Thursday Post #1-Leadership

  Leadership is the ability to provide vision for others, while empowering and uniting them in the pursuit of this vision.  In looking at the broad spectrum of leaders, there are good leaders and bad leaders as well as good people and bad people.  This is an important distinction to make, as good leaders are not always good people.  Hitler and Mussolini were a couple of guys who inspired nations to be united behind a cause and most certainly empowered them to work towards this goal, but there is no way one could argue that these were good people.  On the same note, there are plenty of people who are great men and women of integrity, but are not good leaders.  I believe when God gets his hand on someone of integrity who has the ability of bringing people together and empowering them to work towards a cause we witness great things.

In the Bible we are given incredible examples of people in the Old and New Testaments who were incredible leaders for the people of God.  Moses might be one of the greatest leaders of all time, who at the command and constant direction of God led an entire people in a quest for freedom against one of the most powerful ancient civilizations ever, armed with nothing more than a staff and unleavened bread.  Joshua picked up this mantle, and led the entire nation of Israel in their conquest of the promised land.  David was an incredible leader, who honored the authority over him, despite the fact that this authority wanted to kill him.

 In Paul, we see a man with an uncontrollable passion for the gospel who spreads the church more than just about any individual over the course of history.  Maybe the greatest example of leadership we are given though is Christ, who comes as the servant.  I cannot think of anyone else who presents a vision more glorious than bringing the kingdom of God to earth and uniting those under him to share this vision.  Not only are they united, but he also imparts his divine spirit to them in order to empower them to accomplish this goal.  All of this is done as the leader who was willing to wash his students’ feet, and die upon a cross.