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Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken

Many of my wilderness experiences have been self-imposed. They grew out of drivenness within me; the fruit of selfish ambition, fear, and the anger that created unmet needs in my heart. And those needs should never have been met. That means that many of my wilderness experiences could have been avoided if only . . .

If only I were aware of my drivenness; if only I had realized my ambition—pursued, sincerely I believe in the name of Jesus—was mixed with the slag of my glory even as I sought His glory; if only I had understood that my fear actually was pride and my anger was anger. I carried inner anger without even knowing what it was. I gradually came to understand that these feelings within me were harmful and that prayer alone could bring me release. By then I had been a pastor for probably four or five years and realized I needed help from other leaders to be free. That’s when I asked the elders of our church to meet with me early every Sunday morning to pray because that’s how I gained some deliverance along the way.

So it was that I entered into burnout and edged toward depression for a period of time early in my pastorate. So it was that I struggled with comparison and competition and feelings of failure because I wasn’t as good as others or I hadn’t reached the standard of success I set for myself. Now I realize that that standard of success was self-imposed and not from God or anyone else; now I realize that it doesn’t make any difference whether I’m as good as others; now I realize that those wilderness experiences were self-imposed and unnecessary.

I don’t like to project myself on other leaders, but, as I have talked about these concerns in cultures all over the world, I have found many fellow leaders who identify with me because they’re in the same self-imposed wilderness. I’m just a little bit ahead of them. As I talk about these wilderness experiences, I find them responding, recognizing their own struggles and seeking freedom. So what can leaders do when they find themselves in the self-imposed wilderness?

Find the joy of the wilderness, the rugged beauty, the blooming wild flowers, the cooling shade, and the refreshing oases of flowing, refreshing water. How?

1. Stop denying the truth about you and fall on your face before God in prayer, acknowledging that virtually everything you blame on others comes from you.
2. Read the Bible in the light of your responsibility and God’s grace and make Christ your life, not only the One you talk about, but the One you depend on to live.
3. Find someone you can talk with honestly and tell him/her the truth about you and listen to what you hear back no matter how much it hurts, even if you must travel hours and hours to get to him.

While many, probably most, of my wilderness experiences have been self-imposed and unnecessary, they have been critical to my growth as a man, my sensitivity as a husband and a father, and my impact as a leader. I wish I could have avoided them, but I couldn’t make it without them. So, I encourage you to keep on wandering in your wilderness. Sooner or later you’ll get to an oasis of refreshing rest. But after you’re there a while, you’ll start over again with another season in the wilderness—and that will be the best place you can be if you want to be God’s kind of leader.

Good leaders start well. Great leaders end well. There are many good leaders. There are few great leaders. What makes the difference?

In between a good start and a great finish is one decision the leader must make over and over again—the decision of the altared heart.

I don’t doubt at all that you have made that decision. Your heart is on God’s altar—or at least it was when you put it there.

Mine certain was. I put it there when I was twelve years old, and I meant it when I did it. It was only later when I unexpectedly hit the wall of inadequacy that I realized my heart had outgrown my altar, that the altar of a twelve eyar old wasn’t big enough for a pastor and a seminary professor and I discovered that what I thought was an event was actually a process.

And that’s the difference between a good start and a great finish.

My start began in Philadelphia in the northeastern part of the US.

I have been in the UK on many occasions and I remember a time when I was standing In Hounslow, the borough in London, and I had one of the strangest feelings I ever had, a deju vu kind of feeling like I’d been there before, but I had never been there ever. Then it hit me. This feels like Philadelphia, like where I grew up. The row homes—that’s what we called them—with the front gardens so much like one of the homes my parents owned after I was on my own—it was all there. As it turns out, to me Philadelphia is one of the most British of cities in the US.

And it was there that I started my pilgrimage in Christ, a pilgrimage that has led me into ministry all over the world through which I have learned a great deal about ministering in cross cultural settings.

And I long ago learned how futile it is to export American methods into other cultures. In fact I learned three reasons why it’s so futile to do this.

First, it doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t work. It’s a waste of time. Worse than that, it’s an insult to the culture. What good does it do to bring American methods to solve problems British churches don’t have? That’s simply crazy!

