When Servant Leaders MUST Fire Someone
There is no better way to help people achieve at their highest potential than servant leadership. Servant leaders, committed to the mission, the organization, and their people, work to find more effective means to achieve, strengthen their organization, and build up their people. When the leader’s concern for people is sincere and trusted, expectations can be discussed openly and problems corrected. Occasions when someone has to separated from the organization and the team are few.
An Inescapable Responsibility
However, there are situations where a servant leader must take action to remove someone. Some of these situations are — or should be — easy decisions.
Confession Meets Forgiveness
I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. . . .
Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept.
Genesis 45.4,14
When sincere confession meets deep forgiveness, amazing things can happen. Consider one, truly amazing case. The case of Judah.
(more…)Crossing the River of Fear
In three days, you will cross the Jordan River. This is my command—
be strong and courageous! For the Lord your God is with
you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9-11
The river was dark with fear: hesitations, doubts, timidity. On this side the people of Israel. On the other, the land of God’s promise. Just step in. Walk across. Easy! Right?
Wrong!
There were two problems: the first physical, the second spiritual. The Jordan was at flood stage: wide, deep, fast, dangerous. God worked a miracle. The waters stopped. The river dried up. Problem one solved.
(more…)Break Free from Your “List”
Just as Death and Destruction are never satisfied, so human
desire is never satisfied. Proverbs 27:20
As a boy, I had a painful longing for a certain baseball glove. When my father gave it to me, I was ecstatic, but a week later I discovered that I wanted a new bat. After that is was a certain pocket knife. And then more. It seemed that taking one thing off the list inevitably meant one more thing—usually several more—were added.
Sometimes shorter, most often longer, the list of things I wanted was never empty. Sixty years later what I want has changed, but my list still is not empty. You have a list too, and it’s not empty. It never will be.
“Human desire is never satisfied,” the Scripture says. Why? The answer may surprise you.
Our desires and longings were never meant to be fully satisfied by things or relationships or anything else within the circle of this earth. We are incomplete. We long for more and always will, because only the joys of heaven will fully and finally satisfy our deepest needs.
Really? Are we inescapably chained to unsatisfied longings that will forever gnaw at us? No!
Full satisfaction of our desires awaits arrival in our forever home. It is a promise for the future and hope for today, but we do not have to trapped in our desires. “Rejoice always,” the Apostle Paul writes, “gives thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16-18).
(more…)Courage to Continue
We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold
our original confidence firm to the end.
(Hebrews 12:12-13)
175 meters from the finish, searing pain shot down Derek Redmond’s right leg. He fell in agony to the ground, his Olympic dream over. To everyone’s amazement, he struggled to his feet, determined to finish the race. On one leg, he began to hop forward.
Suddenly, a man jumped from the stands. Pushing past the security guards, he ran to Derek and put his arm around the injured athlete. They crossed the finish line together. 65,000 fans stood and roared approval. Courage!
The man who helped him across the finish line? It was his father.
This Scripture encourages us to hold fast to confidence in Christ. Along the course of our race there are many obstacle, not the least is what Hebrews calls “the sin that clings so closely” (Hebrews 12.1).
It takes two things to continue. The first is courage. We may stumble, fall, suffer hurt and setback, but then we must get up again. If we can’t run, we can hop. Can’t hop? We crawl. Can’t crawl? God carries us.
(more…)Spread It Out Before the Lord!
After Hezekiah received the letter, he spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed. (Isaiah 37:14-15)
One day your life is running along in its normal way, and then, without warning, arrives a worry, a demand, a threat, perhaps frightening, possibly overwhelming. What do you do?
Hezekiah had a day like that. He received a letter from the King of Assyria. The scroll contained a demand and a threat. If the demand was frightening, the threat was terrifying. Hezekiah would either surrender Jerusalem to the Assyrian king or he and its entire population would be destroyed.
Today we unfold letters. In the ancient world scrolls had to be spread out flat. Hezekiah took the threatening scroll up to the temple and “spread it out before the Lord.”
Can you picture Hezekiah hands moving from side to side as he unrolls the scroll on the altar? As Isaiah says, he “spreads it out before the Lord,” placing the entire situation into God’s hands.
This is a powerful moment we can learn from. Faced with death and destruction, Hezekiah’s immediately goes before God and spreads it out before the Lord in prayer.
(more…)Improve Your Storytelling
It’s an ancient art. A storyteller has captures his listener’s with voice and gestures. As the tale unfolds people learn the heritage of their people, weep over their tragedies, rejoice in their triumphs. The stories express deep longings and fears, cherished dreams and hopes, values and behaviors to imitate or avoid.
