The Anatomy of a leader - Arm

A towel over your arm

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. - Mark 10 v 45

Many times a leader can be seen as someone to "strong arm" people into doing something or taking a certain path. It is interesting to me that the greatest leader of all time used his arm to carry a towel.

On the eve of his greatest accomplishment when he was about to serve the whole of mankind he chose to serve His followers. He chose to serve people that should have known better after being with him for so long. He chose to serve those who only wanted to be served. He chose to serve those who wanted the glory of His Kingdom without that attitude of the King.

He had a right to read the riot act but he faced down selfishness with silence and servitude. Make no bones about it leadership in our saviours Kingdom is about serving, serving in the lowest place, no questions asked, even those who don' deserve it.

It's counter cultural but its the culture of His Kingdom:

Jesus intervened: "Kings like to throw their weight around and people in authority like to give themselves fancy titles. It's not going to be that way with you. Let the senior among you become like the junior; let the leader act the part of the servant. "Who would you rather be: the one who eats the dinner or the one who serves the dinner? You'd rather eat and be served, right? But I've taken my place among you as the one who serves. - Luke 22 v 26 - 27

Knees
Nose
Ears
Eyes

The danger in politicizing the church

Powerful forces are often at work to try and take the church off its mission. Often the carrot tempting the church can look tantilising and even good but its not the mission.

The church or church leaders entering the political field can be one of these areas. The following video from John Piper says it in a better way that I ever could:



Cant see the video click here

Discipleship is about God's Faithfulness

The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment that God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God’s faithfulness.

We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God’s will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasm.

- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 128-129

HT Tullian

The anatomy of a leader - Eyes

Keeping our eyes on Jesus

Some people are just easily distracted. There you are in a serious discussion where you are engaging totally and you see that the persons eyes have detached from you and are now focused on someone or something else over you shoulder. At that point my first reaction it to punch them on the nose. That will get their attention.

But its not that they are bad people or are being disrespectful (in most cases) it is just that their make up presupposes them to distraction visually. Some secondary event is causing them to take their eyes off the main thing.

Christian leadership to be clear is all about Jesus. The Bible says he has taken the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. He chose a number of high school dropouts to be on his dream team. Leadership in Jesus kingdom is not about our greatness but about His greatness.

It really is amazing when we have the opportunity to look Jesus square in the eyes and learn from Him how we get distracted by people and things so far below his divine majesty.

• We start looking at other leaders and idolise them instead of worshipping Jesus.
• We start looking for people's approval instead of Jesus smile.
• We start looking at the success of our ministry (The fruit) rather than the victorious saviour (The Vine)
• We start looking at our weaknesses rather than His strength.
• We start looking to the church down the road or round the world for creativity rather than to the creator & sustainer of the universe.

The writer to the Hebrews makes it quite clear:

Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honour, right alongside God.  Heb 12 v 2-3

Knees
Nose
Ears