Beyond Boundaries: Reimagining Leadership, Organizational Development, and Nation-Building for the Next Level

Introduction: When Your Effort Is High but Your Results Are Small

Every serious leader knows this feeling:

You are sowing much, working long hours, sacrificing sleep and comfort for the organization, ministry, or nation you care about. You are fasting when you could be eating, studying when you could be relaxing, counselling people when you yourself need comfort. Yet, if you are honest, the results do not match the sacrifice.

You are busy, but you are not breaking through.

In his keynote at the Refuel Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, A. Joshua Adedeji spoke into this very tension using a prophetic text from Haggai 1 and a simple but unsettling divine instruction:

“Consider your ways.”

He linked this ancient prophetic call to our modern leadership realities—whether you are a pastor, CEO, founder, civil servant, or nation-builder—showing how boundaries we set (or inherit) can both protect and imprison us, and how God sometimes resists our activity to realign our priorities.

This article reframes that message as a leadership essay for any leader, founder, CEO, or builder of institutions and nations. It lays out principles and practices for leading beyond boundaries—not just expanding geography or budget, but reimagining the very way we think, build, and obey.

“We don’t just have ministries and organizations; we also have ways. And sometimes, the problem is not the calling—it is the way we’ve chosen to execute it.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji (Founder, Leading Change Africa)

What Are Boundaries in Leadership—and Who Drew Them?

The conference theme was “Beyond Boundaries: Taking Your Ministry to the Next Level.” But before you can go beyond any boundary, you must answer two simple questions:

1. What exactly is the boundary?

2. Who put it there?

In leadership, boundaries can come from several places:

• Self-imposed boundaries

  • The way you have decided to operate:

    • “This is how we do things here.”

    • “We don’t go beyond this type of project.”

    • “We only serve this category of people.”

• Institutional or denominational boundaries

  • Rules, traditions, structures, and unwritten codes that define “what is allowed” or “what is normal” in your organization or sector.

• Social and cultural boundaries

  • Expectations from your community, family, tribe, or nation about what success “should look like” or “should not look like.”

• Spiritual boundaries

  • God-given seasons and assignments

  • Or demonic limitations that try to keep people, organizations, and nations trapped in cycles of smallness, fear, or compromise.

In the keynote, Adedeji points out that leaders are not just victims of boundaries; we are also creators of boundaries.

“When you start a ministry or an organization, it is very possible that you are responsible for setting its first boundaries—its focus, its limits, and sometimes, sadly, its ceilings.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji (Founder, Leading Change Africa)

Like someone who buys land in Abuja and immediately fences it, we fence our work. We create organizational structures, titles, doctrines, policies, and strategies that define what is “ours.” Those boundaries are not evil. They help us:

• Protect what is entrusted to us.

• Define the space God has given us.

• Clarify who we are called to serve.

But boundaries that are never revisited eventually become cages.

They keep us from seeing further, serving wider, and obeying more fully.

“Consider Your Ways”: God’s Diagnostic for Stagnant Leaders

Haggai 1 is a prophetic conversation between God and His people. They had legitimate responsibilities, real needs, and actual economic pressure. Yet God interrupts them with a disturbing observation:

“You have sown much, and bring in little;
You eat, but do not have enough;
You drink, but you are not filled with drink;
You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm.
And he who earns wages,
Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”
(Haggai 1:6, NKJV)

Then comes the divine instruction:

“Consider your ways!”

Adedeji presses this deeply:

• These are not lazy people.

• These are not unserious leaders.

• These are sacrificial pastors, CEOs, founders, workers, parents, nation-builders.

Yet something is wrong with the equation between sacrifice and outcome.

In contemporary language, Haggai 1 describes:

• Overworked leaders

• Under-resourced organizations

• Burnt-out staff

• Frustrated founders

• Economies that never seem to stabilize

• Ministries that labor intensely but impact relatively few

“God is not attacking your passion; He is questioning your patterns. He is asking you to put your ways under review.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

What Does “Consider Your Ways” Mean for a Leader?

To consider your ways is to subject your leadership lifestyle, routines, decisions, and systems to prophetic and strategic examination. It means:

• Asking:

  • Why do we do things this way?

  • Who taught us this way?

  • Is this still what God is emphasizing?

• Looking at:

  • How you use time, money, people, influence, and platforms.

  • Whether your structure still serves your calling—or just your comfort.

• Accepting that:

  • You may love your ways, but God is not obliged to bless them.