Would you like to improve your storytelling? Peter Guber can help. Guber is producer of films such as Rainman and The Color Purple. His films have earned over $3 billion dollars worldwide and earned over 50 Academic Award nominations. This is man who knows a lot about story telling.
Great Storytellers Are Great “Truth Tellers”
At the core of every great story is a great truth, Guber explains. At root storytelling is “truth telling.” Great stories point to truth about the meaning of our world and our lives. Effective storytellers, Guber believes, master the four truths of storytelling.
1. Truth to the Storyteller
A consummate storyteller “knows his own deepest values and reveals them in his story with honest and candor. When a story is congruent with the teller’s own values and beliefs it bears the hallmarks of authenticity. Authenticity is important because the storyteller wants to “enter the hearts of his listeners,” Guber says, “because he must enter the hearts of his listeners. Because people know the power of their heart to move them, people guard access to this part of their soul. The storyteller uses the truth of a well-told story to bypass these guards and speak deep truth to the heart. “So although the mind may be part of your target,” Guber says, “the heart is the bulls-eye.”
Scripture gives a marvelous example. Filled with pride and sin David sits with the confidence of absolute power on his throne as Nathan tells the story of a wealthy and unscrupulous man who for his own pleasure stole the treasured lamb of a poor family. His story slips past David’s defenses, speaks directly to his conscience, and breaks his heart. Such behavior is an outrage, David proclaims before all in his court, and, “The man who did this deserves to die.” Within seconds the powerful king is reduced to a sinner, crying out in shame to God: “Against, you, you only, have I sinned.” Nathan has hit the heart’s bulls-eye. His story is consistent with his own deep values, and he has become a truth teller to God’s king.
(more…)Leading From Behind: The Shepherd’s Way
There’s a marvelous article in the Harvard Business Review on “leading from behind” and “leadership as collective genius.” Professor Linda Hill is chair of the Harvard Business School’s High Potential Leadership program and an active researcher in the field of leadership. Leadership in the future, she says, will require “leading from behind” to create environments where people working in teams can contribute their skills for collaborative problem solving and innovation through the joint creativity of diverse teams. (See the article here.)
She compares this process to the work of a shepherd. Shepherds lead from the rear of the flock, helping them navigate and creating an environment where the more nimble and agile are able to run ahead so that the others can follow. The task of the leader is to help individuals flourish in their roles, setting boundaries for the flock, and helping to resolve tensions. Leading from behind is particularly important when the goal is to encourage innovation, discovery and implementation of new ideas and processes. Innovation flourishes where leaders both unleash and harness the creativity of the team, Hill says. “You have to create an environment in which” all the participants are “engaged and in which the collective talent of team members is tapped by having everyone take the lead at some point.”
Nelson Mandela and “Leading from Behind”
In more recent time the concept of “leading from behind” has been associated with President Barrack Obama and said to be a foolish idea. This confuses politics with leadership, and seriously fails to understand the concept. “Leading from Behind” is not about hanging back and failing to lead. Nelson Mandela, a leader admired world-wide for his strength of character explains the true meaning of “leading from behind.”
“It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” (Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 1995, 22).
“Leading from behind” is about empowering others to lead in addition to yourself. It’s about being in front when there is danger but allowing others to join in when there is success. Leading from behind is the pattern of strong, not weak, leadership.
(more…)The Priority of Love
Is there anything a grave marker can teach us about love?
The answer is “a lot.” Take a look at the stone below that stands over the grave of Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators.
Cam’s final message to his followers includes two exhortations. First, “By love serve one another.” Second, “Finish the task.” Notice that serving one another by love comes first and the task second. The order is deliberate, instructive, and biblically accurate. The great task of Bible translation is carried out by the community of believers who love one another.
There is always a temptation to put practical results first, to make “getting the job done” the first priority and then to fit in love for one another when there is time or opportunity. The problem with this approach is that loving one another gets squeezed out in the rush to catch the next flight, to get to the next appointment, to take the next phone call, to answer the next email, and–well–very simply to do “the next thing.”
Commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission can turn into this kind of high-pressured race. Let potential followers who want to gather together for fellowship go elsewhere. We “signed up” to do evangelism and the Great Commission not to love one another. This can even turn into a suspicion of taking time to love one another as if loving one another could become the enemy of the Great Commission.
What Does It Mean to Be a Disciple?
What does it mean to truly follow Jesus? To be one of His disciples?
Jesus Himself gave us the answer to this question in Luke 14:33.
“. . . those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”
He affirmed this same truth in another way in Mark 8:34-35.
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
for whoever wants to save their live will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
Guy Saffold
