Stewardship is the greatest hallmark of leadership

Recently I was told of a survey that rated CEO’s based on perceptions. It found that leaders who looked the part commanded an average 7% higher pay.

The biblical King Saul was a commanding presence. Yet he was a bad leader - the unfulfilled perceptions were to be a recurring theme of history. His successor, David, was also striking, but Saul tried to kill him, his son subverted him, he had many enemies and his wives scoffed at him. So much for the idea that appearances matter, not that I give much credence to perceptions, given the sheer number of leaders who never lived up to their images.

What made David such a great king was beyond perception. God saw a heart after His own heart. When he fled from cave to cave, he learnt to listen to the voice of His shepherd. He never became great because he looked the part or was some superhero or had all the answers – his prayers suggest vulnerability and a lack of answers. He was a great leader, not because he could command men, although to an extent he did in spite of so many rejections. He became a great leader because he submitted to God.

Designed for glory

We are not our own. God our maker, called us to serve His purpose and fulfill our design potential.

I read a quote recently, which implied that we cannot reach our potential without Jesus.

That sounds good enough, but I am never happy to just accept motherhood and apple pie. I need to dig into an expression like that and get to its soul.

In 1947, Howard Hughes built a huge, eight-engined propeller powered aircraft out of wood (due to wartime shortages of metals). Critics soon dubbed it the “Spruce Goose”. The eccentric billionaire had taken flying to the edge on many occasions, but he invested all his passions into building this great aircraft: the largest flying boat ever and the reigning world champion for all aircraft in terms of wing span (97m) and overall height (24.2m) – compare that with dimensions for the world’s largest passenger aircraft at 76m wingspan and 24.1m height and you get some idea of how big the Spruce Goose was.

But, alas, the Spruce Goose only flew once at a height of 70m and a speed of 135mph. Critics argue that she lacked the power to climb and only achieved her maiden flight through ground effects. Well, whatever the truth, I am sure the plane was never designed to be parked in a museum, in Long Island. It was designed to fly and carry cargo. But it never reached its potential.

Everything in life is designed. Go and look at the smallest insect and you will see design and logic. Each has its place in the cycle of life, the food chain and the functional balance of nature. Nothing is wasted.

It is as true that we were built to specification. We may not be Spruce Gooses, but each of us is uniquely designed for a purpose. God created humans to serve many general and specific purposes, but He never intended any aspect of His creation to become a mere museum artifact. We were made to live, breathe and be of value.

So, when we speak of reaching our potential, we at least refer to the fulfillment of the potential invested in us by our maker. But there is a more subtle point here. We have not reached our potential merely for the fact of doing or achieving many things or through the exploitation of our talents. We can only reach our potential within the context of God’s will and purpose for our lives – He is the sole judge of what we are supposed to be and whether we realize that potential.

So it is right to say that without Jesus we cannot reach our potential – we can do much and achieve great things, but we can only reach our potential on the terms of our maker.

This introduces two key leadership issues.

Firstly, are you a leader at all, by God’s standard, if you merely achieve. No you are only a leader insofar as you achieve His purpose. That is not at all unreasonable. When shareholders elect a CEO they entrust the stewardship of their investment to the chief executive, which may or may not center around profit growth. In return, the CEO entrusts issues of compensation to them. No CEO who is truly worth his own salt exists for himself. An executive exists to satisfy the objectives of his shareholders and his performance will be judged by them alone.

Church leaders are there to execute God’s mandate. In effect they are really just midwives who oversee the outworking of God’s potential and the realization of Christ-likeness in the lives of individuals.

That brings me to the second point. You are not a leader if you mold followers to your ways or your patterns and make them replicas of yourself, for you are not and shall never be the standard by which their potential shall be measured. You can only consider success in terms of the degree to which Christ is formed in the hearts of people and that is exactly what Paul defined as the whole purpose of ministry (read it for yourselves in Ephesians 4). As partakers of the divine nature of God He has given us all we need for life and Godliness, so that the outworking of His potential may redound to His glory without ever being the product of human ingenuity or original thinking – indeed, no flesh shall ever glory in His presence.

I get the feeling that the modern shepherd has become more of a cowherd, living with the notion that leadership is all about herding people from meeting to meeting and doing relevant crowd management through good music, entertaining ministry, creative programs and comfortable auditoria. Well that’s all good and well and may have its place, but when you stand before Him one day, the sole shareholder of this divine enterprise will only be concerned with the faithfulness of your stewardship. If we fail to implement the patterns He has prescribed for us, we have not achieved at all and we will have missed our potential.”

