Leadership

I was reading an article today about a playground fight in North Philly that ended in one 16 year old killing another 16 year old by accident. Having been away for so long I forget how common death is in the city. When I left the murder rate averaged more than one person per day and I'm sure it's gone up since. The numbers are heart wrenching. In the article I read in the paper today the father of the killer was quoted as saying, "It was another senseless killing. There will probably be another one tomorrow, and you'll be talking to another family."

Reading those words made me want to throw up. There are times that I am heartbroken by the amount of need there is around me. Depravity is everywhere although I am rarely touched by it. In fact I am so rarely touched by it that the majority of the time I am not heartbroken but complacent. One thing I do know is that even if I were to quit my job and devote all of my time to service I wouldn't be able to fill the void. Not even close

I've been realizing this past year how desperate we are for leaders. Not only do we need people to go out into our communities in order to impact the places of great need, but we need people to step up even within our churches to lead all of the programs and ministries. We even need people to lead within our own families and friend circles. So why is it that we don't have enough leaders?

I can only speak for myself on this, but I have a feeling I'm not alone. There are far too many times when I don't feel qualified to lead anything. I let my shame or lack of confidence or inexperience dictate my decisions in this area and never find my way into a leadership role. It's safer, isn't it? I mean, there is so much pressure on a leader to make choices that will satisfy everyone when more often it feels like you haven't satisfied anyone. Not only that, but when in leadership you can only lead people as far as you yourself are willing to go, which means you have to be willing to go. I can assure you that I'm intimate with the reasons not to lead, but I'm far less familiar with the reasons why I have to lead.

As I read this article this morning and thought about all the need that I see all the time I started to wonder, should we all be leading? Doesn't Christ tell us that all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to us? Doesn't he give us the power and strength to do all things? If I as a Christian were really ready to believe that with all of me, I would be leading so much more and I imagine that that is true for more people than just me.

I believe that there is so much more that the church could be doing if its members believed themselves all to be leaders. I think we forget that we are leaders already, so where are we leading people? I think I lead more people to the couch than to the street or to the church and that needs to change.

I don't know how many people read this, but if you do please consider this a challenge and challenge yourself with me. Consider the challenge of asking God where he has you leading that you might not even be aware of. Ask him how you can be a better leader and most of all ask if there are places where you could be leading and you're not. I'm asking you to do this with me because I'm honestly afraid of the answer. My hope is that in asking together that we might hold each other accountable to that which Christ has entrusted us with.