“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.” John 3:16
Lessons for leadership drawn specifically from Scripture
There are two sides to the coin of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary. One side is the price that He paid by His death as a perfect, sinless man, which was the sufficient price to pay the penalty for the sins of mankind. That’s why last week I made he point that Jesus died for you. The other side of that coin, however, is the victory that was achieved when the perfect man who was also fully God rose from the grave victorious over sin and death. That’s why I can also so that Jesus rose for you.
Jesus died for you and me because we were not able to pay the penalty that was necessary for our own sin, which also meant that we would be forever separated from God because of our sin. But thankfully, and graciously, God provided the substitution for us through his son Jesus Christ, who sacrificed his life on Good Friday but then rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. And that, my friends, is what we really celebrate! Jesus died for you to pay your penalty, but he rose for you to make it eternal. And because Jesus died and rose again, the Bible tells us that all we have to do is place our faith in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross to receive salvation, and the assurance that we will spend our eternity in heaven with God.
Jesus died for you to pay for your sin, and then He rose for you so that you could be reconciled to God. If you have never placed your faith in Jesus, accepting His payment for your son, I would encourage you during this Easter time to make that decision. Jesus died for you. Jesus rose for you. All that is required of you is to believe.
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
Easter is almost here. You can tell because the seasonal aisle at the store is full of plastic eggs, Easter baskets and candy, chocolate bunnies, stuffed bunnies, and all the things that tell you that the important holiday that celebrates the Easter Bunny bringing candy-filled plastic eggs and pastel-colored hard-boiled eggs has arrived. But is that what really makes this day significant? Sure, it’s fun to decorate the eggs and give Easter baskets to kids, but is there a deeper purpose for Easter?
You probably already know the answer to that. Beyond the Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies, the true focus of this day is Jesus. Specifically, it is something that Jesus did. Even more specifically, it is something that Jesus did for you. What exactly is it that He did? He died for you!
Easter is really about that. It’s about “celebrating” the death and resurrection of Jesus. (Next week, I want to focus on the significance of His resurrection, but this week I am focusing on the significance of His death.) Now, I use that word “celebrate” carefully, because it is not a celebration of the beating, torture, and death of someone who was viewed as antagonistic to societal and cultural norms. Rather, it is a celebration of what that death accomplished.
You see, Jesus – the Son of God and one of the persons in the Holy Trinity, and therefore fully divine – took on human form, born as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem, and lived about 33 years as a human being, a living person like you and me. However, because of His divinity, He was able to live sinlessly even though He faced temptations just as we do. Because He lived a sinless life, He was, therefore, qualified to pay the penalty that our sin deserved, that we are unable to pay. The result was that the crucifixion of this perfect person satisfied the debt we owe, enabling you and me to be reconciled to God.
Our sin separates us from God, because God is perfect and we are not, so our sin disqualifies us from spending eternity with God in heaven. Our imperfection means we cannot go to a perfect heaven to dwell in the presence of a Holy God without something being done to resolve that issue. (My dad once said, if you find a perfect church, don’t join it because you’ll mess it up.) The wonderful thing is that something was done. Jesus, perfect Jesus, died on the cross to be the sacrifice that pays for all of our sin. His death paid for our sin, so that God would se.e us through His substitutionary act, seeing us as perfect through Jesus so that eternity with God became possible. To say it simply, Jesus died for you so that you could live with God.
In this “Be A Better Leader” series of website articles and podcasts, I am talking about a variety of attributes, characteristics, and skills that are essential to effective leadership, and discussing how they are reflected in practice. I have grouped these things into five categories of what a leader ought to be, which is why I am labeling them as the “Be-attitudes of Better Leadership.” These five categories are: “Be Genuine,” “Be Relational,” “Be Trustworthy,” Be Knowledgeable,” and “Be Excellent.” We have already looked at being genuine and being relational, so today in part 12, I am continuing our discussion of the third category, “Be Trustworthy,” and more specifically, I am talking about the importance of being safe.
Have you ever seen someone’s spirit get crushed? I have. I can remember sitting in a fast food restaurant when I was in my early 20’s, when a young boy at a nearby table spilled his soft drink. His mother immediately reacted by loudly and harshly belittling him with her words, and by publicly humiliating him. He was visibly crushed. If he learned anything from that experience, it most likely was that accidents are unforgivable and should never happen. He learned that, in his world, it was not safe to make a mistake.