Look, simply put, the church is not a good ideas club. It is God’s design for bringing us all (not an exclusive few) into unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man. That is what we are about and what we must achieve, nothing more, nothing less. If people do not grow up into the head, which is Christ, and thus become like Him as true disciples, well then you can only really claim to have formed a museum artifact, something with unfulfilled potential that was designed for greatness.

(c) Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/

Stand in the gap

The power of precedence, is a key biblical principle. It was the watershed of major historic events.

The act of one man, Adam, less so much his wife, determined the future of the entire human race. The act of Saul, when he disobeyed Samuel, blighted his descendents and cut them off from the throne of Israel. A single act of obedience by one old man on a lonely Canaanite outpost, blessed all of Abraham’s descendants from that day onwards. When Esau sold his birthright for some stew, he could never get it back though he sought it with tears, but what he lost to Jacob would remain Jacob’s inheritance forever.

Ultimately these principles point to the cross where the second Adam, paid the price to right the precedence of sin and death that came through the first Adam, so that now through that one man righteousness and life must accrue to all who believe in Him.

These principles allude to the weightiness of leadership and the substance of our stewardship. It is why I, like many other men, drew a line in the sand and declared that whatever errors defined our forefathers, the rot would stop with us.

It is evident from 1 Samuel 10, that God anointed Saul and placed His spirit on him, but that did not prevent his failure because Saul had never been through the forging furnaces of life that are so necessary for preparing us for greater responsibility. But David first proved his heart, then was anointed as a future king and then faced years of struggle and only then was He commissioned to rule as King. That made him a far more resilient and wise leader, but it also ensured his own teach-ability, humility and sensibility.

The problem with leaders that have power without substance, is that they are all too often impulsive, reckless and egocentric, just as Saul was. They also suppress all opposition, just as Saul did. They can break organizations and do untold harm to the teams they inherit, but their insecurity makes them the centre of attention so that everything revolves around the dominant individual, just as it was for Saul. And like Saul, some of them never outgrow their flaws but eventually just fall on their own swords.

A seasoned campaigner has fewer chips on their shoulder and is more likely to be magnanimous, tough when needed, but otherwise unthreatened by other aspirant leaders.

So as moments of decision or key individuals made telling differences to succeeding generations throughout history, so one leader can and often does make a telling difference to the future of modern organizations, including churches. That demands a very accountable, servant-like heart that is in touch with the weight of their role and willing to humbly execute their mandate in obedience to God.

Look what Abraham did after he secured God’s blessing. He paid great attention to detail in ensuring that Isaac was mentored, had the right wife to support him and was otherwise adequately prepared to carry his legacy into the future. I could paraphrase the man’s sense of his blessing and the implications thereof: “Heck, I will not let anyone take this blessing and corrupt it. Listen to me Eliezer, this is not a matter of life and death: it is much more than that. Place your hand on my groin and swear by an oath that you will not fail to ensure a proper wife for my son and a mother to my grandchildren.”

I may have used nice airy-fairy biblical language thus far, but the previous paragraph brings the concept of stewardship into a richer perspective. The kind of heart it takes to carefully watch over and shepherd all that God entrusts to a leader, is the kind of heart that has paid too great a price to ever drop the ball.

Leadership is not a game, nor is it a title, rank, career or symbol for our fragile egotism. It is a fearful and significant thing for God to delegate the weight of His kingdom to us and to call us watch over His beloved people.

When we wound the sheep and drive them away to preserve our own rights, we stand guilty of the presumptuous sin that David so despised. But when we fearfully determine that none shall be lost of those so entrusted to us, then and only then will we have grasped the heart of leadership.

Leadership is not eloquence or learning, but may involve both. But when leaders are anointed because they look, sound or seem the part, they are nothing but empty vessels, sounding gongs and clanging symbols (1 Corinthians 13: 1). But when we shepherd faithfully, in a covenant of love and a full understanding that we can make a difference for the kingdom in preserving His legacy, then you will understand why, “love is patient and kind, without boasting or pride. It is never rude (offensive to the sheep) or self-seeking. Nor is it easily angered and it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres and it will never fail” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8).

© Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/