Life inside Transform – The Leader’s Gathering- Part 1.

Life inside Transform – The Leader’s Gathering- Part 1.

On Friday 6th and Saturday 7th September 2019, I attended the Leader’s Gathering in Nalya, Kampala at the Worship Harvest Ministries. In these series,i will be writing about my observations at the Gathering and lessons learnt. Attendance of a Gathering like this comes at a personal cost as I have to travel from Jinja to Kampala. But as John Maxwell says in two (law of Trade offs and Law of Sacrifice) of his laws of Growth, to achieve our full potential, we must be willing to sacrifice something. Growth does not come out of the blue.And if we need to change anything in our life,all we have to do is change our habits. Daily Habits determine who we are.

This is an annual gathering of leaders both from the church and the market place and one of its core aims is to equip leaders with the necessary leadership skills so we can be better leaders in our different spheres of influence. The Gathering also exposes participants to networking opportunities with influencers and visionaries.

I wrote to about 30 church and market place leaders that I personally know and directly invited them to attend the Gathering. Only 4 (14%) of those showed up. The rest just had good excuses and most promised to attend next year. As Ugandans, we need to learn to invest in continuous learning, and this learning has to be paid for, as we human beings tend not to value free things. I have been into spaces where they told us that Yesu Ababudde emere (Jesus has provided free food), but once we leave such environments, most of what we heard just evaporates- Why? Probably because since it was free, we attached little value on it.

I had scheduled visitors who were coming home on Friday 6th, the very day of the conference. So Julie and I spent much of Thursday preparing for them; as such I slept a little bit late and tired. The following morning at around 4:20am, I woke up, but I was not in the mood to leave my bed. I somehow even entertained feelings of not going to the conference. Part of me wanted to go but the body was not cooperating. I slept in more for a few minutes, but was also worried that sleep may overcome me and I woke up late. I eventually overcome the disturbing feeling and left my bed.

I and my team got prepared, showered and dressed up, by exactly 6:00am; we hit the road for Kampala, by 7:50am, we were in Nalya. The ushers did an incredibly good Job welcoming us in.
The formal Gathering session started at exactly 9:00am. Now organizers(Worship Harvest Ministries) of this Gathering believe so much in time keeping and being excellent. So they kept time and were exceptionally organized. I don’t see this sense of order in many places in Uganda, neither do I see many institutions/individuals that live out their values. I would like to laud the Worship Harvest ministries for walking their talk.

First on stage where the choirs which did an excellent Job with their presentations.Thereafter,Mosze who was the first speaker talked about Momentum and how it’s a leader’s best friend. He also talked about how we should operate with focus and intensity in our areas of strength. I took note of this.

He pointed out the four kinds of Leaders, namely;-

1) Momentum Breakers: These ones can slow down and even kill the little momentum handled to them.
2) Momentum takers: These are good when things are good and bad when things are bad.
3) Momentum fakers:- They ride on hype, they make it look like something is happening, They talk big.
4) Momentum makers: They make things happen. They are U turn leaders.

I have interacted with all groups. I remember one time at church; we had gained a lot of momentum, when suddenly we heard that one of our team members had impregnated a girl on the village. Word quickly went around and it somehow slowed down our momentum.Such is the harm that momentum breakers can bring upon a team.

In our leadership spaces, let us all do whatever we can to be Momentum makers (No.4) not breakers.

Blessings – Edward.

Part 2 will come out tomorrow.