The story of numbers 13 is deeply instructive for any ministry organization. As you remember, the spies were sent into the promised land to survey it prior to the Isrealites taking it. On return, two of the spies gave a favorable report while ten did not. Those ten said it was an impossible job to take the land. The people were too big, the cities too fortified and the land to vast. Never mind that God had promised it to them and said that He would go before them as he had so many times before already.
What is scary is that it took only ten individuals to sway the vast majority of the people who then refused to follow God and ended up causing everyone to wander in the desert for 40 years. Hundreds of thousands of people suffered because of ten individuals who refused to follow God or believe his promises, and these were leaders no less.
Ministry success always depends on leaders who are willing to courageously follow Christ and believe that He will take them to the places He wants them to go. Negative leaders, scared leaders, tentative leaders, easily swayed leaders, leaders of little faith - none of these should be leaders in God's Kingdom. Like the leaders in Moses day they will hurt rather than help those whom they lead.
Ministries do way too little to guard the leadership door against those who do not belong. Who you have in leadership matters a lot. The wrong leaders exact a spiritual price on those they lead while good leaders do the opposite. It only takes a few bad leaders to derail an organization.
In almost every ministry meltdown or church conflict I have watched it was the failure of a few leaders to act with wisdom and vision that caused the problems. Who paid the price of their bad leadership? Everyone else!
No comments:
Post a Comment