When people believe that it is not safe to make a mistake or to fail, they will stop putting themselves at risk. They will stop trusting people, taking chances, putting in effort, and growing. Instead of taking a risk, or learning something new, or stepping up to the plate, they will revert to a place of self-preservation. They do this to protect themselves from the consequences that could come with failure, by removing the risk of failure altogether.
We need to remember, however, that failure plays an important role in the development of leadership. In fact, it plays an important role in the development of all people. For that reason, leaders need to have the right perspective regarding failure, so that they can intentionally harness its power for good, and a right perspective on failure includes three important ideas.
- Failure is certain. We are imperfect people, living in an imperfect world. We each have particular strengths, but we also each have particular weaknesses. We learn by experience. This combination of ideas guarantees us that we will make mistakes, and that at some point, we will fail. You can see illustrations of this everywhere you look – babies learning to walk, teenagers learning to drive, students taking tests, professional football quarterbacks throwing interceptions, and countless other examples. The reality is that people make mistakes, and this will always be true. And while failures and mistakes sometimes have the potential to be fatal, generally failure is defeating only when you let it keep you down. As General George Custer once said, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down that count, it’s how many times you get back up.”
- Failure is valuable. Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Clearly, he viewed every mistake, every setback, as a learning opportunity. That’s what makes failure valuable. It provides an opportunity to learn, to change, and to grow. By implication, if you don’t learn from your failures, you won’t change and grow; rather, you will continue to make the same mistakes. This differentiation is one of the attributes that characterizes leaders – they are able to learn from their mistakes and improve. However, the underlying context that makes this work is an environment that allows someone the opportunity to learn from mistakes. It only makes sense, then, that if it is not safe to make mistakes and learn from them, people will avoid behaviors that bring the possibility of failure, and therefore will miss the opportunity for growth that comes from those same failures.
- It can be safe to fail. Given both the certainty and the value of failure, it becomes important for leaders to cultivate a culture that makes it safe to try and fail, and there are three steps that can be taken that help to ensure this:
- First, provide opportunities for people to try. Experience is such an important part of growth and development, but experience only comes when someone has the opportunity to try – to lead a project, manage a task, facilitate a discussion, plan an event, and so on. What we have to keep in mind is that (like a baby learning to walk) people will stumble in the process of learning something new and stretching themselves.
- Therefore, the second step is to have a response that is instructive, not destructive. Use it as a teachable experience, one from which they can learn. Take time to evaluate the causes and contributing factors, the mistakes that were made, and provide guidance that will ultimate produce greater growth, confidence, and development.
- Finally, the third step is to give people a chance to get back up after they have fallen, to “get back in the saddle” and try again. The goal is that they have learned from their failures and become more competent and skilled, which will be better for everyone. And if they don’t learn, then you have; you now know that they are beyond their limits of performance, at least at this point in their personal development, and therefore you, the leader, can choose to not give them those opportunities again.
President Theodore Roosevelt once declared, “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much or suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Failure is an important part of life. Make it safe for people to fail and then to learn. When you make it safe for them to do so, they will learn to trust you, and will therefore be freed up to try more and do more, which will benefit both of you in the end.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
I can remember the first time my oldest child asked me if Santa was real. She must have been about 5 or 6 years old, and I am sure she had heard things from friends at school and wanted to know from her parents if Santa was a real person who delivered presents for Christmas. At that age, she already knew that Jesus was her personal Savior, having come to an awareness of her need for Jesus to save her when she was 4 and 1/2 years old. I know that seems young (and it is), but her decision was totally driven by her own questions and her own choice to follow Jesus, unprompted by us as her parents, and was followed at that young age already with the realization of how that shaped her choices.
But, back to Santa. When she asked us that question – “Is Santa real?” – I was faced with a dilemma. Do I tell a little lie and preserve the fantasy for a little child, or do I tell the truth and squash childhood imagination? In the end, realized that it wasn’t a true “either/or” choice, and so we chose to tell the truth while also preserving imagination and fun. Because she asked, we knew she was seeking to make sense of the world around her, so we told her the truth – “No, Santa is not real . . .” – but then framed it into a purpose of imagination and joy – “. . . but it’s fun to pretend and imagine the stories of Santa, so we do it just for fun at Christmas time. But the real person we celebrate at Christmas is Jesus.”
