Effective Leadership

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."  --Jim Elliot--

In the second session of the course "Biblical Principles for Leading with Love", the Swallow and her coursemates watched a short clip titled "He is no fool".  It was a short chronicle of the lives of several well-known men and women who chose to give their lives in service to their Lord God.

Some of the men were killed while they were trying to reach out to a tribe in the jungles of Ecuador, with the hope of bringing the saving Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to them.  The world called these men fools because they were in the prime of their lives, and when they died in the course of serving the Lord God, they had left behind their wives and young children.  Yet they did not die in vain.  Although they were not alive to witness it, their deaths brought about salvation for the very natives that killed them.

To be an effective leader is to be one who has an influence on the lives of those around him.  For he who thinks he leads but has no followers, is only taking a walk.

Jesus is the greatest example of an effective leader.  He influenced the lives of those around him, whether they were humble fishermen or intelligent tax collectors.  The characters of Peter, John and Thomas were examined in order to see the influence of Jesus in their lives.  These men were part of a group of twelve men chosen by the Lord Jesus as His disciples.

Peter's character is his impulsiveness.  He was the one who claimed, very quickly, that he would be steadfast even in the face of persecution (Matthew 26 : 33).  He was the one, when Judas Iscariot came with soldiers and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees to arrest Jesus, who drew his sword (quickly too?), struck the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear (John 18 : 10), but he was also the one who, just as quickly, denied three times that he knew Jesus (John 18 : 15 - 18, 25 - 27).

For John, he was known as the disciple whom Jesus loved.  Confident in Jesus' love for him, he was the one who leaned back on Jesus' breast to ask who would betray Him (John 13 : 21 - 25), yet he was also the one, together with his brother James, who went to Jesus with the request to sit at Jesus' hands in glory (Mark 10 : 35 - 40).

Thomas will always go down in history as the doubter.  He needed to see in Jesus' hands the print of the nails, he needed to put his finger into the print of the nails, he needed to put his hand into Jesus' side before he could believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, and had appeared to the other disciples (John 20 : 24 - 25).  Yet a little known side of him was that he was the one who suggested that the disciples follow Jesus to Bethany, a town near Jerusalem, because Jesus was going there to see Mary and Martha whose brother, Lazarus, had just died, and because the Jews in Jerusalem had recently been seeking to stone Jesus (John 11 : 16).

Three different men.  Three men with different strengths and weaknesses.  Yet these three men went on to be men known for their love for the Lord Jesus Christ.  Historians recorded that Peter died on a cross too, hung upside down as he felt he was not worthy to be hung the same way as his Lord and Master.  John became the last disciple to die, who wrote Revelations, the last book in the Bible, while in a Roman prison on the island of Patmos.  Thomas was the one who brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to India.

How to be an effective leader?  Look at the Lord Jesus Christ and learn from Him.

For those men who died for Christ, they were no fools.  They were effective leaders.