Posts Tagged leadership

What to do if as a leader you feel called to liberate a nation that is under the oppression of a current empire? You probably want to take it easy. Just forget about the call per se and go out and get married, have a family and live a normal life. Just do the things you do with excellence and try to meet God in his own place (Exodus 2:15). Moses confronted with this dilemma run out of Egypt and went into the land of Midian probably looking for his ancestors and also looking for the God of his ancestors (Exodus 3:1). It is in Horeb, in God’s mountain where he met God and received his commission to go back to Egypt and rescue God’s people, his people.

The first priority of the leader is to encounter God. It is God who knows when people are ready, in this particular case; it was both Israel and Egypt that needed to be ready. When Moses tries the first time neither were ready. Israel was oppressed but not to the point of asking for God’s help, and Egypt was also not ready for the Lord to intervene on them.  Effective leadership is not based on need, it is based on call. The need was there and Moses saw it but if he were to persist in leading based solely on the need he saw, he probably would just get kill. Instead he undergoes transformation. This is actually harder to do. Sometimes it is easier to transform reality so it conforms to our views and satisfactions. It is much harder to be willing and able to transform ourselves in order to see reality from different vantage points.

Because effective leadership is based on call, the main outcome is not what the leader can do or what he or she can accomplish. The main outcome is what the leader becomes in the process of taking on the call and fulfilling his or her mandate. In the case of Moses, whoever edited that last words in the book of Deuteronomy “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (34:10). Then the text ponder over the mighty deeds that Moses performed before Egypt and Israel. By knowing the God of his ancestors Moses knew what his God could do through him if he be willing to obey and follow His direction. There is of course a big difference between knowing God “face to face” and thinking that one knows God. One such example we can see in the high priest Caiaphas who being in the place of Moses and standing in front of the Lord and thinking of himself as on the Lord’s side ended up as his chief enemy. “The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death” (Matthew 26:59). Jesus answers to them in Luke  “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Everyday I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour – when darkness reigns” (Luke 22:52-53). I myself tremble when I compare these passages. I have thought in the past, oh I am so busy working for God! Without thinking, yes but so were Caiaphas and the leaders of the people, as the Lord put it “at their hour”. Concerning Moses Maimonides said that he was the greatest of all prophets because all of them prophesied by dreams or visions while Moses did it while awake and conscious standing in God’s presence.

I do not know what your call or your challenges are but I do know that your first priority is to go to God and to be acquainted with Him; let him call you and let him send you. Let his power work through you. He can do through you as he did with Moses. Call on the name of Jesus and let him whisper in your heart “follow me”. Then let him empower and send you.

John 3:28-30

As a young leader, one of my biggest hindrances in ministry was to answer the deeper questions of identity in external ways. Being born in a catholic family my first identity was formed as that of a catholic. Then I had an identity as a young atheist in search for answers. Later, as I encounter Christ I did not wanted to go back to my old identity as a catholic. I became a part of the Anabaptist tradition and had a negative identity formed in contrast to Catholicism and Protestantism. Later I moved ahead in this external way of forming my identity thinking of myself in terms of occupation. I thought myself as a preacher of the gospel. An external identity based either on the denomination we serve or on the occupation that pays our bills is a false identity that hindrance the leader’s effectiveness. If you pastor a small church it is easy to feel very frustrated to see that you do not measure up as a leader. You bemoan the fact that you have no mega-church to show for and that you do not circuit the nations or fill the air streams through radio or television with the message of salvation. The next temptation is to forget your particular call and your place in the kingdom in order to emulate the pastors or leaders that you consider to be a success. In my particular case, the Lord has been at work in my heart. Through his word, great mentors, great books, brothers and sisters, prayers from the saints and daily living he has been tearing down all resistances and shedding all kinds of idols from my heart. I see now that the identity of the leader has to come from the inside. It has to be rooted in Christ, and in what he made us out to be; but first and foremost in his love and grace and mercy and compassion for us. Because Jesus made us free to be certain kind of people and for certain kind of action and certain kind of praxis, leadership comes from the intersection between being, doing and feeling. We see this interaction in Jesus (John 13:1-5). First, he had feelings of love for his disciples; second, he knew who he was and where he was going; third, he decided to love his disciples to the very end and as a farewell he started to wash his disciples feet; later he will give his life for them. Action that is not rooted in being and in an identity rooted in Christ could be activism, a sort of compensation to fill voids from false identities. Sooner or later the true feelings that accompany these false identities will show their ugly face. So sit down and ponder deeply on who you are. One place to start is by thinking as John the Baptist did. Ponder on who you are not. I am not the Christ! I am only the friend of the bridegroom. It seems to me that the greatest leaders, whether we talk about Christ or John the Baptist started out by having a conscience of who they were. Being dictates doing and feeling. The main preoccupation of the leader should be with being not with doing. With knowing who he or she is and who he or she is not.

