Leadership

Most people have a hard time with leadership, including myself. I have found in my walk with Christ and my study of scripture that the way things seem to be are usually not the way things actually are.  Have you ever thought about Jesus saying, "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it." (Lk. 9:24) Bottom line is, until we place Jesus at the beginning of everything that we do or think none of our actions or thoughts can be trusted to be the best for us or those around us. Truth be told, most of us, most of the time, are out for ourselves and that always proves disastrous in the long run. Even the "good" things that we do are not good at all.

How does this apply to leadership?
Tendencies:
Most of us who are in some type of leadership position many times do what we do for 1 reason, ourselves. Consider 2 types of leader. The first is the dominating leader who towers over you and demands that you follow His lead. His persuasive power to get you to follow him is fear. You may follow this leader because you know that he is more powerful and influential than you so you will submit out of fear of what he could do to you. The second is the leader that cowers instead of towers. This type of leader's persuasive power to get people to follow him is compromise in order to give everyone what they want. You may follow this leader because you are more likely to get what you want.

The truth is that both of the models above are flawed and lead to destruction. Both are founded on pride and self preservation with no pure motivation or goal in sight. The towering leader creates fearful followers or harsh dominators, and the cowering leader creates greedy followers or cowards. Stay away from leaders who lead by force or leaders who lead by compromise. They will not teach you how to follow and they certainly will not teach you how to lead.

So what type of leader should I be and what type of leader should I follow?
Ideals:
Based on Jesus' statement, "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it," there are 2 things that you should look for in a leader.

1) A clear cut understanding that they are not the goal of your following. A good leader does not NEED people to follow him because he has all of his NEEDS met in Christ. He has lost his life for Christ only to find his true life in Christ. This means that he is able to lead you to fulfillment and truth instead of using you to find fulfillment and truth. This leads you to greater fulfillment instead of using you up for personal gain. A leader who is seeking to gain his life will lose his life and use up your life trying to get back his own.

2)A clear cut understanding that Jesus is the goal. The problem with following someone who is leading out of pride is that they are always chasing their tail looking for meaning and they never go anywhere significant. A leader who has lost his life only to find it in Christ is able to create other leaders without fear of losing his purpose or meaning. This type of leader does not NEED to lead through fear because his followers love and desire to follow ; also, this type of leader does not NEED to compromise because he knows exactly where he is going which gives security to those following. Most of the time this type of leader doesn't actually try to find people to follow him; rather, people find him so that they can follow him.  A leader who has lost his life only to find it in Christ will lead you to Christ where you will find your life as well.

This is something that all of us must continually seek God about every single day because all of us are leaders to someone in some way.  This is for everyone, but especially for us husbands and daddys, it is of the UTMOST importance that we lead correctly!! Run after Jesus because they will run after you, guaranteed.