Leadership is not position, it is a function. It is not status, but a role anchor for other roles..
After a long period of Jewish history, during which they were ruled by judges, the last judge, Samuel, had to manage a painful transition to a monarchy.
The demand for a king came from the people, who felt that the nation had no centre, no unifying factor. They looked at other nations and saw that they had kings to rule over them.
Samuel advised them that a king would be costly. “He will draft your sons into the army and your daughters will serve in his courts. He will tax you and impose all kinds of laws on you. Why do you reject God and seek a king in His place?” 1 Samuel 8.
I am reminded of a story about a man who went to a shop to buy an electric drill. The sales person asked him, “what do you need it for?” “To make a hole in the wall”, came the reply. “Ah then what you need is something to make a hole in the wall (not necessarily an expensive drill)”.
What Israel demanded, had little do with her need. She needed a centre and a unifying force, things to raise her stature amongst the nations and to assert her strategic position. She perceived that a king would solve that, but overlooked that God was her centre and had always been so. He had turned a slave culture into a noble nation and given them title to their own land. For two hundred years that had progresses as a nation, albeit not in the ways that we prefer to measure success.
Sometimes I wonder if we are able to recognize success. Capitalism is insatiable, always demanding progress regardless of the damage it often causes. God’s model of success had far more to do with peace, stability, order, spiritual significance, maturity and issues of character. Wealth, power and status were not on his list of priorities.
However, God is also progressive. He moved Israel from nothing to something in a very deliberate way. So we must assume that He was not against progress, just concerned with how that would be achieved.
The first principle of leadership is to know what you seek to achieve. Stephen Covey made the same point about starting with the end in mind. The theory of situation leadership also comes to mind.
How often people feel nothing can be achieved without a significant leader, a pastor or senior pastor or bishop or something similar. That is not God’s heart. Leadership is not specifically about an icon or charismatic pinnacle, but about galvanizing people and that is the need that leadership must meet.
Perhaps what Israel really needed to ask God for was a centre, a process that would unify and integrate Israel into something looking like a nation. The solutions to such a brief, might well have involved a form of leadership that would not have looked like a king.
After a long period of Jewish history, during which they were ruled by judges, the last judge, Samuel, had to manage a painful transition to a monarchy.
The demand for a king came from the people, who felt that the nation had no centre, no unifying factor. They looked at other nations and saw that they had kings to rule over them.
Samuel advised them that a king would be costly. “He will draft your sons into the army and your daughters will serve in his courts. He will tax you and impose all kinds of laws on you. Why do you reject God and seek a king in His place?” 1 Samuel 8.
I am reminded of a story about a man who went to a shop to buy an electric drill. The sales person asked him, “what do you need it for?” “To make a hole in the wall”, came the reply. “Ah then what you need is something to make a hole in the wall (not necessarily an expensive drill)”.
What Israel demanded, had little do with her need. She needed a centre and a unifying force, things to raise her stature amongst the nations and to assert her strategic position. She perceived that a king would solve that, but overlooked that God was her centre and had always been so. He had turned a slave culture into a noble nation and given them title to their own land. For two hundred years that had progresses as a nation, albeit not in the ways that we prefer to measure success.
Sometimes I wonder if we are able to recognize success. Capitalism is insatiable, always demanding progress regardless of the damage it often causes. God’s model of success had far more to do with peace, stability, order, spiritual significance, maturity and issues of character. Wealth, power and status were not on his list of priorities.
However, God is also progressive. He moved Israel from nothing to something in a very deliberate way. So we must assume that He was not against progress, just concerned with how that would be achieved.
The first principle of leadership is to know what you seek to achieve. Stephen Covey made the same point about starting with the end in mind. The theory of situation leadership also comes to mind.
How often people feel nothing can be achieved without a significant leader, a pastor or senior pastor or bishop or something similar. That is not God’s heart. Leadership is not specifically about an icon or charismatic pinnacle, but about galvanizing people and that is the need that leadership must meet.
Perhaps what Israel really needed to ask God for was a centre, a process that would unify and integrate Israel into something looking like a nation. The solutions to such a brief, might well have involved a form of leadership that would not have looked like a king.
(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com
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