Leadership

Those of you who know me realize I spend a lot of time reading about, thinking about and talking about, leadership. I believe that so much of what God does through His people is affected by how leaders walk with Him. Some leaders have a way of making a dramatic difference in the people and organizations they lead while others miss those opportunities. We certainly live in a day when our world is craving leaders who can make a positive difference! While I served as a seminary president I was regularly approached by churches seeking a pastor. Everyone was looking for someone who would walk with God and who would be able to lead the church to do the same. Seems like a straightforward request. But tragically there are many churches today who are looking for such a person in vain.

Recently I was reading the account of Moses just after the Israelites made a golden calf in Exodus 32:30-32. God was preparing to destroy them and to start all over again. Moses interceded for the people and offered to even sacrifice his own eternal reward if God would spare the people. The Israelites probably had no idea how close they came to instant destruction if their leader had not been in direct communication with God. Moses had spent a great deal of time with God and he knew God’s heart. Moses had come a long way from the periods in his life when he tried to do God’s work through anger and violence or when he gave up on God doing anything and immersed himself for forty years in the shepherding business! Now Moses had a heart for people like God had and he knew how to intercede with God on his people’s behalf. Good leaders make a difference!

I have done a lot of traveling this month so I have had more time to read. I have read several interesting books. Phil Vischer, creator of Veggie Tales, has an interesting book called, Me, Myself, & Bob. It is fascinating not only for his account of his meteoric rise to fame and success and then plummeting to legal conflict and bankruptcy, but also because he shares about the impact my dad’s book on Samuel had on him. Here are some hilarious quotes from his book: (for those fans of my dad, I mean no irreverence. Really!).

“Suddenly I felt as if I were Luke Skywalker, running through the swamps of Dagobah with a seventy-year old Baptist church planter on my shoulders. I had found my Yoda.”

“And yet here was little Yoda Henry Blackaby, standing alone in the corner of his swamp making such radical statements as, ‘We have no business telling God what we want to accomplish for him or dreaming up what we want to do for him.”

“Yoda Blackaby was rocking my world.”

Vischer’s point, and he had one, was that he had spent the first part of his life doing all he could for God. Only out of his failure did he realize that God was looking for him to yield his life into service for what God intended to do through him. There is a huge difference!

Reading

This past month I also read two books by Malcom Gladwell, The Tipping Point and Blink. Both are intriguing looks about influence (albeit from a human perspective). Both books will make you think.

Two other books on influence I read this month are: Max De Pree, Leading without Power and Kouzes and Posner, A Leader’s Legacy. Both are good reading. They discuss how leaders make a difference. I am interested in a leader’s legacy. That is leaders’ lasting difference after they are gone. All of us are leaving a legacy. For some it will be a negative one. For others: extremely positive. Yet others, hardly noticeable. I am particularly concerned about what legacy I leave my children. They are constantly watching my life and being impacted by what they see.

Prayer

Finally, I would appreciate your prayers this month. I will be speaking in Tallahassee, Florida to a gathering of state government leaders who have been studying our book, Spiritual Leadership. Pray that I would know what God wants me to say as I address state senators and congressmen. Please pray as well as we complete a thorough revision of Experiencing God. I am joining my dad and Claude King in the writing this time. My dad and I have also made new videos for it. I pray God will continue to use this material to bless many more people for years to come.

I would encourage you to take some time to pray about how God is using your life to make a difference for His kingdom. We each have one life to live. We need to live it well.

Posted by Richard Blackaby at 6:12 pm