Second, we tend to export our worst solutions, like the CEO model of leadership for churches, an ungodly model for churches if there ever was one. The CEO model works great in business when it’s exercised with care and concern for the well being of the followers as well as the prosperity of the business. But the biblical model of leadership is shepherd, not CEO, and that’s the model we need most to focus on.

But thirdly, our ministry, Leader Formation International, is a message ministry, not a method ministry. You have plenty of leaders in the UK who have developed all kinds of methods that are effective in your ministries. Our ministry, instead, is a message ministry.

Much to my amazement I have been invited to share my message, the message of the altared heart, the message of walking with God in the ways of wholeness, all over the world. I never sought this. I never planned this. I never expected to be making this video today. It ahs just happened through the sovereign grace of God.

Years ago, when I started as a pastor, the Lord blessed our ministry. Then, unexpectedly, I hit what I since realized was the wall of inadequacy, a season when nothing in my education or experience worked, when I struggled without success to break through to what I expected to achieve. It was through that season of brokenness that I came to understand to some measure what it means to walk in God’s ways of wholeness.

Across some time I realized the role of the cross in leadership, how the cross frees us from our expectations of power, success, and control, how death leads to resurrection, how power, success, and control no longer matter—not that they ever did—but how they no longer matter to real leadership, not personal power or

personal success or personal control. Instead what really matters is love, service, and sacrifice through the cross. That’s what great leadership is whether anybody hears of us or not.

Now we know what a great leader is, a leader whose heart is on God’s altar through the cross.

So that’s what we are at Leader Formation International: a cross broken altar focused message ministry seeking to walk in the ways of God’s wholeness as we strive to move from a good start to a God-glorifying finish.

All of us are afraid. In fact, fear may be the most common emotion of our lives. For virtually all of us, the first response we have to fear is to hide it, deny it, not let anyone see it. We are afraid of fear, afraid, especially as leaders, that if we let others see our fear they will reject us, lose respect for us, and take advantage of us or even reject us.

So it’s surprising to hear Paul admit his fear up front, at the beginning of his companion epistles, I and II Corinthians. In both letters his authority is at stake, yet he puts his status on the line when he says, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling (I Cor. 2:3).” Later he states that he experienced “. . . fighting without and fear within (II Cor. 7:5).”

It’s little wonder that Paul was afraid when he got to Corinth. Driven from Philippi to Thessalonica to Berea and through Athens, he ended up in Corinth, the last stop in Greece before boarding a boat and sailing for home. Shortly after arriving in Corinth and proclaiming the Gospel there, he was in the middle of turmoil. Staring physical violence in the eye, he had every reason to be afraid until Jesus appeared to him and assured him that he was there to bring many to the truth. On this basis he stayed and persevered despite the overwhelming idolatry and evil of the city.

One of the many truths we learn from Paul’s ministry is that leadership is hardly a triumphal march to the mountaintop. More often than not it is a struggle through the darkness of a deep valley, even the valley of the shadow of death through which Paul ultimately walked.

In several places Paul acknowledged fear, inadequacy, and need, but he never pulled back from God’s call, no matter how overwhelming it was. Still he could only make the decision to stand against fear by being in situations where he felt out of his depth because he faced fear. God puts leaders in places where we are forced to confront fear so He can teach us to turn fear into faith. We not only see this in Paul’s life; we also see it in the disciples as they faced overwhelming fear and terror for their lives. How do you respond when you face such great fear? Can you stand against it by faith or do you give in to it by conforming to the demands of those around you?

To stand for the Lord you must first spend time with the Lord, lots of time, searching your heart and releasing it to Him, focusing on Him, releasing ourselves to Him, yielding ourselves to Him and His purposes and His will. We must be prepared to lose everything for Him so we can gain everything for Him. Anything less than this will cost us everything for Him. This is the decision of a lifetime, and we can only make it as we prepare ourselves by giving ourselves to Him in small ways over our daily lives.  God teaches us to face fear so we can overcome its attack by learning that it cannot overcome His faithfulness no matter how afraid we are.

At Leader Formation we focus on the leader rather than leadership.

Effective leadership is our aim, but we have learned that leadership collapses when competent leaders lack godly character. God has used leadership from the beginning of time, but time after time we see leadership fail because leaders fail. Look at Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, Mark and on throughout history, and you will see that leadership is flawed because leaders are flawed.  As one of our board members, Dr. Gary Wood, declared, “Skills are essential but not sufficient.”