Why was this important for us? Because we wanted our child to grow up with an understanding of the difference between fantasy (the Santa Clause we talk about at Christmas) and meaningful truth (the significance of the birth of Jesus). That’s the most important message of Christmas. Not that we receive gifts, or that Santa knows who is naughty or nice, or that reindeer can fly. The real message is that at this time, over 2000 years ago, God entered into our physical realm in the person of His Son, born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph. He did this so that Jesus could live His life as both fully God and fully man (theologians call this the Hypostatic Union), and live it sinlessly, so that He would be qualified to become the perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins through His death on the cross, burial, and resurrection. In doing this, He paid the penalty for our sins and opened the door for us to be reconciled to God. And that’s the Gospel message: that Jesus paid for our sins so that we could receive salvation by trusting fully in His work on the cross.
That’s the truth about Christmas. It’s the season that brought Jesus into our midst, which in turn would make salvation available to all who believe, not in the “jolly old elf” who brings us presents, but in the real, divine person who came to save us from our sin. My friend, if you have not placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, as the one and only means of salvation from your sin and reconciliation with God, I urge you to do that today. Acknowledge your sin and accept the payment of Jesus. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
This is a bold ask. I am asking because I want to help people connect faith, wisdom, and leadership, and so I have crafted these resources to do just that. Here is what I am asking: will you follow and share the website and podcast information? I would love your help in sharing this information with as many people as possible.
I am a connect-the-dots kind of person. Therefore, one of the ways God has taught and grown me is by helping me connect the dots between scriptural truth and life application. It is from that perspective that I initially launched this website and its accompanying resources a little less than a year ago. The purpose was to connect faith, wisdom, and leadership in a way that would help other followers of Jesus grow in their leadership and make an impact. That original dream of an idea turned into three things: the self-publication of a book on Amazon (Leadership Ezra), the creation of the Leadership Ezra website, and the initiation of a corresponding podcast. The overarching theme became “Faith. Wisdom. Leadership.: Connecting biblical truth with wisdom for leadership.” Therefore, that is the basis of these “Leadership Ezra” resources – a book, a website, and a podcast – that are now available to help you grow in leadership from a biblical foundation.
The book, Leadership Ezra (order your copy on Amazon), is all about connecting the dots between Scriptural truth and life application, specifically within the realm of leadership, using a story in the Bible to do so. In this case, the story is actually the story contained in the book of Ezra, a book comprised of two different journeys of return for the people of God. The experiences in this book demonstrate and illustrate lessons that can then be applied to your practice of leadership today.
The website, www.LeadershipEzra.com, is intended to be a resource to help leaders with this same connection, again providing principles and practices that connect biblical truth with wisdom and applying it to the practice of leadership. If you are new to leadership, if you are struggling in your leadership, or if you simply want to learn more and grow in your leadership, here you will find counsel and insight to help you be more equipped to lead and to do it in a godly way. The goal is to help you lead like Ezra: know God deeply, live by His Word, and apply that wisdom in your leadership of others.
The podcast, also called “Leadership Ezra” and available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, is likewise all about connecting biblical truth with wisdom for the practice of leadership. These are short episodes (10 +/- minutes) that share an illustration and provide some explanation and application of topics from the website. The episodes are helpful handles to understand and remember key ideas.
These three resources work together to connect three dots: “Faith…Wisdom…Leadership.” Aimed at Christians in leadership, including those who are leading in Christian schools and ministries, my purpose is to connect these dots so that I can help people lead well. So if you have found any of those to be good for your leadership, would you tell at least three other people? With your help, I believe that God can use these resources to better equip leaders who will make an impact for His Kingdom.
In my thirty years of life and experience in leadership roles in Christian organizations, there are leadership lessons that I learned (and continue to learn) from the life of ministry to which God called me. Over that time, He taught me lessons based on stories, principles, and truths from the Bible that have been translated into personal application. This particular series of articles focuses on a set of those lessons drawn from the book of Ezra in the Old Testament, the same lessons that I have published in my latest book. This week, in part 15, I am pulling out three big ideas that I hope you take away from the series. Here is the transcript of the podcast.
