The Leader's Preparation Chapter 3
Life shapes a leader
Home life
Failures
Perhaps it was Churchill’s numerous failures that led him to define success as “going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Crises
Personal Struggles
Surprisingly, perhaps, many of history’s famous leaders experienced difficulty in public speaking as children. Winston Churchill, famous for his eloquence, had a speech impediment as a boy. Theodore Roosevelt spoke with difficulty. Mahatma Ghandi was so fearful of public speaking that in his first attempt to represent a client as her lawyer he became tongue-tied when it was time for him to speak in court. The embarrassed lawyer was forced to refund his fee and locate another lawyer for his client. D. L. Moody showed no early signs of developing into the forceful speaker he would become later in life. So poor was Moody’s grammar and so sparse his knowledge of the Bible that when he applied for membership in the Mount Vernon Congregational Church he was turned down upon his first application. When the young Moody attempted to speak in public during his church’s prayer meeting, he noted that it made adults “squirm their shoulders when I got up.” Some of the adults complained that Moody did not know enough grammar to address the congregation, and he was eventually asked to abstain from commenting in public.
It is intriguing that so many great leaders suffered severe romantic heartache as young people. Harry Truman was so painfully shy that it took him five years to muster the courage to speak his first words to his future wife. Because of his family’s misfortunes, it was not until Truman was thirty-five that he finally felt able to marry the girl of his dreams. Reading Truman’s correspondence to Bess during those years reveals a young man desperate to win the affection of a young lady for whom he felt completely unworthy. Lincoln was also woefully inept around women and suffered painful rejection before eventually marrying. Winston Churchill had the first woman he had ever truly cared for marry another man while two other women rejected his marriage proposal before he finally married Clementine at age thirty-seven. John Wesley, the famous English preacher, endured great frustration regarding a young woman while he was a missionary in America. As a result, he returned to England a brokenhearted, disillusioned, and unsuccessful missionary. Roger Williams, the first Baptist pastor in America, fell into severe depression when his low social status prevented him from marrying the young lady he loved. A young Billy Graham was devastated when Emily, the girl of his dreams, rejected his marriage proposal for another suitor who showed more promise of making something of himself. Graham remembered: “That woeful night in the spring of 1938 when she called it quits between us was Paradise Lost for me. In my despondency, I looked up Dr. Minder … I wept out my misery to his understanding ears.” Eleanor Roosevelt suffered the agonizing discovery that her husband Franklin was unfaithful. Historians have suggested that much of the energy and passion she later invested in social causes stemmed from an absence of fulfillment in her relationship with her husband. In each of these cases, it seems, early disappointment gave the aspiring leaders both a sense of humble reality and a renewed zeal to achieve something significant in their lives.
Success through hardship
So many of history’s great leaders suffered major failures, crises, and disappointments in their development as leaders that these traumas almost seem prerequisite to leadership success. If any conclusion can be drawn from the biographies of great leaders, it is that none enjoyed easy paths to greatness. It could, in fact, be argued that, had they avoided hardship, greatness would also have eluded them. This painful process of leadership development may be seen in the lives of biblical leaders as well. Moses, arguably the greatest figure in the Old Testament, had a life filled with adversity and failure. As a newborn, his life was threatened, so his mother gave him away to a foreigner. Although Moses was raised among Egyptian royalty, he was regularly reminded that his ancestry was, in fact, slavery. His bungled attempt to rescue a fellow Hebrew meant he had to flee for his life into the desert. Moses spent forty years herding sheep in the wilderness for his father-in-law because of a mistake he made in his youth. He spent another forty years wandering in the wilderness because of a mistake made by those he was leading. He would ultimately die outside the land he had dreamed of entering because of a mistake he made while wandering in the wilderness. Yet, despite his significant failures, even secular historians recognize Moses as one of the most influential leaders of all time. The apostle Paul, perhaps the greatest figure in the New Testament after Christ, was a murderer, as was King David in the Old Testament. In fact, several of the most influential people mentioned in the Old and New Testaments were murderers.
God shapes spiritual leaders
Inner life growth
Ministry Maturing
phase people make their earliest attempts at spiritual leadership. They may volunteer to lead a church program, or they may venture to share their faith with someone. Through such experiences God teaches them more specifically what it means to be spiritual leaders. When people first attempt to exercise leadership, they often fail or experience great frustration. It is as they develop leadership skills, as well as a résumé of experiences, that people begin to understand their strengths and weakness. At this stage the focus is more on who leaders are rather than on what they do. What leaders learn from these early experiences will largely determine how they advance in leadership ability.
Life Maturing
period is when spiritual leaders begin to focus on their strengths and to find leadership opportunities in which they can be most effective. Whereas until this time, God was working primarily in the leader, now God begins to work increasingly through the leader. An experiential understanding of God matures at this time. Through significant life experiences God teaches people about life and relationships. It is through the normal experiences of failure and success, criticism and praise, loyalty and betrayal, illness and loss that God matures people. Again, much depends upon the leader’s reaction to the life circumstances through which God brings them. Positive responses to these circumstances will guide the person into a more mature level of leadership.
Convergence
phase, people’s ministry experiences and their life experiences converge into a specific job or responsibility wherein they draw on all they have learned in order to enjoy maximum effectiveness. This will be the job or role for which leaders are best known and in which they experience their greatest success.
Clinton’s focus is on the development of spiritual leaders, but the general principles can apply to secular leaders as well. Both can experience the merging of their life and work experiences into a leadership role that successfully integrates all they have learned with who they have become.
Unfortunately, many people never reach convergence. Some leaders never find jobs or challenges that bring to fruition all that has gone before in their lives. The full benefit of their past is never brought to bear on society’s needs. The Holy Spirit will work to pull together all the experiences in Christians’ lives in order to bring them to a deeper maturity. When leaders neglect the Holy Spirit’s role in their lives they never reach their full potential as spiritual leaders
Celebration
is a level of leadership Clinton says few people achieve. It comes after one has successfully led others for a significant period of time. For spiritual leaders this phase occurs after they have faithfully allowed God to accomplish his will for their lives as well as for their organizations. Successful spiritual leaders spend this final period of their lives celebrating and building upon the work God did in and through them. This is also a time for teaching the next generation. Leaders in this sixth phase have nothing to prove. Others respect them not because of their position of influence, or even because they are continuing to lead, but because of who they are and what they represent.
Abraham was a great leader
CONCEPTS AND SCRIPTURES FOR CONSIDERATION
• The greatness of an organization will be directly proportional to the greatness of its leader.
• Ultimately, leadership is more about “being” than about “doing.”
• Any strategy for developing spiritual leaders must take into account those emerging leaders currently in their preteens.
• Most of history’s famous leaders have been decidedly ordinary people.
• So many of history’s great leaders suffered major failures, crises, and disappointments in their development as leaders that these traumas almost seem prerequisite to leadership success.
• God can use adversity to build certain qualities deep within one’s character that could not be fully developed in any other way.
• God seldom intervened when people were about to make mistakes. Rather, he allowed them to fail, but stood ready to redeem them.
• No experience, good or bad, is ever wasted.
• People may apply for various leadership positions, but God is the one who ultimately determines which leadership roles they will have.
• God’s assignments are always based on character—the greater the character, the greater the assignment.
