Impact Conference 2026 | Purpose-driven Leadership And Priesthood by Apostle Joshua Selman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Why Leaders Matter

Every time there is a problem — in a land, or with God's program — God rarely goes to the government. He goes to the church. 2 Chronicles 7:14 — "If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and heal their land." The healing of the land depends on God's people — not government.

Every pastor is an aggregate of many members and has access to the minds of many people. If priesthood is fixed, it is possible to change a nation's narrative.

In leaders' conferences, the emphasis is usually growth and expansion — but the more foundational question is quality. The quality of the ministers and the quality of the people they produce is the principal determinant of the church's efficiency in any territory.

Psalm 78:72 — "So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands."

Jeremiah 3:15 — "And I will give you pastors according to my heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding."

Defining Leadership

Words taken for granted carry different meanings to different people. Unifying meaning is the foundation of understanding.

Definition One:

Leadership is the ability to harness and coordinate human and material resources so as to achieve a common goal.

Key words to unpack:

• Ability — Leadership is beyond desire. It is a skill. It can be learned. There is a science, a psychology, and a spirituality to leadership.
• Harness — The capacity to see potential and invest in it until it becomes what is desired. It is a blend of discernment and intuition — the ability to see treasure in what currently looks like trash and then invest in it.

  • Leaders who lack this skill will discard good people because of how they currently appear.
  • Jesus prayed all night and selected Peter (erratic), Judas (suspicious), and Thomas (doubting). Yet the mission was fulfilled through them.
  • David found men in the cave of Adullam who were distressed, in debt, and bitter — and trained them into the mighty men of David, warriors of legendary exploits.
  • There is no right to claim a stake in anyone's life you did not invest in. If you did not believe in someone on their way to the cross, do not expect a seat at their table of victory.
  • The man who will become a loyal PA will not arrive as a PA. The skill of harnessing means you see what they will become, not what they are.

• Coordinate — To make sense out of nonsense. To piece together so that rhythm and profit are derived.

  • Everything needed to build a house exists in a building materials market — cement, sand, zinc, finishings. But there is no house in a building materials market. The difference is coordination.
  • Ezekiel 37 — "Bone came to his bone." There is no structure, no army, in disarray. Coordination is what turns parts into a whole.

• Common goal — Divergent goals disqualify leadership. Within a larger goal there can be many sub-goals, but they must all move toward the same destination. Goals are achieved one at a time.

Definition Two (Dr. Myles Munroe):

Leadership is the ability to discover, develop, and deploy your potential and to serve it at such a level of excellence that you become an inspiration to people — and in return they give you the gift called loyalty.

This definition has nothing to do with people already being present. It is about reaching into what God has placed within, refining it, and serving it so excellently and so selflessly that people are drawn to it without being commanded.

• The Gentiles do not need to be called — they come to the light. Isaiah 60:3 — "Gentiles shall come to your light."
• Daniel 12:3 — "They that be wise shall shine like the firmament of the heavens."
• The world has not yet developed immunity against genuine, consistent results. When the light is real, it is impossible for the world to ignore it permanently.
• When Herod heard about Jesus, he called people to investigate. When the light becomes consistently brighter, kings themselves come — and kings do not come empty. The queen of Sheba came to Solomon bearing gifts. It is customary to meet greatness with gifts.

Five Requirements for Any Vision to Speak

If a vision, mandate, or assignment is in place but these five requirements are not, the vision will not speak.

1. A Clearly Defined Mandate

   The great commission is everyone's mandate — but it is not unique to any one person. Every minister must find the subset of the great commission that is distinctly their own.

   "Our similarities define our comfort, but it is our distinctive differences that define our reward."

   As long as a ministry looks like every other ministry, there is no wonder attached to it. What did God specifically say to do?

2. A Divinely Inspired Strategy

   A strategy is as powerful as the prophecy. Do not use human creativity to invent the execution of a God-given vision.

   • It is the same God who gave the vision who must give the strategy.
   • Jericho was a fortified city. The obvious strategy was to fight. God's strategy was to march and shout. The correctness of the mandate does not guarantee success if the strategy is wrong.
   • When the Israelites devised their own strategy to carry the ark, judgment fell instantly.
   • Two people can carry the same prophetic mandate. What differentiates them is the strategy.

