LEADERSHIP TIPS

LEADERSHIP IN GOD’S KINGDOM

In the past few years, the Church in Africa, particularly in Nigeria has been blessed with explosive expansion and growths on all fronts. But with this blessing comes a great responsibility of conserving, managing and efficient and effective leadership. Our Church, for example has been blessed in multifarious ways in the past few years except we want to deny the undeniable reality on ground. But a major problem in nearly of Church History is that as the Church grows and expands, leadership does not grow commensurably with the expansive growth. Hence Church grows to a certain level, it plateaus and after sometime it begins to decline and eventually goes into extinction. This is a brief analysis of what went wrong with mega revivals of the yester years in Europe, the Americas, and even among select denominations in Nigeria. Hence there is a call for a strong leadership in the Church.

One of the concepts highly and wrongly misconceived and misunderstood in the Church today is the concept of leadership. The various misunderstandings and misconceptions arise out of the worldly understanding of similar views. For example, the word Minister means different things in the secular arena and in the kingdom of God. In the former, it carries the image of a boss; in the latter it simply means a servant, nothing more nothing less. The danger then is that people who have served as boss in various categories carry same mentality in to the Church and expects to function under certain illusion and thereby cause confusion in the Church they are suppose to give direction to.

Leadership is not about age, post, economic or political status. Most people attach their sense of being leaders to post and functions and that is why when their tenure expires they don’t want to leave and they have the capacity they make their post untenurable. The mistake is that most of us in positions of leadership think that the moment you are given a post people will naturally follow you, obey you, respect you; fffffffffff oooooo uuuuu lllllll! It doesn’t work that way; you have got to earn your status as a leader. Leadership is not conferred, it is earned.

Granted the above-said, what then is leadership? Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Leadership is about influencing others around you in   worthwhile cause. It is not dependent on post, position; it is not dependent on titles. Leadership is dependant on someone catching a vision from God and mobilizing others around him to join in fulfillment of that vision. Leadership is not about domination or control, it is about influencing others and others choose to follow. Leadership is about service, not about being served.

Jesus, the Perfect example of Man that ever walked on the planet earth gave us examples both in lifestyle and teaching what Kingdom leadership ought to be. Let us read from Matthew 4: 18-20

18.  And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 19.  And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20.  And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

Follow Me:

·         Kingdom leadership is preceded by thorough discipleship. Peter and his friends were first and foremost disciples before they became and were addressed as Apostles. Today we have many undiscipled people who want to function as apostles and when it doesn’t work they result to control, manipulations and politicking to exercise not influence but control over God’s people. If you think you are a leader, who discipled you? These are the days that common Follow the Master, the Master Life… people are not ready to go through the discipline for whatever reasons.

·         Kingdom leadership is about followership: As a leader you follow a leader and other followers follow you. Paul had his mentor and had his Timothy ;( See I Timothy 1:) Peter had Jesus leading and had Mark following him; John had Jesus leading and had Eusebius following him. If you think or believe you are a leader who are you following, don’t say Jesus, everybody is doing that; who are you mentoring, following in your step?

You see, if people are following you based on your parentage, post, or functions, you need to develop to a realm of influence. They are only respecting our age, status, royalty, title, education, post, by the time they become what we are we likely lose our command and control. Our life as leaders must be the ones that command influence and respect and not demand it. The moment we begin to demand these, then we are not leaders but Master and there is only one Master for us all Jesus Christ. Matthew 23:8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.

·         Follow me: This also suggests Kingdom Leadership is about Trust: Before people would follow us, they want to be sure we know the way. Following anyone to anywhere is built on trust. If I don’t trust you that you know the way I won’t follow you. Jesus modeled it before the disciples before he said that John 14:6  Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Naturally, people will not follow us when they know we have nothing to offer them. When you yourself are struggling about the issues of life that they are struggling with, they won’t follow. Nobody wants to follow a struggler, everybody wants a Saviour. Are you a Saviour-leader or a struggling-leader?  If your life is an epitome of backwardness, visionlessness, corruption, sin, lackadaisical attitude to life etc, no matter what qualifies you to give a word of command, people will not follow you. They may obey your command by force, but you re not leading them. Why? You can not lead people beyond where you are. As a leader I need to ask myself, “Can people trust me to help them get to their desired destiny?” If your answer is no, you are not a leader in reality.  There is a Japanese proverb that says “he who says he is a leader and looks behind him and finds no followers, is not a leader he is only going for a walk.”

I WILL MAKE YOU FISHERS OF MEN.

Kingdom leadership is about adding values to people; Kingdom leadership is transformational: Jesus met Peter et al as fishers of fishes he left them as fishers of men. He didn’t change their skills, but helped them discover greater value for their skills. He transformed their skill without changing their skill to give them better value and meaning for life. That is what leadership entails. It is not about sitting at board meetings making policies and rules and regulations we never lift our fingers to execute.

You can’t be a leader indeed and come in contact with people and leave them where you met them. You are a leader by what you contribute into their lives- adding value to lives.