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Leaders come in all shapes and sizes, and the world is full of people who rightly consider themselves such.  In truth, every individual possesses at least the potential of leadership influence …no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it may seem.  The world of church is no exception (and, by the way, neither is your own life).  The question that matters most in the realm of influence is what kind of leader are you for the people you’re entrusted to influence?

This is the essential question, the leadership litmus test, and ultimately it’s a question that nobody gets to answer in self-evaluation.  That commentary will be written by others …especially those who are closest to us, those who know us best.  In this 3-part series, I’m reflecting on two separate readings in Scripture that God spoke to me through on the same day this past week.

The stories come from 2 Samuel 24 and Jeremiah 27 and they highlight the difference between the servant-leader and the self-serving leader.  Both of these types of leaders are fallible, imperfect and prone to make mistakes – that’s just the nature of leadership in the reality of this life.  Yet, how a leader handles that reality makes all the difference (as we see in these accounts)!

It seems to me that in every arena of life there are far too many examples of the self-serving kind of leader, but it is especially detrimental in the ministry of family and church.  Too many homes and houses of faith are led by men who put their own personal interests above the best interests of those they are charged to serve.

Grant it, most people don’t start off in family or church leadership with self-serving motivations …it seems to be something that just creeps in, seemingly unrecognized, over time.  Few seem to notice while things have the appearance of “going well”, but when trouble comes …when the pressure is on or when God is trying to stretch us toward something new, character shows.  Leaders often make the mistake of persisting down the adopted path of self-serving leadership simply because they want to protect the status-quo.  Where once they led for the good of others and to make a difference, now they lead to protect the position they have grown into with all of its perks and privileges.

I want to learn from these two examples simply because I recognize the same human tendency toward self-centeredness in me, and because in my heart of hearts I genuinely desire to serve my family well and lead a church in the spirit and example of the servant-leadership of Jesus.  I don’t want to be and I don’t want to be thought of as a self-serving leader!

How about you, do you recognize any self-centered tendencies in your leadership?  We can be sure of this, God’s work in our life is intimately tied to dealing with that natural bent in our humanity just as it was with King David and the poser-prophets of Jeremiah 27.  It’s just part of the litmus test of leadership.  The choice is your’s and mine: we can either expend all of our energy striving to protect our sense of entitlement and privilege (maintaining the prideful charade of control) or we can allow the Holy Spirit to strip us of self, and strive to influence for the glory of God and the good of our family and fellow man.

Most leadership writing in our day springs from an understandable tendency to want to accentuate the genius of a particular leader.  There aren’t many publishers pushing ‘how to’ book proposals for Bernie Madoff or Tony Hayward (of BP renown).  One can get the impression that great leadership is simply a matter of eliminating mistakes …to be on top of your game …always doing the right thing.  There’s a great deal of pressure (much of it self-imposed) on family leaders and organizational leaders to measure up to a stereotype of leadership that can feel like an exhausting search for perfection.  All we ever know of many leaders lauded in the public forum is how they do things right.  Yet, no one has ever lived or led flawlessly except for Jesus Christ.

Jesus alone sets the standard for perfection because he alone is perfect.  We do well to remember that everyone else we seek to learn from in this life is plagued by the same imperfection that we face.  No matter how much hype a leader gets on the way up, approval ratings ultimately slip because nobody’s perfect.  This shouldn’t be the ground, as it often is, for slinging mud, but rather for practicing forgiveness and helping us more properly frame the pressure we often impose on ourselves to perform perfectly.  We can’t and we won’t attain perfection.  Not this side of heaven anyway!  It’s only as we recognize our imperfection (our fallen nature) that we are ready to face the leaders litmus test.

We all make mistakes, yet by God’s grace those occasions are not necessarily the final word on our lives or our leadership.  They represent the opportunity for us to respond rightly …even in the midst of significant failure.  This is just one of the reasons why the Bible stands apart from every other writing …because, as the Word of God, it deals honestly, transparently with the failings of humankind.  Even among the favorite characters in Scripture it is common to find yourself learning from the human propensity for ball dropping!  It’s the kind of lesson we can learn from the life of David in 2 Samuel 24.

David was a great leader is in his own right.  The list of his leadership achievements is long and impressive.  No greater compliment is made of David than that “he was a man after God’s own heart.”  A compliment not paid to any one else in Scripture.  Yet, David made his share of mistakes (some of them quite large), and the Bible doesn’t seek to hide such indiscretions.  For that we can all be thankful because it’s precisely in the failings of others that we can perhaps relate the most.  Additionally, it is there that we stand to gain the most from the life of another.  To see how they handle a mistake, misstep or moral blunder can help us when we face our own.

In 2 Samuel 24 David provokes God’s displeasure by acting in pride and ordering a second census to check-up on his own greatness.  Despite a plea from Joab, the commander of his army, to not go forward, David persists.  A decision made in one moment took nine months and twenty days to come to fruition, but at the very moment David is given the report we read these words; “…David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people (24:10a).” David immediately came clean saying, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done.  But now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done foolishly (24:10b).”

