LEADERS AS FOLLOWERS

So what kind of book is this? A how-to book with simple-but-not-easy, clearly defined steps to leadership success? I’ve learned much from such books, but that’s not the book I have written. Do books like these give me insight I can put into practice? Of course. Do they offer wisdom for all of us? Certainly. But this book is something different.

In these pages I hope to offer an inspiring vision of leadership that is less hurried and more fruitful, less hectic and more joyful. I will provide practical insights I’ve learned along the way to help you make your way fruitfully into all the unhurried leadership opportunities God has for you. I hope you’ll discover with me that an unhurried leader grows ever more confident that all the truth and all the wisdom we need is available to us in Jesus (1 Cor 1:30). There is no kingdom-fruitful wisdom apart from him.

Jesus sets the pace of my following, and I’m not trying to be super spiritual here. This is just basic kingdom reality: I cannot lead for the good or the honor of God’s kingdom if I am not seeking his kingdom first and foremost in my life and my work. Otherwise, I end up promoting my own little kingdom agendas, all the while assuming I am doing so in the name of Jesus. It happens all the time. It’s happened far too frequently in my own leadership.

Too often I’ve lived and led fueled by the idea that the one who hurries gets the most done for God. This is so different from the spiritual wisdom that the one who hurries delays the things of God. What I’ve been discovering is that unhurried leadership is actually more fruitful because it is more unhurried, not in spite of that slower pace. My mentoring of others, for example, is among the most unhurried ways to have lasting kingdom influence. There are no instant strategies to becoming a faithful disciple. Just like anything relational, such influence takes time—years or even decades. In this book, I’ll share what I’ve been learning in my unhurried journey as a disciple of Jesus. After all, kingdom leadership is rooted in followership. I’ll share from God-given successes and all-too-familiar personal stumbles along the way.

HAVING A HOLY INFLUENCE

When I talk about leadership in this book, I’m not limiting that to people like CEOs and senior pastors who have a wide span of organizational responsibility. I certainly hope that what I have to say will be a significant help to fellow organizational leaders. But I’m writing not just about organizational leadership. I’m writing about life leadership. I’m talking about spiritual influence, about kingdom of God influence. Each of us has been planted in particular places among particular people whom we might bless and benefit by sharing something good we’re receiving from God’s good kingdom.

We all have some scope of influence in the lives of others. We need not have a position of influence to be a person of influence. Many influential people in my life over the years had no position of organizational authority in my life, but the way they lived and worked inspired and motivated me to a better way of living and leading.

I would love for us to learn together how to live as blessed members of God’s good kingdom who can share with others from his abundance in our lives. What a beautiful impact we would have on our world. We could grow in our trust of God’s grace shown us in Jesus so that our lives actually become like an ever-expanding river of not only his grace but also his goodness and generosity. God might fill our lives with more of his love and compassion than we can contain so we can share that “more”  with others. Our influence would be the overflow of God’s very presence filling us and spilling from our lives in ways that bring refreshment, encouragement, and holy energy to others.

What if each of us lived this way? Imagine the changes that might come to our little place in the world! Wouldn’t this be significant, even life-changing leadership influence? What if parents found the roots of their life sunk deep into the infinitely vast love of their heavenly Father, so much so that their parenting was simply the expression of that abundant divine love? What if men and women in business found in God inspiration for a creative, powerful, and unselfish vision of their work? What a profound impact they would have on their fellow workers and clients! So I’m speaking to anyone with an inner hunger to have a holy influence in this world. Where our lives touch the lives of others, may we enrich them rather than diminish them, may we generously give and not selfishly expect something from them.

Our influence will grow as we cultivate a way of living and working that feels far less draining over time and far more energized by the Spirit to the point of overflowing. We will experience more and more moments when we feel as if we are living and leading from abundance rather than out of sheer willpower or our own detached-from-God human efforts.

Let’s learn together how to more closely follow Jesus in his way of being open to the people the Father brought across his path. Let’s learn how to put down our agendas and welcome divine surprises that weren’t on our calendars or to-do lists. Let’s learn to stop labeling as interruptions to our work what may actually be God-given opportunities to do his good work in that moment. Let’s learn to make good plans rooted in our fellowship with God, but may we hold those plans loosely enough for him to guide us when we implement them. Jesus has invited us into this reality of an ongoing conversational relationship with God. I love this way of living and leading.

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

One of the ways inner hurry has hampered my leadership is when I’ve rushed to the conclusion that I am not a leader because I am not like a leader I admire. That person seems more like the ideal leader I imagine I’m not. But many leaders like me are more like Timothy than Peter: more tempted by fear than by pride, more likely to be self-deprecating than self-promoting. Unhurried leadership operates from a peaceful confidence that God has made me, that God is remaking me, and that God has invited me to live a life of influence from that very place and as that very person. God is making me to be the person of influence I was meant to be.

Some people might want to call being an unhurried leader “spiritual leadership.”  There’s truth there, but I would use that phrase with a bit of caution. Some will hear spiritual as meaning somehow detached from a real life of parenting, earning a living, paying our bills, mowing the lawn, and such. I use spiritual, however, to describe the most essential inner reality of who we are. Therefore, I don’t limit spiritual leadership to a leader’s prayer life, moral character, or religious observances. Spiritual leadership is leadership rooted in the deepest reality there is: living in vital relationship with God through Jesus, and then bearing the good fruit of that communion.

Furthermore, the term spiritual leadership can help us remember that while what leaders do matters immensely, who leaders...