"I AM A LEADER"

I enjoy eating Girl Scout cookies. But as I was in the process of consuming a box of their iced lemon cookies, I started reading the inspirational sayings each one had, such as “I am creative,” “I am bold,” etc. There happened to be several of these messages that struck me the wrong way. “I am a leader” was one of them. There is, of course, nothing at all wrong about encouraging people to set their goals high. But I reflected on the fact that quite often when the subject of leaders comes up in the Bible, it is accompanied by a caveat.

Thus, Moses was perhaps the greatest leader in the whole Old Testament. But he did not achieve that status by setting it out as his avowed goal. Actually, he fought with God tooth and nail not to be a leader of the people at all. That may sound strange in our dog-eat-dog (to throw in another cliche') business world, but it is very familiar to me in the rather rarefied air of scientific research from which I come. At one lab in which I worked, at least four chemists were approached by the laboratory director to see if they would like to fill a management slot that had just opened up. All of them turned him down because they preferred to stay where they were rather than get promoted. At last, I was also approached and actually given no choice but to take the job. I do realize that particular work atmosphere is somewhat atypical.

Then in the Book of Judges we run into the same phenomenon when perhaps the greatest judge of all, Gideon, has to get his arm twisted by God to become a leader of the people. Soon the people long to have a great and powerful man to lead them just like the other nations had. This is despite God's earlier warning to them through Moses that a king would only tax them and force their sons into the army and on labor crews.

In the New Testament, the Twelve represent other pitfalls to leadership: fighting for special positions of power and prestige in the kingdom and trying to exclude others from sharing in their privileges. With the scribes and Pharisees, leadership meant the admiration and adulation of the people at all costs. Some of Jesus' harshest rebukes are aimed at them along with warnings that the first shall be last in the kingdom of God. And finally, Paul in the Pastoral Epistles is careful to outline all the necessary spiritual qualifications for church leadership.

In my many years at a number of different churches, I have witnessed horrible examples of what the desire to be a leader can in fact lead to. Let me relate one that happened years ago in a church I was attending. There were two factors at the time that helped to precipitate a near crisis in the congregation. The first was the fact that our senior pastor had just resigned. Secondly, a management consultant who attended our church had started a special Sunday school class for men in their 20's to 30's on becoming a leader.

The church by-laws outlined the procedure that was to be taken when looking for a new senior pastor. They included first of all securing the services of an outside person to become the interim pastor, with the proviso that he himself would not be eligible for the senior pastor position. But before the Personnel Committee had time to locate an interim pastor and was still relying on paid pulpit supply, the three associate pastors took it on themselves to inform the Committee that they had worked it all out among themselves and would be rotating duties in the pulpit from then on until a new senior pastor could be located. When the Committee gently told them that their plans would not be in accord with the current by-laws, they did not take it at all well. Especially upset was the youth minister who had obviously decided that he would be the next senior pastor and this would be a good opportunity to show the congregation what a good preacher he was.

Member of the Personnel Committee had to meet with the youth pastor privately and give him time off to consider his attitude. From that point on, things got rather chaotic with one pastor encouraging a church secretary to write a scathing letter to all church members denouncing both the deacons and the Personnel Committee for their actions. Then some of the attendees of the special Leadership Class widely circulated an e-mail labeling the Personnel Committee as “tools of Satan.” And one of the men in that class even reduced the chairman of the committee to tears by following her down the hall between services while yelling at the top of his lungs, “What are you hiding? We demand to know!”

Then came a business meeting in which the associate pastors proposed that the by-laws be changed so that the youth pastor could become the interim pastor. One of their supporters from the leadership class stood up and said, “This church is suffering from a power vacuum.” I stood up and replied, “No, there are plenty of people wanting to seize power. What we are suffering from is a servant vacuum.” The upshot was that the motion was voted down; the youth pastor turned in his resignation; and most of the members of the leadership left the church with the youth pastor to start a new congregation.

Church splits because of leadership differences are not always bad things. Just look at how Paul and Barnabas' dispute over John Mark led to two different missionary teams instead of just one to spread the Gospel message. But in our case, the result was sadly predictable. Teaming a young and inexperienced pastor with a group of men who all want to be leaders without demeaning themselves by serving or sacrificially giving to support the effort is doomed to failure. I was told that the new congregation folded after a few months when most of the men decided to take up an expensive hobby that kept their attention and money occupied elsewhere.

Just saying “I am a leader” does not necessarily make you one. And even if you are eventually destined to be a leader in your field of endeavor, that does not make you one now. In the meantime, you had better prepare yourself by becoming a good follower. “He who would be greatest in the kingdom of heaven must be servant of all,” as Jesus himself amply demonstrated.