In this series, we have been diving deeper into principles and practices that connect biblical truth with wisdom and applying them to the practice of leadership. The purpose of the series, and of the website as a whole, is to connect faith, wisdom, and leadership in a way that will help you grow in your leadership and make an impact. That starts with realizing that God has a plan and purpose that can be trusted, whether or not we can visibly see His hand in it, and He has a part for us in this purpose.
We then spent 3 weeks laying the groundwork for effective leadership, using the analogy of the starting blocks in a race, when all the runners line up and get into position, and the starter yells, “On your mark, get set, go!” The first command, “On Your Mark,” was all about getting to the starting line and in the right place by getting yourself into the right frame of mind and equipping yourself for what is coming. Aligning yourself with truth by seeking and knowing God and knowing where He has placed you, and by establishing your foundational beliefs and values, gives you the capability to lead. The second command, “Get Set,” was all about getting into position in the right form, so that you are best prepared to start well. Performing the actions that set you up to be followed and trusted involves living your life so that your actions and behaviors reflect those beliefs, and that gives you the credibility to lead. The final command, “Go,” is when the starter’s pistol goes off and you start running. That’s when your work begins as you start leading your people and your organization toward your mission, vision, or change. This is hard work and therefore requires someone who is both capable and credible, and that’s why this step must follow the other two. But with those things in place, the race is underway, and what follows are the things you do to maintain your pace and your race. We have already talked about the importance of the ability to see the big picture, giving people a voice in the process and then motivating them, facing obstacles and opposition, the importance of celebrating, the process of strategic planning, and restoration, or what to do if things have gone wrong or you have messed up. Last time we reviewed all of these lessons, and today, in the final episode of the series, I am highlighting three big ideas.
For years I have attended professional development conferences. Typically, it involved two or three days of gathering together at some conference center, hearing from keynote speakers, attending breakout workshops and sessions, networking, perusing various vendors, and trying to learn as much as possible. But that’s where the challenge comes. Usually, I would take all kinds of notes, collect lots of samples and examples, and walk away with a ton of ideas. But by the time I got home, the plethora of ideas was too much to practically implement, and in the busyness of work back at home combined with the overwhelming amount of ideas I had collected, most of the wonderful ideas and information were set aside with the intent of coming back to it at a later time . . . which, of course, never happened. At some point over the years, I finally learned the value of taking time at the end of the conference to reflect and review everything I had learned, and to identify two or three big ideas that I could do when I got home. Amazingly, I found myself implementing ideas when I did this. The difference was that I figured out how to focus on a manageable list of ideas I could actually follow up on.
That’s what I hope this week’s article episode does for you – that it focuses in on three big takeaways that you can remember. I hope that everything we’ve talked about in the previous 14 weeks can be a benefit to you, but if nothing else, I pray you can walk away with these three things.
- See the big picture, which is this: God’s sovereignty operates in conjunction with man’s responsibility, in the context and for the purpose of restoration, resulting in relationship and purpose. Therefore, in the application of leadership, it is vital that we begin with an understanding that God has a plan and a purpose, that He is actively involved in the events of our lives, and that we also have a responsibility to act.
- Remember that leadership is hard, but the right skills can be learned to help you succeed. Be intentional about learning them. There are a multitude of valuable resources available to help you in your development of leadership, so study and learn and grow. But don’t forget to also seek out resources that help the spiritual development of your leadership, which is just as important (if not more so) for Christian leaders. So where can you go to get help for understanding leadership principles and practices within a biblical context? This may seem to be an obvious answer, but ironically it is one that is often overlooked by leaders: look to examples of leadership in the Bible.
- The Bible is relevant to leadership. The Bible is not an archaic text with no relevance to modern leadership and living, but is, rather, an incredibly practical source of principles, wisdom, and guidelines that can be applied to leadership to help you become more effective. The secret is in understanding that God, the Creator of man and of this world, and therefore the source of the greatest knowledge and understanding of man, life, and relationships, has revealed Himself to us in the Bible. Therefore, when we can see into the stories and the history with that lens, we can identify the ideas that apply to successful and effective leadership and living today.
