Feed me!
I have the privilege of being a leader at home, at work, and in a small way, in church. I don't think I am a natural leader in the sense of having any great charisma, but like many skills, leadership can be cultivated through willing practice. Practising to be a leader is a good thing - 1 Timothy 3:1 says "Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach..."
The more I exercise leadership, the better I get at it, with my family, my colleagues and my church community. But one of the perils of leadership is that it tends to feed my pride as well. Why? Well for one thing, people often only tell you the good stuff. They agree with you more. When the world keeps telling you you're right, you start to think you're pretty good at this. Pretty soon, you're up on a pedestal with pride as your armrest and ego as your seat cushion.
Second, being a leader often means being put in the spotlight. We stand up and speak at meetings and conferences. Maybe in church we get to preach or lead worship. Our performance is graded more and more by how a large group of people perceive us. In fact, the higher we rise, the larger our audience. This means that each individual member of the audience likely knows us less personally, and only ever sees our stage persona. Slowly, what we do, especially behind the scenes, becomes less important than how we look on stage. And then, we start to believe our own hype, that we're really amazing, because that's the persona we put on in front of other people.
This is why I am thankful for the example of servant leadership that my church leaders and Jesus Himself have shown me. Jesus was great in leading crowds of followers. But He never let His pride get in the way of coming to earth to be born in a feeding trough for animals, or washing His disciples' dusty feet, or being stripped, beaten, mocked and nailed to the cross for all to see. He says in Mark 9:35 "Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all."
I think one of my church pastors exemplifies this. He doesn't get on a big stage to preach. He doesn't lead worship. But he leads the service for the intellectually disabled in a small chapel which few of us ever see. He signs for the hearing impaired in a corner of the auditorium. Last week, when I went for my prayer tower duty (typically a two-hour session), I saw that he was finishing the session just before mine. When I signed in, I realised that he had actually carried on two straight sessions - in other words, he'd run the prayer tower for 4 hours straight - the first session was his, the second wasn't, but he just carried on, I suppose because he realised that there weren't enough people to keep it up. These prayer tower sessions aren't glamorous. It's just a handful of people meeting and taking turns to pray round the clock. But he just served, because he knew He has a real audience of just One. That's leadership!
Why can't I be more like that? On reflection, it really comes down to the question of "who is my audience?" (or who is my boss!). So often at work, we look for validation - validation from our bosses, from our colleagues, and yes, even from our juniors. We live for a pat on the back, for positive feedback. When we get criticised, we feel lousy. When our boss fails to notice what we have done well, we feel unappreciated. It's the same at home - which of us, after doing the dishes or mopping the floor, or helping with homework, doesn't wish our spouse or kids would say, thanks, great job :D
I thank God that He does give me a stage from time to time, at home, at work and in church. But that stage is not to put the spotlight on me. It's to put a spotlight on Him. It's not to receive applause for me, but to direct applause to Him. And He puts me on the stage not because I'm good but because He is good. I need to care less about what people think of me, and care more about my audience of One. I do have a treasure, but I have that treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from me (2 Cor 4:7). That's really all I am - an ordinary vessel of mud. What's inside doesn't belong to me, but it's treasure - thank God that He allows me to bear it!
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