Leadership.....

I have been thinking a lot about leadership this week....


Craig Weatherup, CEO and Chairman of PepsiCo, says, “People will tolerate honest mistakes, but if you violate their trust you will find it very difficult to ever regain their confidence. That is one reason that you need to treat trust as your most precious asset. You may fool your boss but you can never fool your colleagues or subordinates.”


In other words, you have to lead yourself before you can lead others. As someone has said, “It doesn’t matter if you have climbed the ladder of success if it is leaning against the wrong wall.”


A leader has to have vision because he has to know where he/she is headed. Most often this vision comes from God who gives to all who call upon him. He enables us to see what could be and helps us to go after the vision. I looked up the meaning of vision in the dictionary. It offered these definitions:
1. The faculty or state of being able to see.
2. The ability to think about the future with imagination or wisdom.
3. A mental image of what the future will or could be like.


Those are good definitions. John Maxwell, in his excellent book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, says that leaders, “see things others can’t, make changes, and move forward before others know what’s happening.” A person of vision is an innovator and is never satisfied with the way it has always been done before. If you are going to lead you have to have a plan. The difference between a pipe dream and a vision is that a pipe dream is only a dream without a plan. A vision is a dream with a plan. People of vision dream big dreams, but they also see how to get there.


It was 1911 and two groups of men had a dream of being the first to reach the South Pole. One group was led by a Norwegian explorer name Roald Amundsen. Before his group ever began, Amundsen was carefully planning every detail of the trip. He studied the methods of the Eskimos and other explorers. He decided to use dogsleds to transport all their equipment, supplies and food. His men were selected for their skills in skiing and handling dogs. He would only allow the group to travel for six hours a day. He wanted the men and dogs to have plenty of rest. He had supply depots all along the route. His men had the best gear possible. They reached the South Pole and returned home without any serious injuries. The other group was led by Robert Falcon Scot, a British naval officer who had done some exploring in the Antarctic area. Scot was determined to be as modern in his approach as possible. Instead of using dog sleds, he decided to use motorized sledges and ponies to carry all their supplies. Things started going bad when the motors on the sledges stopped working. Then the ponies who were suffering greatly in the cold had to be destroyed, which meant the men had to haul the supply laden sledges themselves. Scot had not given the clothing and equipment much attention so that all the men had frostbite — some even developing gangrene. The goggles Scot had selected were poorly designed and the men became snowblind. Their food and water supply ran low. By some miracle they reached the South Pole, but only to be greeted by the Norwegian flag and a letter from Amundsen. They had arrived a full month after Amundsen and his men. Amundsen was a leader because he had a vision that was more than a dream — he had a plan. The book of Proverbs says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22).


You need vision to be a leader. The Bible says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18, KJV). Leroy Eims, the author of Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be writes, “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others do.”


If you are going to last as a leader you have to be willing to push through the tough times. You can’t give up at the first sign of resistence. You can’t be negative, cynical or pessimistic. You have to believe in the vision and do whatever is necessary to make it a reality. You have to be responsible and be a person who is willing to work very, very hard. If you are going to be a leader, you not only have to see what other people cannot see, you have to do what other people are not willing to do. Carnegie Hall, massive theatre in Edinburgh..there is an old joke, how do you get to Carnegie Hall..practice!!


David Beckham became an awesome football player with practice. Tiger Woods will hit hundreds of balls at a driving range. He will practice hundreds of chip shots and puts. He runs and works out at the gym. His greatness does not just come because of a God-given ability. It comes through hard work, a willingness to endure through drudgery, disappointment and discouragement. You have to be willing to press through these things in order to reach your goal. A leader works hard and uses failure as a learning opportunity. A leader is an initiator, an innovator and a motivator. When you have a vision you innovate. When you are willing to work you initiate. When you endure you motivate.


But this is christian leadership we are talking about today… love must be at the root of leadership. You have to love people to lead people. You have to believe in people. If you don’t believe in people they will not believe in you. You lead by expecting the best from others, even when they fail. As soon as the project becomes more important than the people you have stopped leading. People must always be the priority. A leader has to be willing to sacrifice for people. John Maxwell says, “There is no success without sacrifice. The higher the level of leadership you want to reach, the greater the sacrifices you will have to make.”


Jesus was the living example of that. He ultimately sacrificed his life for the people he was leading. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested and jailed on many occasions in his struggle for equal rights for African Americans. He was stoned, stabbed and beaten. They bombed his home; threatened his life and his family, but he never wavered. In fact, his vision and determination increased rather than waned. The evening before his assassination in Memphis, he told a crowd: “I don’t know what will happen to me now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter to me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I won’t mind. Like anybody else, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. . . I’m not fearing any man. ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’”


That is what leaders do. They makes the necessary sacrifices and stay the course. They have integrity, a vision and endurance. They keep their eyes on the Promised Land and the God who dwells there.


Twenty centuries after the gospel was first preached, how is it that the gospel is still potent? Still active? Still vibrant? Nero, Napoleon, Stalin, have all gone their way, and so have the empires they ruled. But the gospel has not. Many philosophies, many schools of thought, have had their day and faded away. But not the gospel. Why? ‘The gospel has been upheld in the world not as a system, not by books, not by arguments, nor by temporal power, but by the personal influence of such men and women, who are at once the teachers and the pattern of it.’


He is talking about leaders. Paul, Peter, Timothy, Patrick, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Martin Luther King, Billy Graham, the list goes on. Your name and mine could be in there. This is why this gift is so important. Leaders change the world. Lastly the qualitiy of a ministry and the development of a church, are directly related to the spirituality of the leaders….. leadership is important.....and one of the greatest challenges the Church faces today..is how to grow more leaders......will you step up to the mark?