Jesus as leader - beyond the man

The most telling feature of Jesus’ own leadership and the greatest reason for His impact on the world was because He touched the world where it hurt most. To try and comment on His leadership from any other perspective would be to cast Him into the mold of an icon: the very reason He had to go away again.

If we remember Him as a man, for all the greatness evident in His life, we will never benefit from His life or death – indeed we will be intimidated by it. He will be to us nothing more than the stones of condemnation that Moses smashed before His people – a standard beyond us. Yet even if we could get past that, we would still veil Him in mystique and miss the very point of His incarnation. He came to die, not to live as a hero.

The golden calf was a depiction of Jehovah, not a throw back to the gods of Egypt. Because Moses had been gone too long they created a replica of their concept of God. Sadly, in remembering Jesus the man and in trying to evoke a visible replica of a savior who never wanted to be remembered that way, many have made another golden calf.

What Jesus did not do - part 2

Continuing on the theme of the previous blog ...

He did not do performance - He was never driven by externalities, but by an inner compass - a desire to please the Father. His obedience was rewarding enough to sustain His soul, thus He said, "My meat is to do His will". He was never driven by ambition or fear or personal vulnerability, all of which are negative, energy sapping and unsustainable drivers of human behaviour. He was always driven by the zeal of His Father's house.

He did not seek position - Aside from His personal presence, which had to be felt rather than observed from a distance, Jesus generally dismissed positional status. He preferred to be invisible and understated. He typically led from the middle, not from the front (as charismatic leaders prefer to do) or from the back (as generals like to do), but from the middle, where He could coach, mentor, guide, motivate and uplift His followers. He knew He only had a few years to work with them, so He had to build away from Himself.

What did Jesus not do?

So often we use models of historic or current leaders to define leadership. That is useful, but it often ends up being anecdotal rather than principled.

A principled person has a clear sense of what to do and what they will not do. Thus, observing what Jesus did not do, may provide us with a more principled leadership model. Some of the things He did not do:

He refused to be His own man - now that is about as against the grain of contemporary leadership thinking as I dare go. He defined His entire life around His Father and that became His sole basis of authority. It is not a crazy idea either, for the modern CEO is a steward of shareholder value, answerable to his board and never to his whim. That said many CEO's are self-serving, but Jesus refused to serve His own interest.