The Bible and Leadership (Bot9 #317)
To start our baseball offseason, I’ve been meeting with a group of our returning players and reading The Twin Thieves by Steve Jones and Lucas Jadin. Our conversations happen over dinner after a whole program devotion. The format is simple. I start with every player answering a “what stood out to you?” prompt and then focusing the discussion on elements of the reading I’d like to drill down on.
A few weeks ago, I asked this question from early in the book - “What is holding you back from leading?”
Now, the “twin thieves” as outlined in the book are the fear of failure and the fear of judgement (no spoiler alert necessary - this information is on the front cover). The players expressed what was holding them back and everything they said boiled down to those two fears. Would they lead correctly? Were they qualified to lead? Have they lived up to the same standards they were asking out of someone else? I quickly reaffirmed what I’ve seen previously - that the greatest barrier to leadership is ourselves.
But there’s something else keeping us from leading as well. I was listening to a leadership podcast and the two guys on the show were looking at some of the greatest leaders in the Bible. Before you know it, these two are geeking out about the accomplishments of these great Biblical leaders. “Oh man, Moses did such and such. Paul and all he did. And, how about David?!” The conversation was all fine and dandy, but I turned to my daughter and said, “Are they going to talk about all of the obvious flaws of those guys or not?”
Unfortunately, the answer was no. No mention of Moses murdering a guy or his speech impediment. Nothing about Paul’s arrogance or whatever that “thorn in the flesh” was. David’s adultery? Nah. This misses the most important message the Bible gives us over and over and over again: the great leaders of the Bible also felt disqualified for leadership, may not wanted to lead, and were absolutely human. God called them, they walked in faith, and they doubted themselves like everyone else does. They weren’t perfect, in fact, far from it.
The Bible and the leaders therein aren’t meant to be propped up and idolized. They’re meant to be seen as human examples, just like us, so we might step out in faith as they did. We might not part a sea or lead a people from one land to another or spread the Gospel throughout an area of the country or be a king, but we are meant to lead and love ourselves and others. All of us. Every one of us. And it takes a lot of courage to overcome the barriers of ourselves and the high regard we have for the leaders of the faith.
The disciples ran into some barriers as well. In Matthew 17:14-18, a man comes up to Jesus and explains both his son’s affliction and the fact that the disciples couldn’t heal him. After Jesus removes the demon from the boy, he has this interaction with the disciples:
Matthew 17:19-20, “Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
May we all have more faith in the Spirit dwelling in us so we might live a life without barriers.