Deep in the heart of most men looms the question, What was I created to do? What is God’s mission for me? Os Guinness writes, In more than thirty years of public speaking and in countless conversations around the world, I have heard that issue come up more than any other. Genesis 2:15 partially answers that question for men, where we are told that Adam is placed in the garden to work it. The Hebrew word is avad, which mean to make fruitful, to cause to flourish. Adam’s calling is to help the garden (world) and its inhabitants reach their fullest potential. In other words, Adam is designed to IMPACT his surroundings. No wonder men dream of changing the world. No wonder men want to fix their wife’s problems instead of just listening to how she feels. No wonder men want to make a difference—it’s in our design! We are made to change things. We are made to have impact. This episode looks at how we impact the people God has placed around us for Christ.
The greatest impact we have on those around us often comes when we fill the role of spiritual leader. This role can come to us in countless ways—by being assigned by God to spiritual leadership at home as a husband and father, or by serving as a church or ministry leader. Leadership can come with being the default spiritual influencer on your sports team or among your friends. It can be the result of assuming responsibility to steer brothers and sisters in your extended family towards Christ, or neighbors, or work associates. This episode looks at the way spiritual leadership can have maximum impact in the lives of those who surround us.
The most valuable truth I’ve learned about leadership in general is that leadership is not synonymous with authority. Authority is a good thing; God punishes sin, the boss has the power to fire, God gives the state power to punish wrong behavior, and parents need to exercise firm discipline to train their children. You might say, authority is the power to COERCE obedience. When kids are young, in our house, we use AUTHORITY (discipline) to get the behavior we want. But when our kids are older, away from the house, if the child still chooses to do what you would want him to do—that’s LEADERSHIP. Authority uses force to coerce obedience (a good, necessary thing). Leadership accepts the responsibility of wielding authority—but leadership primarily uses influence to cause your child to want to obey you.
In fact, leadership really is influence. Spiritual leadership in the home is the ability to get your wife and children to follow you in your love for Jesus. My favorite leadership proverb is, He who thinks he is leading when no one is following is only taking a walk. Successful spiritual leadership at home is creating a desire in your wife and in your children to WANT to follow you as you follow Christ.
Authority, again, is a God-ordained structure that we must teach children to respect. But effective leadership (especially with adults and teens) must go beyond authority. Harry Selfridge, the owner of a London department store chain, shows his managers the difference between seeing themselves as bosses or leaders.
- The boss drives people, the leader coaches them.
- The boss depends upon authority, the leader depends upon good will.
- The boss says, “I”; the leader says, “We.”
- The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.
- The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how it is done.
- The boss says, “Go!”; the leader says, “Let’s go!”
Three Components of Leadership and How They Relate to One Another:
1. THE TARGET: Leaders are taking their followers somewhere. There is a goal to achieve, a mountain to climb, a destination to reach. When we talk about spiritual leadership, i.e. influencing those around us towards Christ, we could define the goal as spiritual maturity.
2. FOLLOWERS or POTENTIAL FOLLOWERS: For dads, it is our wife, kids, and grandkids. But followers can also be those I lead in my Bible study, those I serve in church leadership, a friend who has drifted from Christ that I am seeking to bring back, or a work associate I am trying to lead to Christ.
3. THE LEADER: This can be the one assigned leadership by God in the family, or filling a leadership role at work, in the church, in the classroom or on the athletic field. Being a leader is not synonymous with being an upfront person. As any church dynamics expert will tell you, the real leader in the church may not even hold an office; but he or she is the one everyone listens to—the key influencer.
HOW EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP WORKS
Effective leadership follows the three arrows on the diagram (orange, green, and brown), which describe the reltionship between the 3 components of leadership:
1. Orange arrow across the bottom: The leader must, himself, FOCUS upon and MODEL his own spiritual maturity. He must lead from his life (MODEL). However, here is a key point for men: What you model is DIRECTION not PERFECTION. The gospel is that we all get knocked down by our own sin. Our kids know we fail. It does NOT help them to see us try to hide our failure; what they need is to see us fail and then get up, get back into the race, and follow after Christ even harder.
2. Vertical green arrow on left. A leader’s influence is completely dependent upon the quality of his relationship with his followers. We will look next week at how Jesus, affirmed, served, motivated, challenged, felt compassion for, and loved his followers.
3. Brown arrow from upper left to lower right. The leader EQUIPS and ASSISTS his followers to keep taking steps towards the goal, spiritual maturity. The best leader is not a hero; he is a hero maker. (Check out a great book by this title, Hero Maker, by Dave Ferguson.) Good leaders 1) help their followers see their own potential, 2) encourage them to discover their own, God-given gifts and passions, 3) equip them with training needed to succeed, 4) give them honest feedback, praising their successes, and pointing out their blind-spots. Many dads understand this part of fathering in the sports arena. We do everything we can to help our kids discover their athletic gifts, develop their skills at throwing, catching, kicking the soccer ball, take them to countless practices, try to get them the best coaching we can, and root obnoxiously for them during the games. But Bob Hamrin of Great Dads asks, Dad, do you put as much energy into helping prepare your child to succeed spiritually as you do athletically?
