Who doesn’t want to?
Make an impact, leave an imprint, live this one short life leaving legacy?
We may never think of ourselves as a leader, nor carry the title or the flowchart of leadership, but everyday we’re influencing someone or something in one way or another, to one extent and another.
Leadership is much more about influence that it is about position, and others are being constantly impacted by the way we live, speak or feel — no matter if that someone or something is ourselves, our offsprings, our company or our congregation.
So whatever our arena is, we’ve each been called to lead people and glorify God, and to do that with the heart of a servant-leader, one that liberates others to discover their greatness in God.
Lead in a way that liberates others into their greatness in God.
John Maxwell says it best:
“If you want to be the best leader you can possibly be, no matter how much or how little natural leadership talent you possess, you need to become a serving leader.”
A serving leader understands that anything worthy of accomplishment can’t be achieved alone, and so they won’t, and don’t desire a glory to their own names.
Here are 3 leadership fallacies to dispel so we can really lead for legacy:
- Don’t Believe That You Are Indispensable
Because you’re not…(sorry!)
When Moses busied himself serving his people from morning to night in Exodus 18, his wise father-in-law, Jethro advised him to change his method in order to accomplish his mission.
There were cracks in Moses’ understanding and style of leadership that would fail the great purpose of God from being accomplished through their lives if he were to carry on like that.
Because when Moses took all the responsibility upon his own shoulder, he was conveying the message that there was no other as qualified, gifted, and spiritual as Moses had been.
After all, the guy had been through a lot with God.
But Jethro warned him that what he was doing will certainly wear himself and the people out, and that this thing was too heavy for him and not to be done alone by him.
This is the sad thing, when you shoulder the responsibility alone and think that others may not get it, you make yourself irreplaceable as a leader and others irreparable as a people.
Because the truth is that none of us is irreplaceable, and none of them is irreparable, which leads us to our second point.
2. Don’t Believe That People Are Powerless
Because honestly?, people are not!
Helplessness, as Pastor Edmund Chan says it, isa learned condition.
People become weak not necessarily because they’re weak, but because you feed into their weaknesses.
But give them the rod, teach them to fish, and they’ll learn how to feed.
Tell your tribe that they can shine for God, do great things and rock their world for God, and they will. Let them seek the face of God themselves, and they’ll treasure their walk and growth in God.
People constantly rise to whatever standard their leaders set before them.
When we believe in people, we really empower them unto greatness.
We can then get busy building a church where there’s no one superstar, but God’s the ultimate Star, and we are all subjects serving the Sovereign with an attitude spanning eternity, and an aptitude for an inter-generational prosperity.
3. Don’t Believe You Need to Burn Out
because you can burn on instead…
Jethro matter-of-factly said to Moses that he needs to represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, then warn them about the statutes and the laws, making them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. (Exodus 18:19-20).
Essentially, he was telling him to focus on his core calling, and then raise other able, God-fearing men to lead the people in groups.
With that in place, Moses wouldn’t have to push himself to the verge of spiritual exhaustion and his people would find their place and rise to their own call in God.
One of the best things our Pastor has taught us is to develop our own walk with the Holy Spirit, and to rely solely on Him for all matters big and small.
So I’ve been slowly learning, that the word ‘leadership’ isn’t something we need to struggle with or shrink from. We can simply and humbly just get about busy utilising it to achieve God’s desired end.
We can focus on actually training others to have a genuine walk in ‘the stature of the man of God’ and the ‘statutes of the law of God’ , and in so doing, do what every spiritual leader is meant to do, to be a priest to God and a prophet to the people.
We can also bid every insecurity goodbye and give others we lead the spotlight, knowing that we would have done a great job as a leader if we have worked ourselves out of job as their leader.
Your job as a leader is to work yourself out as their leader.
And slowly rising, we can learn to lead with both a compass in our head and a magnet in our heart. (Howard Hendricks)