Leading is Easy!

Being a leader is easy. All you have to do is show up with a vision of how things should be and then start putting people in the right places so they can make your vision a reality. If you lead really well, you won’t even have to get your hands dirty. I mean, how can you lead and oversee everything if you’re busy actually doing the work? Right?

Sadly, this type of leadership exists all around us. From political to religious, often times our leaders are up there somewhere and we’re down here doing all the work.

I remember reading an article once about how Al Gore was advocating climate change, cutting back, and becoming environmentally friendly. Funny thing is, his house was using more electricity in a month than the average house used in a year. Recently we heard about how some automobile industry leaders flew to Washington in their personal planes to talk about how bad things were getting financially. Examples abound, but I’ll stop here.

The bottom line is, far too often a leader asks his followers to do something he isn’t doing himself. In Nehemiah’s day, the governors ate like fat cats while the people all struggled. Well, Nehemiah was a real leader. He never asked the people to do anything he wasn’t doing. You see, Nehemiah did more than lead with words—he led by example. If the people needed to know what to do, they could just look at Nehemiah. I can’t help but think he was the first one to start working and the last one to quit. When he asked the people to sacrifice, you can bet he sacrificed more. This has huge implications for us today.

For example, take a look at our churches. We preach and teach against sin, but we have just as much debt, we get divorced just as often, and physically, well let’s just say we’re not in a good shape. So when the world looks at us, they don’t see what they should be doing; they see what they’re already doing.

Now it’s going to get a bit personal and painful. When your class looks at you, what do they see? What are you exemplifying to them? Are you asking your learners to study the Bible though you only read your lesson on the way to church? Is your prayer life healthy? Do you take care of the body God gave you? Do you spend more time talking about people than investing in them? Do you tithe? Serve? Love? Spend some time this weekend truly checking your example.

These are questions worth asking, even if the answers hurt. We need to stop talking about the right way to live and start being the example, just as Nehemiah did.