Leaders Make Matters Better
Leaders make matters better. There, that’s it. That’s my definition of leadership.
They don’t need a microphone, stage, suit, or a John Maxwell book (though those books may help).
They step into situations, meetings, groups, and relationships … and make them better.
They don’t focus on their own betterment. They may never need to speak a word or get their own way. They situation, meeting, group or relationship is better … and that is sufficient.
I tell this to the young leaders I teach. I tell them if they walk into their youth area and the toilets are dirty an hour before youth group starts…. leaders make matters better. If there’s trash across the college campus as they walk to and from class…. leaders make matters better. Someone calls and is hurting while they’re working on a camp flyer…. leaders make matters better. Or one of their youth calls, isn’t hurting, but the report from the soccer game they want to share with him or her is important to them…. leaders make matters better.
I’m concerned that our definition of leadership has created a bit of an entitlement mentality. The professionalism of youth ministry has been good, but it’s also created an approach to ministry that reflects something quite different from what we see in the New Testament.
Somewhere along the way we devalued the holistic elements of leadership and gave it seven, or 21, points that can be taken as hierarchical and certainly efficient. Leadership in community is too messy for efficiency, a Western value in our low-context culture. Ministry demands too much of our time and energy. And It should. If we want to make matters better, it will require of us time, energy, and personal inconvenience.
We’ve also pushed community as an overriding value to the side in exchange for efficient business models. The church has been paying for this error from the 1980s. And correcting it.
Look over your day today. Some people and tasks will present themselves to you that aren’t on that schedule.
…. leaders make matters better.
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