FOCUS/MODEL
Let’s turn to this bottom orange arrow. The first part of the leadership influence process is staying focused on our mission, ourselves, so that we can lead from our own lives. Paul wrote to Timothy: You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose (2 Tim 3:10 NIV). Notice, that Paul called attention not just to what he had said, my teaching, but to his everyday way of life, and even to what Paul was pursing as his mission, my purpose. Paul stayed focused on his mission, and he led from his life.
As busy men trying to be faithful to God’s purpose for us, can we put some kind of plain, clear target on the wall for which we can aim? Can we state this purpose in a way that enable us to maintain a clear focus upon it? That is the very purpose of this podcast/blog. The clear mission of the church is to make disciples. When Jesus gave us this Great Commission, to go and make disciples, those hearing it understood the meaning of that word, disciple. Bands of disciples with their masters were common in Jesus’ day. Everyone knew that a disciple (the Greek word is mathetes) was a FOLLOWER of a master. Jesus’ hearers knew three things about disciples. 1) The disciple had the deepest kind of personal friendship with the master because they did life together. 2) The disciple patterned his whole life on the teaching and example of his master. The disciple’s greatest goal was to be like his master. 3) The disciple, as a “follower” joined in his master’s cause. Jesus came into the world to overthrow the kingdom of darkness and establish his kingdom of righteousness.
This podcast/blog's three-part definition of our mission is rooted in this original, three-part understanding that a DISCIPLE is a FOLLOWER of Jesus. This is how we state our three-part mission:
a. A disciple has a close personal relationship with his master. (We are Called TO Christ--to enjoy a love relationship with him.)
b. A disciple seeks to be like his master (We are Called to BE LIKE Christ—to holy, Christ-like attitudes.)
c. A disciple joins the master in his mission (We are Called to EXERCISE DOMINION FOR Christ—to implement Christ’s righteous agenda in our role as husband, father, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, steward of resources, and ambassador of the kingdom. Christ has begun to overthrow evil and establish his kingdom of righteousness over the earth. That is why his followers are commanded, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt 6:33).
The more we stay focused on this mission, the greater will be our impact on others for Christ. I want to say that again: The more we stay focused on this mission, the greater will be our impact on others for Christ.
HOW TO STAY FOCUSED ON CHRIST’S MISSION FOR YOU
1. Have a concrete target to aim for—which is what we just tried to forge. If you aim at nothing, that is what you usually hit. That’s true in everyday life and it is just as true in your spiritual life. If you fail to aim, aim to fail. Knowing our mission makes a difference, as we begin a new week: 1) knowing that our number one goal is to feast on Christ’s love for us and try to love him back 2) remembering that God wants to develop Christ-like attitudes in us like sacrificial love, patience, perseverance, self-control, and 3) having thought a bit about God’s agenda for each sphere of our lives.
2. Realize that effectiveness in our mission requires us to resist distractions. A few kilowatts of light, if it is focused, becomes a laser which can cut through steel. One time, Thomas Edison was asked by a reporter, how he became so successful. He answered, “The ability to apply my physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly, without growing weary is my secret to success.” When a reporter suggested that Edison imposed a rather severe schedule on himself and was very smart, the inventor laughed, looked at the reporter, and said, “You do something all day long don’t’ you? Everyone does. If you get up at 7 AM and go to bed at 11, you have 16 good hours, and it is certain that most people have been doing something all that time. The only difference is—they do it about a great many things. I do it about one. That is focus.
3. Realize that God, himself, established the pattern of working six days then resting and reflecting. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation (Gen 2:3). God does not rest because he is physically tired! It appears that he rested to celebrate and enjoy his work. His example is a pattern for us, his image bearers. Like him, we are assigned the work of developing the potential of creation, but also to rest and reflect upon our work. When this pattern is made one of the Ten Commandments, God adds that this Sabbath rest is to the Lord. The implication is that our rest and celebration of our work (our mission) is reflecting with our boss the work he assigned us, i.e. exercising dominion for him over the world he created and is now redeeming. Could it be that the Lord’s Day, as a day free from our regular work routine, is not given to us as a restriction so we can worry about whether we can watch the NFL, but as a profound gift—a day specially set apart for renewal, reflection, celebration of the God whose creation we are to develop and redeem? Could you find one hour on Sunday afternoon or evening to reflect specifically upon your mission with the one who assigned it to you?
For Further Prayerful Thought:
1. What stood our most to you about effective spiritual leadership?
2. How can you stay better focused on your mission?
