The Power of a Leader

from 2/20/13

A leader can be a powerful and useful person.  But leaders have to be careful. 

Reading in 3 John 9 he talks about Diotrephes, who is a leader in the church where Gaius lives.  Diotrephes "likes to be the leader", but evidently is kind of pushy.  It seems Diotrephes has led his fellow church-goers to believe that they should not help the traveling teachers and when John tried to write the church of his issue with this, Diotrephes evidently made sure it was ignored.

Diotrephes, may be a leader in the church, but he was playing for the wrong team.  He wanted the glory for himself and was dragging a whole congregation down with him, away from God's truth.

This is the power of a leader.  You can drag the followers down or help lift them up.  You can be good at leading and still be a bad leader.

I seem to be a natural leader myself.  Either that, or I am just a sucker who can't say no and gets roped into leading things.  Just the same, I enjoy the work, the friendships I make through it and bossing people around that actually listen, unlike my children.  But, I have to be careful too, or that last little remark could be true instead of just a funny (or lame attempt at funny) little joke.

You see, I tend to jump on bandwagons, get worked up pretty quickly, offended quickly and like to have things done the way I like them done.  God has shown me this over time and botched leadership positions from time to time.  I can get bossy, but people don't necessarily like to be bossed around.  I can get over excited about a little mishap and let my mouth get ahead of my thoughts, which I usually have to back track to try and fix.  But, thankfully, God uses these little blunders to help me do better next time.

Leaders have to be careful.  Leaders have to remember that while we may be leading a small flock here on earth we are only but followers of the Shepherd over all of us.  If we stray our flock from that Shepherd there are many lions and bears waiting to attack, but if we follow Him ourselves and listen to our Shepherd and flock, the flock will grow abundantly faith and productivity.