   A correct prophecy with a wrong strategy can destroy. Patience to receive the strategy is not optional.

3. A Platform

   A platform has two assignments:

   • To elevate, so that the voice can be heard
   • To brand the impact — impact must be branded to be sustained

   When "Solution Night" is mentioned, one church comes to mind. That is branding. When the Coca-Cola logo appears, the mind does not go to football. That is branding.

   When Jesus needed to speak to the multitude, he asked for a boat. As powerful as his voice was, he needed something that put him in a clear and distinct position. Those who provided the boat received a reward.

   • Without a platform, greatness may be personal but the name is not great. Both must be great.
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   • The western church made the mistake of investing greatness in individuals but not in platforms. Great preachers rose — but the church name was unknown. When the individual is gone, there is no leverage for those who come after.
   • Other people rise through an elevated platform. The platform is what gives sons and daughters the leverage of inherited greatness.

4. Resources — Human and Material

   Many great visions have been stunted by limited resources. Not disobedience — simply the absence of the vehicle that moves prophecy into manifestation.

   It is the responsibility of every leader — including every man of God — to be financially intelligent for the sake of the assignment.

   • In the school of leadership, finance is not an elective — it is a core course. To neglect it is irresponsibility, and irresponsibility with influence is a representation of a selfish heart, because many are following in the direction of that ignorance.
   • Pastors must know how to generate income for ministry. The alternative to learning God's way is compromise. Lack pressures people toward lying, stealing, and moral deviation — not because they are bad, but because they are pressured.
   • Integrity is expensive. Make sure you can afford it. One of the blessings of resources is that they defend integrity — certain temptations are dead on arrival when resources are in order.

   Resources also protect focus. There is nothing that can distract a man's focus like the economic weight of executing a vision. A minister can be awake throughout the night — not in prayer, but in anxiety over how to fund what God said to do. And the members, with sincere hearts, will say they saw in a vision that the bill is paid — then go to sleep. They have seen it in the spirit. How the word becomes flesh, they leave to the minister.

   • The way the kingdom prospers is through the glory of God. When the glory comes, it brings wisdom, understanding, power, favor, skill, and strength. These are the resources used to do business in the kingdom.
   • The same grace that multiplied the widow's oil was the same grace scheduling the buyers. The anointing does not only produce miracles — it produces economic outcomes.
   • The presence of God is not a waste of time. Staying there until the glory rests, then discerning and deploying the resources that come with that glory — that is how wealth is built in the kingdom.

   Real wealth is men. The resources and all the transactions that happen on earth happen because there is a man at the back end.

   Resources come through two channels:

   • Favor — men willing to invest time, energy, credibility, and resources to enhance a vision
   • Value — a measure of usefulness not to oneself but to those who can reward it

   Every time there is lack, these are the only two places to check. When God wants to multiply, he amplifies both.

5. Divine Backing

   It must be evident that God sent the minister. It is not unusual for people to doubt — making the calling and election sure is the minister's responsibility, not God's.

   Acts 4:33 — "With great power the apostles gave witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and great grace was upon them all."

   • Apostle Paul was doubted. Jesus himself was not believed by default. Walking with God is what silences doubt about the validity of the assignment.
   • When Elijah faced the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, he gave them a full day. They lacerated themselves — nothing happened. He set up the altar, poured water, and called on God. Fire came down. The people themselves declared: "The Lord — he is God."
   • The anointing is not only for miracles — it brings validity to the witness. When God is demonstrably with a ministry, men cannot deny it.
   • Spiritual things respond to hunger. God will stimulate desire, but he waits for a response.

   Whatever price must be paid in this season in righteousness to secure the backing of heaven — grace for that price is released. Supernatural backing, wisdom, favor, men, anointing for signs and wonders — never again will words be void. You will call and nations will come, in the name of Jesus Christ.

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The Great Commission: A Tripartite Mandate

Many Bible schools have taught the great commission only as preaching and evangelism. But the great commission — kingdom come, kingdom advance — has three dimensions. No pastor or church will be truly relevant in the modern world by omitting any of them.