This is not just spiritual introspection; it is strategic governance of your destiny and assignment.

When God Himself “Blows It Away”

One of the most unsettling parts of Haggai 1 is verse 9, where God explains why their labor yields so little:

“You looked for much, but indeed it came to little;
And when you brought it home,
I blew it away.
Why? Says the Lord of hosts.
Because of My house that is in ruins,
While every one of you runs to his own house.”
(Haggai 1:9, NKJV)

Adedeji pauses on this line:

“Some leaders think their problem is witches and wizards. But in Haggai, God says, ‘I blew it away.’ What do you do when the One who called you is the One resisting your current patterns?”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

This is a radical thought for any leader:

Sometimes, your struggle is not just the devil, not just the economy, not just your critics. Sometimes, God Himself is disrupting your results because your priorities are misaligned.

It is possible to:

• Be in ministry, yet God is blowing away your outcomes.

• Run an NGO, yet heaven is withholding dew from your efforts.

• Lead a company, yet God refuses to multiply misaligned priorities.

• Govern a nation, yet the land refuses to cooperate because justice, equity, and God’s heart for the vulnerable are neglected.

“If heaven is blowing away the very things you are trying to gather, the solution is not more hustle—it is deeper obedience.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

Reimagining Your Ministry, Organization, or Nation

To go beyond boundaries, Adedeji shifts the conversation from mere expansion to reimagination.

He invites leaders to reframe the theme as:

Reimagining your ministry.

Replace “ministry” with:

• Your organization

• Your department

• Your company

• Your church

• Your city

• Your nation

Reimagining means asking disruptive questions like:

• What if the way we have always done this is no longer compatible with what God is now emphasizing?

• What if the structures that once served us are now limiting us?

• What if our greatest boundary is not money, government, or demons, but how we think about our assignment?

“There are things I will say that will make sense to all of us collectively, but there are things you must process personally. God is not just asking us to rethink ‘ministry’ in general. He is asking you to reimagine your ministry, your organization, your nation.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

This reimagination is not rebellion; it is alignment.

It is not about abandoning doctrine or abandoning identity. It is about asking:

• Where have I settled like Terah, Abraham’s father—stopping halfway to Canaan?

• Which boundaries were meant to be temporary, but I turned them into permanent settlements?

“Go Up to the Mountain, Bring Wood, Build the Temple”: A Three-Step Framework

In Haggai 1:8, God gives a simple but profound three-part instruction:

“Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified, says the Lord.”

A. Joshua Adedeji unpacks this as a framework for leaders who want to move beyond boundaries:

1. Go up to the mountain

2. Bring wood

3. Build the temple

This forms a powerful sequence:

Step 1 – Go Up to the Mountain: Leaving the Valley of Comfort

The mountain is a place of:

• Perspective

• Separation from noise

• Sacrifice

• Encounter and revelation

For leaders, going up to the mountain means:

• Leaving the busyness of routine and activity for strategic and spiritual retreat.

• Creating time to think, pray, reflect, and look at your work from a higher altitude.

• Going where others will not go—mentally, spiritually, intellectually, and geographically.

“Don’t expect mountain outcomes from valley habits. There are insights, strategies, and instructions that only come if you are willing to go up.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

Application:

• For a CEO: taking strategic retreats instead of spending the entire year just reacting to operations.

• For a pastor: stepping away periodically to hear God afresh, not just recycling old messages.

• For a nation-builder: deliberately seeking high-level knowledge, partnerships, and best practices beyond your local bubble.

Step 2 – Bring Wood: Extract What the Mountain Offers

God does not say, “Go and enjoy the view.” He says, “Go up… and bring wood.”

Wood represents:

• Resources

• Insights

• New methods

• People

• Partnerships

• Tools and technologies

Leaders are not sent to mountains for entertainment but for extraction.

• What new skills must you bring back?

• What new perspectives, systems, or technologies must you import into your context?

• What new people must you partner with?

If you go to the mountain and come back empty-handed, you had a religious experience, not a transformational encounter.

Step 3 – Build the Temple: Invest in What Matters Most to God

The ultimate instruction is:

“Build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified.”

For New Testament and Kingdom-minded leaders, the temple today is not just a physical building. Scripture says:

“You are the temple of the Holy Spirit.”

So the temple includes:

• People

• Families

• Communities

• Institutions that honor God and dignify humans

• Systems that reflect Kingdom values in business, governance, education, media, and social structures

Adedeji challenges leaders not to equate “success” with how big their structure is while their people remain broken, indebted, unformed, and vulnerable.

