Tuesday, February 17, 2009
In my previous post(just before I left for lunch), I mentioned about the current situation taken place in the world today, how we view leadership and introduced the role of a leader since the beginning during Genesis. I also discussed how much I respected king solomon in his request to be wise in his governance instead of wealth and power. His people benefited from him as they were well taken care of and were free of poverty.
In the new testament of the bible we see Jesus Christ teaching his disciples on the significance of service to people. We can see that in the book of Matthew 20:26 that Jesus had to use the word "slave" - v27 to reinforce his point on the purpose of leading. "whoever wants to be first must be your slave". And he ended of with his purpose of his ministry in v28 . We can see this idea of leadership in Jesus's very own experience. From the miracles he performed freeing demon-possesed people(Matt 17), healing the paralytic(Matt 9), restoring sight to the blind(Matt 20:21) to the humble demonstration of service by washing his disciples feet (John 13:5) he proved that his resolve on the call of leadership and influence is not through tyranny, might,power and control but the very desire to serve others.What an opposing contrast to what we see in our world today.
In conclusion, I feel that the essence to leadership is not earned by credit but driven by his very desire to serve his people. He should be able to instill hope and confidence to his people in times of trial and continue to draw(with his followers) useful lessons from failures in times of success. and one who appeal to the hearts of the people and not their minds.Leadership development is a lifetime journey...
book I enjoy about leadership
John C Maxwell-360 degree leader