BP 186
When I coached boys and girls soccer and basketball, I would often tell my players, “Sports doesn’t always build character; it reveals character.”
I certainly believe the same is true when men and women enter into the role of leadership. You will, over time, discover a person’s true character when they assume the position and power of leadership. Most of us have heard the old statement by Lord Acton, the British historian, “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Leadership and power often bring out the worst in a man or woman.
Ben Moreell in Religion & Liberty under the article title, Power Corrupts, writes, “When a person gains power over other persons . . . it seems inevitable that a moral weakness develops in the person who exercises that power. It may take time for this weakness to become visible. In fact, its full extent is frequently left to the historians to record, but we eventually learn of it.”
We have witnessed these moral weaknesses in countless leaders (dictators) over the centuries. Listen to how the words of these leaders clearly exposed their dangerous immaturity:
“He who does not know how to deceive does not know how to rule” ~ Rafael Trujillo
“Death is the solution to all problems. No man – no problem” ~ Joseph Stalin
“I don’t care if they respect me so long as they fear me” ~ Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” ~ Adolf Hitler
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth” ~ Vladimir Lenin
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Lying, power, control, murder, self-seeking, and, as Isaiah 5 puts it, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” seem to be the foundation of morally fractured (and dangerous) leadership.
Okay, how about some more uplifting quotes about leadership from those who are not as twisted as murderous dictators?
“A bad leader can take a good staff and destroy it, causing the best employees to flee and the remainder to lose all motivation” ~ Anonymous
“Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led” ~ Stephen Covey
“Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first 4 sharpening the axe” ~ Abraham Lincoln
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Wise words! I take Lincoln’s statement to mean that preparing the leader to lead must come first–long before even giving a thought to accomplishing the tasks ahead. Often, we focus too much on chopping down the tree instead of sharpening the axe. Covey is also communicating a critical truth, namely, that leaders may control and micro-manage people but never truly know how to lead them.
I like Saint-Exupery’s comment the best. Great leaders don’t tell their people what to do. No. Instead, they awaken their hearts with a vision that is not communicated with words and is vaster than the ocean itself.
Years ago, someone said, “Vision is caught not taught.” Some individuals make a list of the tasks that must be completed while others radiate dreams and passion and love!
We’ll end our flyover of leadership with a few words related to church leadership.
“It takes more than a busy church, a friendly church or even an evangelical church to impact a community for Christ. It must be a church ablaze, led by leaders who are ablaze for God” ~ Wesley L. Duewel
“The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve” ~ John Stott
“The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others” ~ Henry J.M. Nouwen
“Spiritual leadership is the power to change the atmosphere by one’s presence, the unconscious influence that makes Christ and spiritual things real to people” ~ J. Oswald Sanders
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” ~ Acts 4:13
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” ~ Jesus in Mark 10:45
Leadership in the Kingdom of God is diametrically opposite to that of secular dictators and different even from sensible unbelieving leaders. Jesus’ leaders are to be characterized by servanthood, giving one’s life for others, love, humility, hearts that are on fire because they are filled with the Spirit of God, and the ability to bring Jesus’ presence into the room with them because they have recently been with Him.
The completion of tasks is not to be neglected, but people come first, not the job to be done. It is never about a job. Not in the Kingdom the God who is love.
Let’s take a few moments to look a bit closer at being a leader in God’s Kingdom.
A key question a Christian leader must ask is why he or she is leading. What is the ultimate motivation? I believe it is important to know that there will always be flesh in it. Impure aims. Ulterior motivations. Accept that and pray that God will reveal these fleshly aspects to you.
As one pastor in Denmark said, “Prepare to suffer. God is going to break you. You might think you are a humble person, but if you want to lead a church, you’re probably not, because most people who plant or lead a church want to be in charge of something or maybe want to make a name for themselves.”
Maybe these comments from Pastor Arne in Copenhagen are a bit far-reaching, but he doesn’t say all; he says most. As was mentioned earlier, leadership and power will bring out the best and the worst in everyone. Some of you may need to step down from leading the flock of Christ if control and praise-seeking are your primary or only motives—step down at least until you have grown more mature. (There are other unhealthy motives for leadership as well, but today we will primarily be considering the two alluded to above.)
However, for many of you, having your weaknesses revealed while leading may not mean that you need to quit shepherding and become a Volvo mechanic, a farmer, a plumber, or an actuary. Leading will expose your weaknesses which Christ will then prune away and grow if . . . if you are willing to look inside and receive challenge from God and other godly believers.
It might even be true that some of you elders and pastors may be less emotionally and relationally mature than a few (or many?) of your sheep, but God may still have called you to lead—if you are teachable and willing to admit your immaturity.
No one enters church leadership mature–as God’s exalted gift to the church. If you think you are mostly mature, that is a clear sign that you are not. We are all flawed and have major blind spots that, by definition, we cannot see. Here is where we need to be teachable and humble to receive correction and discipline from those who love us enough to speak truth to us.
Leadership is not thinking that now that you are a shepherd, you must hide your flaws and put on a mask of strength and perfection. Quite the opposite. When you are called to lead, you need to be most honest about your flaws and show others how transparency and growth are the way of Christ’s servant, not looking good and controlling self and others in unhealthy ways.
