not merely train people to become educated followers. He trained them to become like Him.

In John 14:12, Jesus even said that those who believe in Him would do the works He did and even greater works. That brings leaders to one of the greatest tests of generosity. After giving people opportunities, raising them up, putting them in place, cheering them on, and allowing them to grow through repeated opportunities, can we embrace the reality that they may eventually become greater than us? That is one of the greatest challenges to the orphan heart.

John and Carol Arnott have modeled this by becoming cheerleaders for the people they have raised up. When others recognize what has happened through Catch the Fire around the world or celebrate leaders who have been raised up under them, John and Carol celebrate those leaders rather than being threatened by their success. The same principle then continues through every generation of leadership.

Jesus told His disciples that it was better for Him to go away because He would send the Holy Spirit. There is something profound in that statement for generous leaders. Generous leadership continually points the people we disciple toward the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the greatest discipler. He is the greatest advocate of a person’s gift. He is the One who anoints people so that they can go and do the work of the kingdom.

Being generous as a leader means continually directing people toward the work of the Holy Spirit in their own lives so that the glory ultimately goes to Jesus. Then leadership is no longer centered on one or two people. A whole multitude begins to rise. They begin to lead. They become generous in their own leadership, and multiplication begins.

There is a difference between building a ministry around one voice and creating room for many voices. John the Baptist was a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but Jesus produces a multitude. When a church allows multiple voices on a platform—three, four, five, six, or more speakers across a year—the people may become far more likely to hear different dimensions of what the Holy Spirit and Jesus are saying than if they hear from only one leader continually.

The generosity of our heavenly Father is multiplied through people. When we look across Catch the Fire World, we see leaders in many different places who have been empowered, given authority, and released to lead within their own nations and spheres. It is no longer about us. It becomes a reflection of the nature of our Father being revealed through many people.

One of the most valuable resources we have is time. Human beings have a limited amount of time in this world, which makes time incredibly precious. But when leaders generously raise up other people, something remarkable happens: time itself begins to multiply. If one leader is the only person using the platform, the influence of that ministry is limited by that leader’s available time. But when that leader raises up multitudes of others, all of their time is added. Across a global movement, the hours multiply. The gospel can go forward in more places, more disciples can be made, and the kingdom can multiply throughout the earth. Generous leadership expands what can be accomplished because it releases other people rather than bottlenecking everything through one leader.

Generosity also has very practical implications. When you plant a church, do not automatically assume that you should be the only person who is paid. There may be seasons when, like Paul, you maintain another source of income or work another job so that church finances can be invested in other people. Instead of taking the available money entirely for your own payroll, you may be able to staff important areas of the church and invest in people who can help the ministry become successful.

That might mean investing in a children’s worker so that the children’s ministry runs well on Sundays. When we first started our church, some key children’s ministry workers had previously been volunteers. We began paying them an hourly rate for the period when they were ministering to the children. That small investment helped bring greater stability. People showed up consistently, and the ministry solidified.

Meanwhile, we did not receive payroll from the church we planted for three and a half years. Kate came onto a very minimal part-time payroll after that. It was seven years before Duncan came onto payroll, and that happened at John Arnott’s insistence. We had another income stream, and we were able to share what the church received.

If you work five days a week in another job but you are effective at preaching and ministering on Sundays, perhaps the wisest use of church finances is hiring someone to help with administration so that the necessary work gets done and you do not burn out trying to do everything yourself. We were able to invest in youth pastors, worship leaders, and other members of the team. The team grew faster because resources were being distributed rather than concentrated entirely on us.

Giving up some of your own potential payroll requires trust in God’s ability to take care of you, but it models generosity, strengthens the team, and can accelerate the growth of the church. Generosity grows through practice. The more we do it, the more it develops within us.

There is a stewardship principle in which the Father partners with people who demonstrate that they will take care of what they have and maximize those resources for the benefit of others. Then finances, buildings, and new opportunities can begin to come. There is a sowing and reaping principle.

In our own journey, we have experienced extraordinary financial blessing. In 2012, we received a check for $1.2 million that enabled us to purchase our building in Raleigh. But long before receiving that money, in the earliest days of our church, we were already sowing into other churches’ building campaigns and building funds. We also sowed into missions.

The Raleigh church has given significantly to local missions, national missions, and Catch the Fire World. We also learned the importance of caring for the poor. When we steward what God has generously given to us, there is more that can be entrusted to us.

When leaders are generous, they create a culture of generosity and love. That generosity flows from a revelation of the Father’s love. As the church begins to walk in sonship, people themselves begin to become generous. They volunteer, they serve, they participate in local missions, and they give what they have.

One example is Embrace Durham Ministries. Someone recognized the need to care for people’s physical needs and began by simply bringing food. Then other people began bringing food. Eventually supermarkets began offering leftover food that was still good, and the ministry grew until hundreds of households could be fed every week.

Food itself was a sign of generosity, but it also became a vehicle for relationship. It created opportunities to connect with people, connect hearts, demonstrate the love of God, and have conversations that could lead people toward understanding who Jesus is and why He came for them. It was love in action.

Eventually there was so much food that the ministry had to find additional people who could receive it. It became one of the local food pantries in the area, including an additional Saturday distribution when people could drive up and collect food. Resources continued coming from every direction, while volunteers became engaged with the vision and gave their time to collect and distribute them. You cannot outgive God.

This culture does not have to exist only through formal outreach programs. It can happen inside the church family. Someone has surgery, and people organize meals. A family has a baby, and a meal train begins. Someone loses a job or an income stream, and people begin looking for ways to help. Food parcels are delivered. Cars are loaned. Needs are met.

It reflects something like the church described in Acts, where people shared what they had and needs were cared for. A person with a generous heart approaches life with a simple question: what can I do to help? How can I help you?

That kind of culture will not develop in a church if its leaders are stingy. If leaders continually ask why people are not volunteering, why people are not giving, or why people are not tithing, they may need to look first at their own lives. The congregation may simply be reflecting the leadership culture it sees. When leaders become generous in every area, people begin to become generous too.

The purpose of sharing these stories is not to boast in human ability. It is to boast in the generosity God our Father has shown to us and continues to show as we trust Him and live our lives with Him. Every leader should press into the subject personally and ask God where they could become more generous with their resources, their finances, their time, and their platform.

For some leaders, the platform may be the most challenging area of all. We have to allow God to reveal what is happening inside us and show us what prevents us from sharing what He has entrusted to us. Generous leadership begins with the heart.

May our generous Father fill us in our leadership and stretch us to another level. May we know that nothing is impossible for Him in His kingdom. May the kingdom of God come in our churches, ministries, businesses, and everything we do. May the generosity of God abound in our hearts and overflow into the lives of others, and may the Holy Spirit train us and raise us up to become the leaders He has called us to be.