“We are building temples everywhere—church buildings, offices, headquarters—but sometimes the situation of our people does not improve in proportion to our architecture. God is asking us to build people, not just buildings.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

Building People, Not Just Places: A Story of Obedience

One of the most striking parts of the keynote is a personal story Adedeji shares hesitantly, but the Holy Spirit would not let him skip it.

A couple close to him had reached a breaking point in their marriage. There was a financial crisis:

• A debt of ₦400,000 (illustrative amount)

• Emotional tension

• A husband who had left home

• A family on the brink of collapse

They knew Bible verses. They had heard sermons. They were “believers.” But they were drowning.

As a leader, Adedeji also had his own needs and financial pressures. His logical response could easily be:

• “Let us pray.”

• “God will make a way.”

• “Receive breakthrough in Jesus’ name.”

But in that moment, God did not ask for another sermon; He asked for obedience. The instruction was costly and practical:

Pay the 400,000.

It was not easy. It did not feel convenient. It did not look “strategic.” But that act of obedience:

• Stabilized the home

• Softened hearts

• Restored dignity

• Brought peace back into the marriage

• Removed a major barrier to that man’s ability to serve God freely

“Sometimes, the real crusade is not a microphone and a banner; it is a sacrificial transfer that wipes away a debt and restores a destiny.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji (Founder, Leading Change Africa)

This story illustrates a deeper principle:

Leaders are called not just to announce solutions but to embody them.

For organizations and nations, this means:

• Using strategic capital to genuinely solve problems that hold people hostage.

• Designing benefits, safety nets, and interventions that reflect God’s heart, not just our PR.

• Allowing our budgets to reflect our love, not only our slogans.

The Cost of Maintaining Status Quo

If we ignore God’s call to consider our ways and align our priorities, Haggai 1 offers a sobering list of consequences:

• The heavens withhold dew

• The earth withholds fruit

• Drought on the land, grain, wine, oil

• Drought “on all the labor of your hands”

In practical leadership language:

• Effort increases but results slow down.

• Frustration becomes normal.

• Talent leaves or underperforms.

• The environment works against you.

“When you insist on maintaining status quo while God is calling for adjustment, your labor increases but your outcomes shrink. You become tired, not fruitful.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

This is true for:

• Ministries that refuse to reimagine their approach to discipleship, finance, and outreach.

• Organizations that refuse to shift from hierarchy to empowerment, from activity to impact.

• Governments that invest in ceremonies and propaganda but neglect justice, productivity, and human development.

The frightening part is that leaders can be sincerely busy in the wrong direction—and only realize years later that much of that effort has been “blown away.”

Seven (7) Practices for Taking Your Work Beyond Boundaries

Drawing from the keynote, we can distill seven actionable practices for any leader who wants to move their ministry, organization, or nation beyond existing boundaries.

Practice 1 – Ruthless Self-Examination: “Consider Your Ways”

Schedule consistent seasons where you:

• Review your patterns, not just your projects.

• Examine your daily, weekly, and yearly routines.

• Ask:

  • Where are we sowing much and reaping little?

  • Where do we see Haggai 1 symptoms?

  • What are we calling “attacks” that might actually be divine resistance?

Build a culture where data, feedback, Scripture, and the voice of the Holy Spirit are allowed to interrogate your current way of doing things.

Practice 2 – Priority Realignment: From “My House” to “His House”

God’s complaint in Haggai is simple:

“My house is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house.”

In leadership terms:

• Our personal ambitions, brand, comfort, and security often grow faster than our obedience to God’s priorities.

• We invest in what makes us look successful while neglecting what makes God truly pleased.

For founders and CEOs:

• Are you growing personal lifestyle faster than organizational resilience?

• Are you building monuments to your name, or institutions that will outlive you?

For ministers:

• Are you building platforms or building people?

• Are your biggest expenditures aligned with God’s heart or with your ego?

“It is possible to have a growing house and a ruined assignment. We must not confuse personal progress with Kingdom pleasure.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

Practice 3 – Mountain Time: Structured Strategic Retreats

Make “going up to the mountain” a non-negotiable part of your calendar.

This includes:

• Annual or quarterly retreats for yourself and your core team.

• Time away from noise to pray, think, and rethink.

• Exposure visits: go where others are doing what you sense God is calling you to do—better, bigger, deeper.

You are not copying them; you are learning what wood looks like in this season.

