Get Boots Now!

Leadership Training goes in cycles and everyone has heard – in one cycle or another – those that you lead can not follow you to a success that you have not attained. It is an absolute truth – followers will not be able to go somewhere you have not been. Anyone can learn and teach absolute truths. For example, how many Biblical teachers instruct their students, “If you want to truly understand God’s character then you need to read the Bible front to back many times culling and learning about who He is.”? However, in survey after survey most Biblical Teachers report not reading the Bible front to back more than a few times in their lives (if that!) and certainly not once a year.

How often does the Christian Leader stress that prayer is important but in survey after survey they are shown to pray only minutes a day on average. Project management and construction are easy examples. Does the building contractor or project superintendent simply drop off the drawings and come back to find a building? If the super doesn’t show up, will the sub-contractors? If the project leaders can’t get informed, intelligent responses to their questions from someone who has practical wisdom, will they follow?

Do you remember that college marketing teacher who could tell you everything about marketing but never held a job long term? Remember the old saying, “Those that can do and those that can’t do teach.”? What we have seen of eternity so far has shown us that children turn out like their parents unless for some reason they have a mature crisis that changes their paths. Parents who live the “do as I say not as I do” lifestyle find again and again that their children struggle later with doing the very things that the parent did. Kids can’t go where parents won’t go or haven’t been.

The Christian Leader must first take people to the deep waters and teach them to swim. No follower will be complete or successful if they can not live life on their own with character, grace and a personal dedication to God. No follower will follow long term and no follower will follow God until they have personally experienced his miracles, grace and constancy. No follower will have stability until they can hear God in prayer and until they have peace. Regardless of the accomplishments of the followers the leaders have failed if the followers can not walk, talk, eat and survive on their own. The Christian Leader’s first responsibility is to make “followers” of Christ – not active people, attending parishoners, great volunteers or followers of men.

The second task of the Christian Leader is to lead the maturing follower to service in an army of other believers – mimicking Christ as he said, “I did not come to be served but to serve.” The Christian Leader must not lead the follower to the leader’s desire or goal but rather help the follower find his nitch in service and then champion him, succeed with him, fail with him, respect him, and coach him.

To do either of these tasks of Christian Leaders, the leader must know how to communicate with the follower and must have been wherever the follower is being coached to go. Who hires a coach for a soccer team that speaks a different language than the players? It may be done but it is certainly rare and purposeful. Who hires a plastics plant manager who only has experience in accounting?

If Christian Leaders want followers to be mature followers of God able to swim in the deep waters, to pray, to hear from God, to set aside time, to read, to trust, to be non-materialistic, to be wise and to be stable, then the leaders must first master these traits. If Christian Leaders want to champion and coach their people they need to get out of the skybox with the mayor and get on the field with the players. The game is on the field. The coaching is done by slapping backs, kicking butt, screaming for fair calls, rallying for success and even kneeling beside the wounded player and telling them, “I remember when I was playing – in fact, I still get wiped out….but you will make it. I promise you.”

Jesus came to earth to be the provision for us so that we could return to God. He lived the life he claimed we should live. He did everything and more than he would ever ask us to do. He never abandoned his followers while they were growing and he never left them to the wolves alone. He did not champion numbers but called people to be “one with the Father like I am one with the Father.” He spoke in their language not because of marketing but because He was one of them and with them. He listened. He loved. He was there. He lived in the trenches and fought alongside those He led.

Heck, he didn’t even have a pillow much less an office to call His own! Perhaps His model is a good enough model of leadership – be it, teach it, lead them to it, live by them in it.

Do you own a pair of workboots?