If you have a clear calling from God, you must stay in the church . . . and grow. Others will help you confirm this divine calling, of course. Being a shepherd may be where you will grow the most. It may be the arena where you will best be broken and developed by the Spirit of God. God might even tear you down to the ground, a severe mercy. Even if you feel abandoned, unappreciated, rejected, not heard, Jesus may want you to serve His church.
You cannot grow if you are not first exposed.
Does not God’s word speak of such truth in Hebrews 4:12-13?
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
It is God’s will for you that you be naked and exposed. If looking good on the outside and hiding your immature self is your underlying motive, then you cannot lead God’s sheep. God wants you to be transparently weak and needy over being disingenuously strong and mature.
What did Paul say about himself?
“But he [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9-10.
Jesus wants you to be weak (and naked and exposed) for only then will you rely on Him for your strength instead of your human wisdom and self-sufficiency. See 2 Corinthians 1:8-9.
You need the curtain that hides your self to be pulled back. Here you have a choice: You can shoot the messenger God sends to pull your curtain back, or you can look inside and clean out the inside of your cup. The Pharisees shot the messenger. They killed the Son of God who exposed them.
True, strong men of God do not despise the messenger and kill him. They are like the wise man spoken of in Proverbs:
“Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning” ~ Proverbs 9:7-9
Some of you are haunted by a spirit within you that demands perfection, that insists you cannot make mistakes, that commands you to maintain an illusion of outward strength even at the cost of blaming others—even your spouses and children. Even God Himself. Heaven forbid.
So, there are two types of people, namely, those who need to be perfect and those who are naked, weak, exposed, and willing to grow. If you must look good to others or maybe more accurately to yourself (on the outside), you will not be receptive to growth (or the word of God or the voice of correction) because growth always reveals that you are not perfect.
Growth always comes with tension, and who wants to experience tension? Why does tension come with maturing? Many reasons. One factor is the dissonance that is produced within us between who we currently are in our immaturity and weakness and who we are called to be in Christ.
Also, if you were shamed as kids when you made mistakes, you might feel that any correction you receive as an adult is telling you that you are all bad instead of kindly pointing to your need to grow, something God Himself calls us to (see Hebrews 12:5-11).
Someone in your past may have shamed you, rubbed your nose in your mistakes, punished you just so you would feel bad. God never punishes. He will discipline. He will break you and melt away your sin, but He always does it for your good, not to make you feel shame as an end in itself.
So, study your heart to see if your past has created a defensiveness in you to any correction that rises above and beyond the normal resistance in the fallen heart. If your defensiveness is reflexive and strong, you will not grow.
Another thought for those of you who might be called to lead is to ponder why Jesus spent three years with His disciples. Obviously, it was not because they were so mature and wise. It was because they were children and needed to be taught by Jesus and challenged to grow.
If you had lived back in the first century, are you someone who could have been counted among the twelve? Are you teachable enough to receive even words of firm challenge from others? If not, you would not have made the cut with Jesus.
You who wish to disciple others, are you willing and even able to be Jesus’ disciple? Discipleship is all about nakedness, weakness, exposure, correction, and humility. Are you that man or woman?
What really is the purpose of the church? Discipleship? Yes. And a significant part of discipleship is for you, the leader, to first be discipled, to be challenged to grow toward full maturity. Teleios is the Greek word, I believe. Discipleship and maturity, at their core, are all about relationship. Being over doing. Love over performance. Presence over achieving. Serving over accomplishing.
In summary, if you are going to be a leader of the sheep, you must not seek to control others, but to serve them. You must be willing to encourage them instead of seeking idealization and valuing from them to bolster your fragile self. You must make it your aim to walk close to Jesus with a teachable heart instead of trying to hoist a template of performance onto your flock and think you are discipling God’s sheep.
You must be a lover of people.
You must count everyone as better than yourself.
Looking back to Acts 4:13, you must show others that you have been with Jesus in your actions, your face, and, above all, with your heart. Actions can be posing, faces can be intentionally fixed into smiles, but hearts will eventually and always be revealed for what is truly in them.
“Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him
and saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the LORD encamps
around those who fear him, and delivers them” ~ Psalm 34:5-7
Don’t look good on the outside. Be poor, be weak in your troubles, but fear God and look to Him!
Finally, pastors and elders and other church leaders, if you wish to lead you must be like Paul:
“Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory” ~ 1 Thessalonians 2:4-12
So, if you have been called by God to lead His flock, you will be wise to listen to the admonishment of Abraham Lincoln. Spend at least 70% of your time and energy seeking and submitting to God’s remodeling plans for your heart. Lots of demoing may be required. Tasks, programs, mission, structure, and organization can wait. Leave them behind for now if you are behind in your growth.
Being a shepherd must begin with your own heart. Every day, practice His Presence and you will be radiant.
It’s first about being, not doing. Instead of trying to look good to the world, ask someone to show you the parts of you that you are blind to but are plain as day to others. Then be teachable and obey and learn. Become like Him.
Others will see the passion of your heart and yearn for the vast and eternal Creator of the sea who is every man and woman’s desire and joy.
Be patient. It will take years (at least sixty years of walking with Him, ha). Jesus will never value you for being mature and perfect. He will love you for seeking Him first and for loving Him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.
After all, it’s all about love, relationship, obedience, and what (who) you look at. As you practice these things, you will glorify Him and experience the joy of Jesus that has no peer in the universe and certainly no twin.