Tag Archive for: #leadershipezra

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about the value of serving quietly.

In my first school leadership role, we had built a new school building that also had shared use with the church that owned the school. Within a few months, teachers were communicating a frustration with me about having to clean up their classrooms every Monday morning, needing to put all the desks back in order, which was taking away from their time to prepare for the start of the week. I encouraged the teachers to have a servant’s heart in response to this situation, but I also passed on their frustration to the church leadership, and asked if we could give the Sunday school teachers some instruction on how to put the rooms back in order when they were done with the children’s classes on Sunday. It seemed like a simple request to me, so the reply I received was unexpected. I was informed that the building was owned by the church, that many of the church members had funded it, and that they were volunteers, so they needed to be able to use the room how they wanted to on Sundays without being obligated to extra work, and the teachers could straighten the rooms up on Monday mornings.

This put me in the middle of a dilemma (which I eventually learned was not an uncommon occurrence in school leadership). The church leadership, and by extension, the Sunday school teaching volunteers, did not see the opportunity they had to be able to serve the school teachers, and the teachers did not see the opportunity to serve children coming to church. Instead, each was focused on their own needs. I was in the middle, with the responsibility of resolving this conflict well.

So, my wife and I started taking the kids to the grocery store after church on Sunday to get a loaf of French bread, some deli meat and cheese, and chips, and then head back to the church. By the time we got there, everyone would be gone, and we would sit in the school cafeteria and have lunch together. Then, along with our two kids who were in elementary school at the time, we would set up all the classes for school the next day. Neither side knew we were the ones going through the building every Sunday afternoon to make sure all the desks were arranged, and that everything was in order.

To this day, my children, who are adults, still talk about that time as a great family memory. They remember having French bread sandwiches and serving together as a family, and finding joy in knowing that we were meeting a need, and no one knew that it was us. In their eyes, it was a secret mission that took care of people, and they had the joy of knowing that teachers would walk into their classrooms at the start of the week with everything ready but without knowing my kids had made sure it was so. They also remember the joy that came because we were serving together and making it a valuable time for our family.

These are wonderful lessons on leadership from this little thing in life, from Sunday afternoons with my children quietly putting classrooms back in order. First, they highlight not just the value of serving the needs of others, but the importance of doing it for the right reason. You serve not for your own praise or glory, but for the well-being of others. Second, they highlight the heart and attitude that should be present in you. If you have the right attitude, you get to experience the joy of being a blessing, especially knowing that your honor should come from God and not from others. So I encourage you to pursue this mindset. If you are a leader, you are also a servant. Look for opportunities to serve, but do it quietly, and experience the joy of seeing the blessing it is for those who experience the results of what you have done.

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about trusting God in our circumstances, even when we don’t understand.

One of the things that my wife and I have enjoyed doing together over the years of our marriage has been watching TV series. What kind of series that is will change, depending on the season or what is catching our interest, but we enjoy watching them together. For example, my wife has long been a Trekkie, so at one point in time, we watched through the entire original Star Trek television series, and then all of the Star Trek movies. Sometimes we enjoy watching animé, so Naruto was another show that we watched all the way through. And of course, there were all the Marvel movies in chronological order, and the Star Trek movies and series, including the animated ones, also in chronological order. More recently, we really enjoyed watching a Korean drama called “When Life Gives You Tangerines,” and thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it. Currently, we are watching the Waltons series. I know it’s an older series, but we also enjoy watching through television series from that era, like The Andy Griffith Show or Hogan’s Heroes. A brief scene in the Waltons reminded me of the important lesson I am sharing today.

In the final episode of season 1, Mrs. Walton (Olivia) was stricken with polio. As the family wrestled with her illness and with the potentially crippling effects, the pastor of their church showed up to visit. On the porch, as he was leaving, he asked Grandma Walton how the children were doing, and she said that they were having a hard time understanding how this could happen to their mother. The reverend replied, “Me too.” Grandma said, “You, a man of God?”, to which he answered, “I accept His ways, ma’am, but I don’t always understand them.”

This made me think about the challenges my wife has had over the years with cancer and its related effects. Her health had been deteriorating over many years, with changing diagnoses from different doctors over that time. But then a new doctor was convinced that something else was the source of much of the issue and began pursuing answers until it was discovered that my wife had neuroendocrine cancer, with a primary tumor in her left lung. The result was a thoracotomy to remove her lung and to start treatments for the effects of that cancer. During that experience, especially early on, we had to wrestle with the same truth that the reverend did on the Waltons. We had to decide if we were gonna trust what God was doing even when we didn’t understand.

In retrospect, I can see that God has blessed and used us through that experience for a purpose. We have seen His hand at work using this to minister to others, and He has blessed us abundantly, even in the worst of it. So, even when we didn’t understand, it was the right thing for us to trust Him because He still knew what He was doing. It’s the same as when a parent gives a child boundaries for their good, even when their children don’t understand why at the time.

And that’s the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from this brief scene in the final episode of season 1 of the Waltons. As Steven Curtis Chapman sang, “God is God and I am not.” It is like looking at a woven rug from the backside, where all you see is the tangled mess of carpet fibers, while God is on the other side and sees the completed beautiful picture. I don’t see the whole picture from my perspective, so the only question I have to answer is whether or not I trust what God is doing, even when I don’t see the purpose. I don’t know what challenges you may be experiencing at the moment, but I hope that your relationship with God is such that you can trust His ways even when you don’t understand.