We are looking at the gift of leadership today, because it is one of the most important gifts of the Spirit. We are emphasizing spiritual gifts because we want you to desire the gifts of the Spirit and pray to receive at least one, if not more of them, in order that your life might be used by God with the time you have been given here. Specifically, we are emphasizing leadership today because a church is only as strong as its leaders. I am so pleased that we have a great deal of strength in this area. I am very proud of the people of this church for being leaders. Along with your spiritual growth, which is inspiring to me as your pastor, I am impressed by how many people we have who are operating in the area of their spiritual gifting. Often, as I am in prayer in the morning, my heart sings with praise to God for all of you. Your love for God, your spiritual growth and involvement in ministry just fills me with joy.
As leaders you have not needed anyone to hold your hand and watch over your shoulder; you take the initiative and think for yourselves. Most of the programs and ministries of this church have come as a result of one of you seeing a need and then taking the initiative in order to see that need was met. Your gifted leadership is inspiring and encouraging others to do something they have been feeling nudged by God to do. So today, I want you to understand the importance of leadership and pray that God will give you the gift of leadership. Understand that I am not talking about becoming the head of some committee. Far from it. I am talking about understanding what your gifts are and then using those gifts for ministry. You begin to operate in the area of your giftedness and then lead others to share that ministry with you.
The first point that I want to lift out today is: A leader is a person of integrity. Integrity means that you are the same person in private that you are in public. You do not have a secret life. It does no good to try to lead if people will not follow you, and the thing that will sabotage your leadership more than anything else is a lack of integrity. What we are talking about is trust. People will not follow someone they cannot trust. Your biggest asset is leading by example. You cannot take people somewhere you have not gone or are not willing to go. You cannot just teach good behavior, you have to model good behavior. A leader is someone who has first of all become a follower — a follower of Christ. The Apostle Paul said, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). To get people to follow Christ, he had to first get them to follow him, and to get them to follow him they had to know that he was following Christ.
The news broke this week that William Bennett, the drug czar and education secretary under Republican presidents, has evidently lost millions in Las Vegas and Atlantic City over the last decade. In a statement released Monday, he said, “A number of stories in the media have reported that I have engaged in high stakes gambling over the past decade. It is true that I have gambled large sums of money. I have also complied with all laws on reporting wins and losses. Nevertheless, I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I wish to set. Therefore, my gambling days are over.” His statement is good in that he admitted the truth, he confessed that his actions were not a good example, and promised to stop gambling altogether. That is more than others have done. But you have to wonder what he was thinking all that time. He is the author of books like The Book of Virtues, The Moral Compass and The Death of Outrage. He is the moral commentator on many TV and radio talk shows. How is it that he saw so clearly the sins of others and did not see his own error? He could have used those millions for such good purposes other than for his own excitement. His lack of integrity has seriously damaged his ability to lead.
How can we avoid this? One thing you can do is to pray that God would reveal to you the areas in your life where you may be blind. We all have our areas of blindness, and we have to be willing to see them. You can also invite other people (your spouse, children or friends) to share with you the inconsistent areas in your life which you need help seeing. That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? It may be painful, but it may also make you a better person and a more fruitful leader. A leader has to be able to take correction. A little humility in a leader goes a long way. The book of Proverbs says, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity” (Proverbs 11:3). It makes all the difference whether you are just talking the walk, or you are actually walking the walk.
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.”
The second point about leadership is: A leader is a person of vision. 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. You can be a Don Quixote and chase windmills dreaming the impossible dream, but what good is it if the dream is actually impossible. 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.”
The third point about leadership is: A leader is a person of endurance. 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.
Larry Bird became an outstanding free-throw shooter by practicing 500 shots every morning before he went to school. 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. When a leader does not see immediate results, he remembers the scripture that says, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3).
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 as with the other gifts, 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. They say with the Psalmist: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass” (Psalm 37:5, KJV).
Keith Cox writes: “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? John Henry Newman, one of the most important Christian thinkers of the nineteenth century, provides a compelling answer: ‘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, who are at once the teachers and the pattern of it.’” He is talking about leaders. This is why this gift is so important. Leaders change the world. May God grant us more of them.
Rodney J. Buchanan
May 11, 2003
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
THE GIFT OF LEADERSHIP
Questions for May 11, 2003
1. Why is it important for Christians to develop the gift of leadership?
2. Why is character so important when it comes to leading others?
3. Read 1 Corinthians 11:1. Why is this an important statement for us to make as well?
4. Read Proverbs 11:3. The old saying goes that you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. How does this verse from Proverbs speak to this truth?
5. Read a dictionary definition for the word vision. Why is this essential to leadership?
6. What is the difference between a pipe dream and a vision? How does a leader balance vision and realism?
7. “The difference between a successful leader and an unsuccessful one is often the willingness to work hard.” Do you agree with this, or do you think that leadership is merely a gift?
8. What are the things that a leader may have to do endure, and why is endurance important?
9. What sacrifices may a leader need to make?
10. What are the benefits and blessings of being a leader?
