Leadership, His way.

This post is completely directed toward business leaders who are Christ followers. Maybe I can write something in the future for leaders who have no eternal hope. On second thought, just do the best you can with this.

Greg Grimaud and Miles Paludan are two men I have been watching succeed in Godly leadership. In the past three years Greg has made a shift from an ego-driven life (ask him) to one of Christ-likeness and the big "H" (humility). Over the past two years, Miles Paludan, the successful custom home builder has become Pastor Miles. He has been a humble servant as long as I have known him and in my opinion is nice example of the leader Henry Nouwen describes.

Henry Nouwen writes his reflections on leadership out of his struggle with spiritual burnout. He like so many was about the business of doing more Godly things, than he was being a Godly man. Henry was at the "top" of his career teaching at Harvard and Yale, when he suddenly quit and took a position as chaplain at a home for the mentally handicapped. It was there he wrote an eighty-one page book entitled In The Name of Jesus. The book is about the spiritual lessons he had to learn to retool his heart for leadership. Nouwen describes the lessons in his life as what I would call movements of the Spirit. He says these movements are what must happen in our hearts in order for us to be prepared for expanded dominion.

The first move is from RELEVANCE to PRAYER.
"It's not enough for the leaders of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is: Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate word, and to taste fully God's infinite Goodness?"

The second move is from POPULARITY to MINISTRY. We need to exchange the need to be a hero with a simple desire to serve people.
"The leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind from the leadership offered by the world. It is a servant-leadership---in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her.
From this, it is clear that a whole new type of leadership is asked for---a leadership that is not modeled on the power games of the world, but on a servant-leader, Jesus."

The third transition is the move from LEADING to BEING LED. Leadership's temptation is to serve our own ego.
"It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of power and humility---powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow Him wherever He guides them, always trusting that, with Him, they will find life and find it abundantly."

(see We're All in the Family Business, by Doug Bannister, pages 58-60.)
Business Runs on Relationships, Relationships take Time!