My hope is that you learned and/or grew from all the lessons that I drew from this study of Ezra, but it is also my hope that two things have happened in particular: first, that you remember a couple of important lessons from this series that you can implement, and second, that you figured out you also can draw lessons from the Bible that will help you be the best leader you can be. The Bible is a valuable (and valid) source of wisdom, so I would encourage you to become intentional about seeking wisdom from it. I pray that this series has been a blessing to your leadership, and as I have said before, if you want to go deeper in these lessons, order a copy of my book, “Leadership Ezra,” on Amazon. Thank you and God bless.
In thirty years of life and experience in leadership roles in Christian organizations, there are lessons that I learned (and continue to learn) from the life of ministry to which God called me. Over that time, He taught me lessons based on stories, principles, and truths from the Bible that have been translated into personal application. This series of articles focuses on a set of those lessons drawn from the book of Ezra in the Old Testament (and then published in my latest book). This week, in part 15, I am wrapping things up with 3 big ideas that we need to take away from the series.
For the last fourteen weeks, I shared various lessons on leadership that can be drawn from the story that takes place in the book of Ezra, which included reviewing the whole series of lessons last week. One of those lessons emphasized the importance of seeing the big picture, so allow me to do that here, by zooming out above the whole story of Ezra to identify three of the overarching ideas for us.
1) One of the most important “big picture” lessons to learn from the story of Ezra – the lesson that represents the overall theme for the book – is this: God’s sovereignty operates in conjunction with man’s responsibility, in the context and for the purpose of restoration, resulting in relationship and purpose. Therefore, in the application of leadership, it is vital that we begin with an understanding that God has a plan and a purpose, that He is actively involved in the events of our lives, but that we also have a responsibility to act. I repeated this idea frequently throughout the series because I think it is one of the most important takeaways from the book.
2) A second big picture lesson is the realization that the work of leadership is hard, and it is not for the faint-hearted. There are decisions to be made, problems to be addressed, challenges to be solved, tensions to be managed, conflicts to be resolved, tasks to be completed, and numerous other responsibilities that ultimately have an impact on many people. And add to that the work of leading and managing people, who are imperfect and operate in the context of a fallen world. For the Christian leader – regardless of whether you are a school leader, church leader, ministry leader, or a Christian leading in a secular industry or organization – it can be even more challenging as you seek to reflect Christ in all you do.
The good news is that successful and effective leadership is a skill that can be learned, but it requires intentional effort. In today’s world, there are a multitude of valuable resources available for helping you in your development of leadership, however many of those do not address the spiritual context for the leader who is a follower of Jesus, which is just as important (if not more so) for Christian leaders. So where can you go to get help for understanding leadership principles and practices within a biblical context? This may seem to be an obvious answer, but ironically it is one that is often overlooked by leaders: look to examples of leadership in the Bible.
3) This takes me to the last “big picture” idea I would like for us to take away from this study: the Bible is not an archaic text with no relevance to modern leadership and living, but is, rather, an incredibly practical source of principles, wisdom, and guidelines that can be applied to leadership in order to help you become more effective. The secret is in understanding that God, the Creator of man and of this world and therefore the source of the greatest knowledge and understanding of man, life, and relationships, has revealed Himself to us in the Bible. Therefore, when we can see into the stories and the history with that lens, we can identify the ideas that apply to successful and effective living today.
You see, application is the connecting of one idea or principle or truth or concept to a practice; sometimes it is a closely related practice (narrow), sometimes it is not (broad), in which case it reflects a general, simple truth that applies to multiple scenarios or circumstances. There are principles that apply specifically to certain fields, but there are also ideas that are general and can be cross-applied because they are either 1) examples / representative of principles, or 2) core truths that apply across a spectrum. A leader needs to be able to think abstractly enough to make cross-application, to see ideas and identify how they illustrate lessons, while also being wise and discerning enough to identify and implement specifically related principles. The Bible, as the greatest source of wisdom at our disposal, is filled with illustrations and lessons that can be applied and cross-applied to leadership today.
My hope is that you learned and/or grew from the variety of lessons that I drew from this study of Ezra, but it is also my hope that you learned that you also can draw lessons from the Bible that will help you be the best leader you can be. The Bible is a valuable (and valid) source of wisdom, so I would encourage you to become intentional about seeking wisdom from it.