Jesus: A Leadership Failure?

Go to any bookstore and you will find a host of books on leadership. Many promoting ideas on how to be an effective leader. However, no matter what type of leader you are, you will still experience some forms of failure. In today’s society failure is considered a sign of weakness. Only the incompetent experience failure. Truly good leaders will never experience problems with those they lead. However, Scripture seems to disagree with this.

Don’t believe me look at the life of Jesus. In Matthew 26 Jesus is betrayed. After pouring 3 years of His life into the twelve disciples Jesus is handed over by Judas. In Mark 10 we see division within the disciples. They experienced inner turmoil as they fought amongst themselves for a better position of power and importance. And finally Jesus was abandoned by His followers. During His darkest hour Jesus was totally abandoned by those whom He discipled. One of which promised to die with Him if necessary.

What can we learn from this? Even the Son of God experienced difficulty when leading groups of people. Why? Because He was leading sinful people. We are no different. When leading we must keep in mind that we will encounter our share of hardship and frustrations. This is common to both the experienced and novice leader. What determines our leadership ability is how we handle these difficulties.

Good leaders entrust themselves to God. They realize that their ministry is a gift from God. Any good fruit that results from their leadership is a result of God’s grace working in and through them. Good leaders work hard for the Lord and entrust the results to Him.

Good leaders do not get distracted by traitors in the camp. Every church has people that will seemingly betray us. They will pull away after we have invested time and energy into them. They will suddenly lead attacks against us or try to steer things in a different direction. Some of these people need to be dealt with directly. At other times it is best to simply ignore them and move forward. The key is to not let them get you off course. You are God’s person. You have been given the call to lead your area. Therefore, move forward and don’t be sidetracked.

Good leaders do not allow others to drain their passion and intensity for ministry. Some people are negative. They see only the dark side of things. These people can become a distraction and discouragement. A good leader must continually seek Christ through His Word for encouragement and renewal in order to maintain their passion. They must learn to lovingly ignore those who are by nature negative and focus on the fruit being produced in the lives of others. All the while praying that the Lord would also convict and renew those who may provide the discouragement.

Good leaders persevere. One of the biggest temptations in leadership is to give up. Give up on people, on the ministry, on God, on your own ability to lead. However, good leaders persevere through all of the disappointments, challenges, and failures. In the Christian life perseverance is key to our faith. This is true also of our leadership. When we persevere to the end we are at times allowed to see the benefits of our labor. Take for example Jesus’ own following. If we had left them just after His crucifixion we would be given the impression that they would never amount to anything. But as we know from reading the book of Acts God used those men to change the world by spreading the Gospel.