1. World Evangelization

   God's program for the unbelieving world. His primary program is not charity or rehabilitation — it is salvation. Mark 16:15 — "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel."

   Without ongoing evangelization, the church loses numbers as generations pass, and numbers are an organizational advantage for the work of the kingdom.

2. Discipleship

   God's program for the church itself. Matthew 28:19 — "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations."

   Discipleship is the process that brings believers to maturity and stature. It produces reformers and nation builders.

   • This is the most neglected of the three dimensions — and the most critical, because it is the disciples who carry out the first and third.
   • The major problem in the church in Nigeria and Africa is not evangelism. It is discipleship. And the crisis in discipleship is that those tasked with discipling are themselves not refined — they have not learned the formula.

   Two medical consultants who have never met can enter a surgery room and trust one another because of a standardized system of accreditation. Pastors from the same country, standing together, are on their own — because there is no standardized architecture of formation.

   Jesus did not leave the church to guess how men are raised. There is a formula. There is an architecture.

   The journey of making a mighty man from salvation:

   • Salvation through the preaching of the gospel — the only entry point. Three things received immediately: forgiveness of sins (Ephesians 1:7), the righteousness of God, and the life of God (Zoe).
   • The saved person is a babe — being born again is the initiation of the journey, not the end of it.
   • Three ministries introduced to the new believer:

     • The ministry of the Holy Spirit
     • The ministry of prayer and the word (never separated — choosing one over the other is a generational mistake. Acts 2:42–47, Acts 6:4)
     • The ministry of spiritual leadership — a teaching priest

   • Transformation — the hardest part. Three elements:

     • Enlightenment — new understanding
     • Renewal — editing of thoughts, values, and ideas. Transformation is warfare.
     • Conformity — the discipline of living the transformed life

   • Empowerment — the third stage. A transformed person without empowerment knows God heals but cannot demonstrate it. The sick walk out sick.
   • Witness — the goal. Only then can God define the geography of the assignment. He trusts the witness. Assignment is given to a witness, not to a seeker.

3. Societal Transformation

   Matthew 5:13–16 — Becoming salt and light. Acts 1:8 — "You shall be my witnesses."

   A church that has been in a community for five or ten years, yet no widow knows it is there, no school around it has felt its presence — that church is compromising one dimension of the mandate.

The Fullness of Christ: What Every Sermon Should Build Toward

The fullness of Christ has three dimensions. Every sermon, in its entirety, should revolve around producing one or more of these in the people:

1. The Nature of Christ — Character

   The most important dimension. When people are crooks, tell lies, are immoral, unserious — this is the dimension that has not been formed. This is where dying to self happens. This is what completes consecration.

   An unbeliever still full of flesh does not need to learn about light and salt first — he needs to learn how to die to himself.

2. The Wisdom of Christ — Kingdom Principles

   The teachings that equip a believer to succeed in every domain: marriage, business, career, finances, raising children, influence in society. Omit this, and people who love God will still fail in school, struggle in marriage, remain poor, and be unable to pay transport to church.

   John 15 — Jesus spent an entire chapter pressing on the value of productivity, not just spirituality.

   Where spiritual attack is present, 1 + 1 does not always equal 2. Peter had the skill, the net, the boat, the right time — and fish refused to enter. Power is not optional. But power without wisdom produces someone who draws crowds but does not retain them, because leaders will not allow themselves to grow more foolish by remaining in that environment.

3. The Power of Christ — The Anointing

   Power without character produces someone who receives a prophetic word, attracts enormous blessing, and then wastes it — because there was no wisdom to build and no character to sustain what arrived.

   Those who have character without wisdom and power are among the most frustrated in the body of Christ. Their children watch a father who never stole, never pursued another woman — but could not pay school fees, and whose faith produced no visible fruit. When that generation is presented with Jesus, they say: which one? If it is the one they watched their father serve, they will choose something that has been proven to work.

The nature of Christ + the wisdom of Christ + the power of Christ = the fullness of Christ. This is what a wise master builder produces.

Closing Prayer and Declaration