This is important because like John the Baptist, there will be a time when you as a leader need to leave the stage so another leader can come to the scene. If you know who you are you will be happy. John’s disciples were concerned, and probably envious of Jesus. “²⁶They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.” John was happy about it. He knew his mission was to prepare the way for the Messiah. The Messiah had already come and was occupying his rightful place. John was a success. His ministry had been a success; he was neither intimidated nor envious. John did not have a sense of entitlement to his ministry. He knew who he was and was leading from the core of his being.

This knowledge of self produces leaders who lead with the success of Christ mission in mind; leaders who are glad when Christ himself, one or more of his disciples moves in. Leaders who do not feel threaten or defensive when they have to decrease in order for Christ to increase. Leaders who are eager to shed all their false identities including those tied not only to denominations, occupations or ideologies be it from agendas leaning to the right or the left.

One question from this passage is: as we march to the promise land, what are we becoming and why? God said to Moses: “go down, because your people,whom you brought out of Egypt, have become corrupt” (32:7). We could say that one reason why they become corrupt was that they could not trust God and his appointed leader. They could not trust them because they were focused on themselves. It was all about them! They were afraid that Moses would never return and they wanted more predictable gods to guide them; their search for security led them to sell out to other god’s. It happens in individual Christian leaders and in congregations. If it is about me/us, then we start the search for more predictable and manageable gods.

The contrast is not only between Moses and the people of Israel but between Moses and Aaron. While Moses was with God because he knew God was the only difference maker among his people (33:14-17) Aaron was with his people but he was not present to them as Moses was with God and his people, he was all about himself. We can see it in the confrontation he had with Moses (32:21-24). To Moses’ question of why he led his people to sin, he not only denies the charges; he sees the problem as Moses’ anger on one side and the people who are prone to evil on the other side. So what about the calf and Aaron’s involvement in the making of it? He answers that he just collected the gold and threw it into the fire and “out came this calf!”  A leader who is focus on himself like Aaron not only is unable to lead where God wants his people to go, he is not even able to own up to his mistakes. Worse, in Moses absence he is an enemy of Moses who stands against what his leader stands for: God and his mission. But in Moses’ presence and being confronted he turns to become an enemy of the people he has led to sin. So am I leading like Moses or like Aaron?

I remember the very first sermon that I preached. It was more than 25 years ago. I still remember it though. It was about me. See, I was not prepared to preach, I was not a preacher, I was totally scared of public speaking and I had not a clue I was going to preach that day. “Why did you preach?” you may ask. Several things were going on in that small congregation where I was a new convert. One thing going on was a problem with one of the leaders. I knew what the problem was because I was an employee of that leader; I also told another leader about the problem. What should have been a private talk between two leaders became a problem that involved all the men of the congregation. This went on for a couple of Sundays. To my amazement everybody was beating around the bushes but were not addressing the real problem. I decided to butt in and name the problem. That caused a big uproar. Next Sunday came and as usual I showed up at church to find that only the ladies were there. Two things were expected to happen: one, no lady will be able to step up and preach because the church believed that if there was a man present no lady could speak. The second thing that was expected was that church had to happen the way we always had done it. I could do two things: first I could step up and preach or I could just turn around and leave so a lady could preach for the other ladies. Being more hardheaded than fearful about speaking I took the first choice. But it was about me. How scared I was, what will I say, from what book, how long will I say it, will I mess up the service?

There is no telling how long it was until I got it. It is not about me! Moses was a great leader because he knew it was not about him. Of course to get there the Lord sent him 40 years into the desert to take care of sheep. After that he learned that first and foremost his life was about God’s mission. God had a mission and it was to take his people into the land of Canaan. From this vantage point, when a crisis in leadership arises he was able to deal with it for the benefit of all parties involved. When God thinks that he is done with Israel and promises Moses that he will fulfill his mission through him, he did not wanted God to come short of his promises. Either he continues his call exactly the way God intended from the beginning or he will go down with his people. I recently heard Tony Blair say that leadership is to put your life on the line for your convictions and if necessary to fall by them. Leadership is to hold everyone accountable, first of course myself then all parties involved. Moses argued with God on behalf of his people and on behalf of God’s own reputation among the Egyptians and among the nations. Moses also refused to have a sense of entitlement. When God told him about Israel being Moses’ people whom you got out of Egypt, Moses fired back clarifying that they were not his people but God’s own people.

For a leader to lead like Moses, he or she has to go from self to others and then from others to God. Normally the life of a leader starts with the self. At the beginning like in my case it is all about us. But a normal development in the life and character of a leader forces him or her to have empathy. Whether you learn to go out of self with sheep or with people, it is no longer about the leader but about those entrusted by God in his or her care. At some point though, a great leader realizes that no amount of wisdom and or experience is going to make a difference in the lives of those he or she leads. Suddenly the leader realizes that God is the only one who can make a great difference. Then, that realization brings another realization: God has a mission and his call to us has to do with us carrying out that mission in history. Once we are certain about God’s mission it is no longer about us as leaders or about others (our organization, or the goals of the organization) but about God, the God of life, the God of Jesus of Nazareth. Self and others are not left behind in the dust; instead you as leader look for alignment in all these areas.