When Leadership and Discipleship Collide

I'm skipping chapter 3 on the Identity in Christ book. It was about being chosen and adopted. One interesting thing though was about in the days of Paul, under the Roman government, biological children could be given up, neglected, and abandoned. Adopted children, however, had full rights to all that a father had, including the inteheritance, and name. The adopted child could never be given up, neglected or abandoned. Interesting, huh?

Yesterday I read the book When Leadership and Discipleship Collide by Bill Hybels. It's from his Leadership Library, is a little hardback book and only 68 pages.

The book starts out comparing secular leadership techniques with those of Jesus. Basically, Jesus broke all the secular leadership rules. I look at it as Jesus designed the leadership rules and the secular world broke them. Afterall, who came first?

Bill continues to give examples of how he broke rules and chose to follow the Biblical leadership examples of Jesus, choosing discipleship over currently accepted leadership rules. Here are a couple of examples:

1. Regarding derailing momentum in the church: "Despite the positive attention, (of the church growing by hundres of people a month) I had the sickening feeling that even though people were filling up our auditorium, they weren't necessarily becoming fully devoted followers of Christ. This was a problem for one simple reason: our mission was (and still is, acutally) to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ.

I interruped whatever was on the preaching docket to do a six-week series about the cost of following Christ, including no-holds-barred teaching about the requirements of discipleship. I wanted our entire congregation to understand what "full commitment to Jesus Christ" really meant. It was during this time that I coined the expression: 'Ninety-five percent commitment to Christ is 5 percent short.'
I asked every person in the auditorium why on earth they would consider giving less than their absolute best to the One who had given his best for them. I beat that drum for six weeks straight."

2. Bet on a Ragtag Team. (When Bill was ready to plant Willow Creek Community Church, he had to choose a leadership team. Normal leadership best practices would tell you to pick highly qualified, bright, experienced people). "One friend was fresh out of the military and trying very hard to get off a bad marijuana habit. Another was just back from South American, where his missionary parents had dragged him along. To say he was spiritually disillusioned would be a gross understatement: he didn't have much use for God, he didn't go to church, and he was intolerant of anything that smacked of religiosity. Another was a high school buddy who had dropped out of college because he had no clue what he wanted to do with his life.

The leader in me knew that I was signing up for all sorts of unnecessary risk with this ragtag group, but whenever I prayed about who was supposed to help me start Willow, the Spirit would whisper the same three names over and over again: Tim, Scott, and Joel. So that's who I chose. Thirty-one years later, these guys are still with me; it can accurately be said that Willow Creek Community Church was built on their shoulders as much as mine."

This was a good, quick read with solid Biblical leadership advise. Other topics covered were Propogate Good Press, Avoid Unnecessary Controversy, Leverage Time and Influence, Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds You, Avoid Sensational Exploits, and Demonstrate Unshakeable Courage.