On Leading Well

Year: 2007

  • Movement Thoughts from London’s Lounge

    I spent this week in Mallorca, Spain, listening and learning a lot about what God is doing in Western Europe. There are fresh breezes of hope and faith blowing through conversations. Hearts are turning, students want to hear about life – real Life.

    My friend Deb Heefner facilitated some great discussions about movements among Christian leaders from Spain, Italy, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the UK and a dozen other countries. Number one question: So what exactly IS a movement, anyway? You can see one definition based on the church in Antioch in Deb’s slide.

    Here’s another winner I came across this week: “A movement is a group of people who consciously, and at their own cost, connect to change the status quo.”

    Question for us as aspiring leaders: What cost am I willing to pay to change the status quo?

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  • Very Tough Week

    The week just past has been a very difficult one for so many people around the world, especially for honest atheists who have no one to pray to and must view this week’s events as normal and acceptable in light of their world view.

    Since Monday:

    • In the USA, 32 students & faculty members were murdered in cold blood at Virginia Tech. Four of these (Jarrett Lane, Matt La Porte, Lauren McCain and Mary Read – pictures) were Christians involved with Campus Crusade. This heinous tragedy has been met with amazing prayer and support from a strong Christian community from around the world. Cynthia, a friend of Lauren (one of the fallen), tells her unfolding story here.
    • In Liaoning province, China, 32 steel workers were killed when a steel ladle preparing to pour molten steel at 1500 degrees Celcius broke loose and fell, spewing workers with the liquid. It’s unlikely these 32 souls will have their stories told.
    • In Malatya, Turkey, 3 evangelicals (2 nationals and one German) were found dead, their throats slit, in the Christian publishing house where they served. More…

    • In South East Asia, over 40 national Christian workers were being detained by a Muslim government for “defamation of Islam.”

    • Multiple suicide bombings in Baghdad claimed over 200 lives. This is normal now.

    • Finally, this week marked the anniversaries of both the 1999 Columbine massacre and the 1899 birth of Adolph Hitler.

    What can we do? We can pray. And we can invite others to look beyond the horizon to a God who knows, cares and intervenes on our behalf.

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  • Suffering Our Way Into Leadership – Part 1

    Nelson Mandela reputedly said when asked how he became the president of South Africa, “I suffered my way into leadership.” Nelson was not alone.

    In 1775 George Washington, in his formal acceptance of leadership the Continental Army, gave Congress a fair warning: “I beg it be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.” Only one year later, after a disheartening string of military defeats, Washington wrote candidly to a friend about the miseries of leadership: “Such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings.”

    If leadership is such a strain, why bother?

    I can think of no better advice than this quote from William Sangster’s journal. This is one dog-eared page I turn to during the difficult times:

    “This is the will of God for me. I did not choose it. I sought to escape it. But it has come. Something else has come, too. A sense of certainty that God does not want me only for a preacher. He wants me also for a leader – a leader in Methodism.


    I feel a commissioning to work under God for the revival of this branch of His Church – careless of my own reputation; indifferent to the comments of older and jealous men.


    I am thirty-six. If I am to serve God in this way, I must no longer shrink from the task – but do it.


    I have examined my heart for ambition. I am certain it is not there. I hate the criticism I shall evoke and the painful chatter of people. Obscurity, quiet browsing among books, and the service of simple people is my taste – but by the will of God, this is my task, God help me.


    Bewildered and unbelieving, I hear the voice of God say to me: “I want to sound the note through you.” O God, did ever an apostle shrink from his task more? I dare not say “no” but, like Jonah, I would fain run away.”


    Again, we must ask ourselves: If leadership is such a strain, why bother?

    Quotes from David McCullough, 1776, and Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership.

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