Practice 4 – Wood Gathering: Invest in Capabilities, Not Just Activities

From your mountain times, deliberately bring back “wood”:

• Training and upskilling for your team

• New systems and technologies

• New partnerships and alliances

• Better tools for financial management, communication, and delivery

• Insights into how other organizations or churches are solving the problems you are facing

Investing in capabilities is more sustainable than just multiplying activities.

Practice 5 – Temple Building: Make People Your Primary Project

In Adedeji’s message, there is a consistent emphasis on people:

• The hopeless

• The helpless

• Those with financial, marital, emotional, and character struggles

• Believers who “know Bible” but are trapped in destructive patterns

Leaders must ask:

• How are we building people to be more stable, more Christ-like, more excellent, more productive?

• Are we equipping them to handle money, relationships, work, and calling?

• Are we producing disciples, or just attendees?

• Workers, or just followers?

For organizations and nations, this translates into:

• Education, skill-building, and character formation

• Systems that dignify people

• Policies that protect the vulnerable and enable productivity

Practice 6 – Radical Obedience: Let God Direct Your Sacrifices

Sometimes, God will ask you to do something that does not look “strategic” on paper—but unlocks a destiny in the Spirit.

• Pay a debt

• Sponsor a child

• Support another ministry or organization

• Relocate to a place that does not look prestigious

• Start a work that benefits others more than you

These acts may look small in the moment, but they realign you with God’s pleasure and glory.

“The money you refuse to use in obedience may be the money God will blow away in correction.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

Practice 7 – Collective Rising: Build Both Unity and Capacity

Unity alone is not enough. A united group of unformed people cannot carry a great assignment.

God Himself said about the people in Genesis:

“These people are one, and nothing they imagine to do will be withheld from them.”

But for that to be positive, the people must:

• Have sound character

• Carry shared vision

• Possess practical skills

• Be emotionally and spiritually stable

As a leader, commit to:

• Building quality people

• Then uniting them around a shared, God-centered vision

• Then unleashing them into cities, sectors, and nations

Nigeria, Africa, and the Call Beyond Recycling

Adedeji paints a vivid picture of the Nigerian church landscape in particular:

• In some regions, churches are scarce.

• In cities like Lagos and parts of Abuja, churches are everywhere—upstairs, downstairs, underground, sometimes of the same denomination, in direct competition for the same people.

This is not a criticism of church planting; it is a warning against recycling.

“We are often recycling membership instead of rebuilding cities. People move from one church to another, but the city remains broken, the nation remains wounded, and the systems remain unjust.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

For Africa’s leaders—whether in ministry, business, or governance—the call is clear:

• Move from competition to collaboration

• Move from building brands to building people

• Move from fighting over the same pool of already-churched or already-served people to reaching the truly unreached and underserved

• Move from activity-driven programs to impact-driven transformation

Leading Change Africa, as a pan-African strategic leadership initiative, is anchored in this conviction:

Leaders must move beyond the boundaries of old mindsets, inherited limitations, and narrow institutional anxieties to build systems, organizations, and nations that reflect God’s heart and unlock human potential.

Conclusion: A Commitment to Rise Beyond Boundaries

At the end of his keynote, A. Joshua Adedeji does not leave the audience with theory; he calls them to prayerful commitment.

He invites leaders to say before God:

• “I will not keep earning wages to put in a bag with holes.”

• “I will not keep sowing much and reaping little.”

• “I will not watch you blow away what I gather because I refuse to realign.”

• “From today, I will convert what You give me into obedience, into building people, into serving Your purposes.”

That same invitation stands for you as a leader, founder, CEO, pastor, or nation-builder:

• Rise internally before you try to rise externally.

• Go up the mountain.

• Bring wood.

• Build the temple.

Let your ministry, your organization, your institution, your nation become a place where:

• God takes pleasure.

• God is glorified.

• People are genuinely built.

• Boundaries are redefined, not by ambition, but by obedience.

“God does not just want us busy; He wants us effective. He does not just want us fenced in; He wants us fruitful beyond every boundary He did not draw Himself.”
— A. Joshua Adedeji

When leaders heed this call, they don’t just take their organizations to the next level; they help whole cities and nations cross invisible lines into a new season—beyond boundaries, beyond stagnation, and into the fullness of what God intended.

Beyond Boundaries: Reimagining Leadership, Ministry, and Nation-Building for the Next Level
Insights from a Refuel Conference Keynote by A. Joshua Adedeji (Founder, Leading Change Africa)