Leader Formation exists to strengthen leadership by forming leaders. As we see it, the heart of the leader is the heart of a leadership and our aim is to form the hearts of leaders through the Holy Spirit. That’s why we call ourselves Leader Formation.

We accomplish our aim by focusing on the Scriptures. We are not interested in exporting American solutions to problems global leaders do not have, but we do know that biblical solutions to problems leaders around the globe do have will make them effective in leadership. The first of our emphases is the four heart factors of a leader, four factors that determine whether a leader serves God or self, found in

I Kings 11-12.

The Four Heart Factors of a Leader (I Kings 11-12)

The Power Factor—Leaders who pursue their power rather than God’s power achieve much but lose everything (I Kings 11:1-43).

The Accountability Factor—Leaders who have Nathans in their lives become Davids because they are transformed from shame to success (I Kings 11:4).

The Flip-Flop Factor—Leaders who rely on God for their convenience and on themselves for their accomplishments trade His greatness for their smallness.

( 1 Kings 12:1-15)

The Fear Factor—Leaders who strive to overcome fear by trusting themselves rather than God always fail (I Kings 12:25-33).

What role do these factors play in you as a leader? All of us long for power, seek to avoid accountability, use God for our own advantage and ourselves for our own advancement, and promote ourselves to advance our cause. This means at least some of the time we strive for our cause in Jesus’ name. If any of these four factors influence your leadership, God will do the same thing with you that He did with Solomon, David, Jeroboam, and Rehoboam. He will cause your drive to take down your leadership. Still He will take your repentance to restore your leadership. Repent early and often and God will restore you constantly and permanently.

It was the spring of the year when leaders took their troops out to defend their territory and protect their country. But this spring David, Israel’s leader, did not take his troops into battle. He had spent seventeen years on the run for his life from King Saul when he lived in caves in the wilderness though he was no risk to Saul. He had opportunities to take Saul’s life, but he would not touch God’s leader.

Now he was king and established in Jerusalem with a new and beautiful house, a gift from a very dear friend, and seemed to have no desire to live the hard life of a military general any more. Besides he had a trustworthy commander and experienced troops he could rely on, so there was no need for him to live on rough ground in primitive shelters when he could enjoy the pleasure of his new home.

So David did not go into battle with his troops that spring. Instead he lived at ease in his new home overlooking Jerusalem, the capital of his kingdom.

Late one afternoon David went up to the rooftop of his home and looked down on his city. Unexpectedly he saw a beautiful woman bathing herself on the roof of her home, where she was purifying herself according to the Lord’s direction in order to obey God. Suddenly attracted, David discovered she was Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, one of his soldiers.  He sent for her and slept with her. Not too long after that she sent word to him saying, “I am pregnant.” Hardly good news for the king. He ordered Uriah to come to Jerusalem, obtained a battle report from him, and sent him home to his wife. Uriah, however, would not go home as long as the ark and his fellow soldiers lived in tents on the battlefield.  So David sent him back to war with a death warrant in his hand—directions for his general, Joab, to put Uriah in the most violent part of the battle where he was certain to die. And Uriah died.

When leaders stop leading they displease the Lord. When success becomes a leader’s greatest desire, when the comfort of accomplishment becomes a leader’s greatest drive, when a leader’s self-image is defined by his greatest achievements, he is facing his greatest danger.  David had committed the two worst crimes he could, adultery and murder, both subject to death by God. God spared his life, but David never had another spring when he could stay home. From this point on he was threatened by enemies and forced to fight battles he never wanted to face. No leader can become caught up in his success and remain successful—the leader who is caught up in success will crash in failure.

What dominates your thoughts—your success or God’s purpose? The leader who thinks about his success rather than God’s purpose is like David—staying home rather than leading in battle. And the leader who does this faces greater battles than he ever thought possible.  

If you are a successful leader, as David was and if you are caught up in your comfort rather God’s demands, as David became, or if you are enjoying your achievements rather than God’s call in your life, as David did, you are taking the greatest risk of your life, the risk of God’s discipline for as long as you live.

Rejoice in the blessing of God’s success through you, but when the next springtime comes, be prepared to lead in God’s battles for you lest you are forced to face God’s discipline in your life.