follow the leader

If you're a church worker, you've probably heard of John Maxwell. He's like a superhero in the Church. I love the guy. He won me over at a Catalyst Conference a few years ago. More on that later...

John has written like 25 books on leadership. He's a guru on the subject. I own like seven of his books. I like them. They're good. Read them.

But lets be honest: some of these pastors that specialize in "leadership" are lousy pastors. They're good at leading, but nobody wants to follow them. They don't even seem to like the people they are leading, or God for that matter. They're great with charts and graphs and procedures, but they are horrible shepherds. They have scripts and cliche' statements that they use to make it seem like they care, but anyone with an ounce of discernment can see right through it all.

But John isn't in that category.Well, based on what he said at this conference, I'm assuming he's not. He said something like this:

The only thing that matters is the type of person you are becoming. Focus all of your attention and energy on that, and all of this other stuff will come with it.

He said this while sitting on a stool in front of 15,000 pastors... and he was sobbing. Not like fake, Emmy Award winning tears, but as far as I could tell very genuine tears.

I know we have a job to do. I know we have people to lead, and we need structure and vision and training and systems and leadership principles to follow... but more than that we need to be pursuers of Jesus. This has been my focus- my breath of fresh air these past few months. I'm starting over. I'm being reminded what is most important.

The quote in this picture I took is from "Hearing God", by Dallas Willard. Read it a few times :)