Wednesday, July 12, 2006
What Maturity Isn't
I have had a great deal of fortune in my life to meet some very important and influential peopple - leaders. I have met Russian cabinet members, Nobel prizes winnners, even a serving US President on a personal level. The most overwhelming impression I have had of all is that they are simply people.
We tend to think of leaders as better than ourselves and we tend to aspire to leadership as a way of bettering ourselves. I think this a mistake.
Think for a minute - leadership is a necessary role. Many people ging in the same direction requires organization and organization requires leadership, leadership is a role, not a value.
I have heard lots of leaders tell me they are no better than me and I think it ends up sounding like fasle humility and rather disingenuous. I hope I can get away with this and people will come to appreciate it because I am not really a leader.
The ability to lead is a gift, some people have it and some don't. Like all gifts, to be really useful it must be practiced and molded, honed and improved. But also like all gifts it is not something everyone can do, no matter how hard they practice and how much they study.
Most truly effective leaders long ago figured out that they weren't all that special, it's the wannabes that have the problem.
Wannabes do more than simply fail themselves, although they do do that. They fail all those that they have attempted to lead, and more importantly they fail the organization or the casue that they sought to lead. Wannbe leaders may be the most destructive force in the Church.
We long ago confused leadership with maturity in Christianity. Christian leaders must be mature Christians, no doubt, but mature Christians are not necessarily leaders.
There is about a book in the can of worms I have just opened, and I am on vacation and don't want to go there right now, call this post just planting a seed. But in here lies some of what I think is the most important lesson for Christian blogging right now, maybe Christianity, and certainly evangelicalism.
We need to learn how to be mature Christians while not being leaders.
Cross-posted at How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church
Related Tags: church, leadership, blogging, maturity, Christian
We tend to think of leaders as better than ourselves and we tend to aspire to leadership as a way of bettering ourselves. I think this a mistake.
Think for a minute - leadership is a necessary role. Many people ging in the same direction requires organization and organization requires leadership, leadership is a role, not a value.
I have heard lots of leaders tell me they are no better than me and I think it ends up sounding like fasle humility and rather disingenuous. I hope I can get away with this and people will come to appreciate it because I am not really a leader.
The ability to lead is a gift, some people have it and some don't. Like all gifts, to be really useful it must be practiced and molded, honed and improved. But also like all gifts it is not something everyone can do, no matter how hard they practice and how much they study.
Most truly effective leaders long ago figured out that they weren't all that special, it's the wannabes that have the problem.
Wannabes do more than simply fail themselves, although they do do that. They fail all those that they have attempted to lead, and more importantly they fail the organization or the casue that they sought to lead. Wannbe leaders may be the most destructive force in the Church.
We long ago confused leadership with maturity in Christianity. Christian leaders must be mature Christians, no doubt, but mature Christians are not necessarily leaders.
There is about a book in the can of worms I have just opened, and I am on vacation and don't want to go there right now, call this post just planting a seed. But in here lies some of what I think is the most important lesson for Christian blogging right now, maybe Christianity, and certainly evangelicalism.
We need to learn how to be mature Christians while not being leaders.
Cross-posted at How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church
Related Tags: church, leadership, blogging, maturity, Christian