In response to David’s pride, God gave him three options from which to chose his consequences – three years of famine, three months of being chased by his enemies, or three days of a curse in the land.  David chose the third and his motivation is found in his message to Gad the prophet in verse 14: “I am in great distress.  Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”

The Lord sends an epidemic on Israel and we’re told it claims the lives of at least 70,000 men, not counting women or children.  Ultimately, David buys a field, builds an altar and makes an animal sacrifice to atone for his sin and to appeal to God for relief.  God responds and lifts the plague.  Yet, David’s reaction to the loss of so many in Israel and his words to God are the most telling with regard to the test of David’s character.  Verse 17: “Then David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking the people, and said, ‘Behold, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly.  But these sheep, what have they done?  Please let your hand be against me and against my father’s house.”

In our day, we might have expected David to fire up the spin machine to explain away this cruel act of nature or give a national address on the tragedy and how his administration was doing everything to remedy the problem.  That’s the sort of stuff that self-centered, self-serving leaders often do.  Yet, David knew intuitively from prior experience that those things wouldn’t really help, and so he did the one thing that a servant-leader can and should do …he took responsibility before God and he sought to serve the welfare of God’s people!

How rare it is in our own day to hear a leader invoke that little pronoun, “I”, for anything other than self-aggrandizing purposes?  How might our churches and our families be radically different if leaders more often followed the example of a men like Moses, David, Jesus and Paul who would routinely drop to their knees in prayer to seek God on behalf of others.  The only way to be a servant-leader to others is to truly stop serving yourself and get squared away and centered on God as the one whose most important!  When we fail to do that then we are often blind to the reality before us.

Some takeaways from 2 Samuel 24:

• Don’t let your guard down when things are going great – you’re more susceptible to sin in seasons of plenty.
• Surround yourself with trustworthy team …and listen more than you speak.
• Remember that leadership decisions have consequences that often take time to discover, and they invariably affect many more than just the one who made the decision.
• At the first sign that you’ve made a mistake or committed sin, seek forgiveness.
• When you feel down and defeated, surrender to the God is merciful and longsuffering in his purpose to redeem your life and circumstance.
• As a leader, when you drop the ball, resist the temptation to pass the buck …stay in the kitchen and take the heat.
• Love those you are called to serve more than you love yourself.

Leadership in this world is all about learning how to deal with reality.  In David’s case in 2 Samuel 24, reality was that David made a bad leadership decision in the eyes of God, but that’s only part of it.  In truth, David did more than make a bad decision (something we all do), he allowed himself to be driven by his own wickedness.  David was a sinner …someone who fell short of the standard of God’s holiness.  That’s the reality for each and every one of us.  By nature we all want things the way we want them.

Reality IS that the remedy for our fallen nature is not trying harder to make good decisions.  There is only one remedy for humanities condition and that’s Jesus Christ …the Gospel …his death, burial and resurrection on our behalf.  As Paul writes in the book of Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works (good decision-making), so that no one may boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (2:8-10, ESV).”

Effective leadership …leadership that passes the litmus test is the leader that never allows herself or himself to stray from that reality.  We are capable of staggering amounts of wickedness when we drift from our own personal need for salvation.  That’s what happened to David; he became so enamored with his own greatness and that of his kingdom that he thought it was okay to do whatever his pride wanted.  It wasn’t, and the consequences were dire.  Fortunately (for David, me and you), God is merciful and willing to forgive.  David got squared away with reality, sought forgiveness, and with humility, returned to the posture of serving his people.

In Jeremiah 27 we get a look at a completely different kind of leader, the self-appointed prophets.  At this time in the life of Israel things have not been going well.  Due to their continued rebellion and idolatry, the nation of Israel has been plagued by a continual series of worldly, self-serving leaders who carelessly disregarded God’s commands.  The result was a series of invasions, sent by the disciplining hand of God, that led to the domination of God’s people and their subjugation to foreign powers. At the time of Jeremiah 27, Israel has already seen the might of Nebuchadnezzar who had previously ransacked Israel taking leaders, people and possessions back to Babylon.

In this chapter God sends Jeremiah to warn Israel, and the surrounding nations, that due to their failure to repent and turn from their wickedness, they had been handed over to Nebuchadnezzar and they were commanded to come under the yoke of his rule.  THIS was reality …it was going to happen and there was nothing they could do to prevent the consequences of their actions.  What they stood to gain through obedience was life …only somewhat different than they had come to know it.  Disobedience, however, invited most certain destruction.

Yet, there were a group of self-appointed prophets who, like Jeremiah, claimed to speak for God.  They didn’t like that Jeremiah’s reality and their message to the people of Israel was completely opposite.  They were in spin-mode, saying, “You shall not serve the king of Babylon.” Further, they were telling the people that everything that had previously been taken to Babylon was about to be returned …in other words, lets just maintain the status quo and everything is just going to keep getting better.  Perhaps it’s sort of like the U.S. continuing to try to spend it’s way out of a recessional malaise while the National debt continues to spiral higher and higher, hoping that it will finally get better.

But better days weren’t coming and in this chapter, God repeatedly warns the people that they should not listen to this dissenting voice.  God says in verse 14 and 15, “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon,’ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you.  I have not sent them, declares the Lord, but they are prophesying falsely in my name.”

These prophets were leaders who had become quite taken with their position and status, and in truth, what they had achieved meant more to them than either God or the people they were supposed to be serving.  When leaders prioritize self-service they lose sight not only of what’s in the best interest of others, but they also fail to see things as they are (reality).  This is a failure of leadership that often holds dire consequences for the leader, the employees, the shareholders and the future of the enterprise.

Grant it, in our day such self-serving leadership doesn’t usually result in entire groups of people being shipped off to a distant country in servitude.  Yet, the consequences can be just as damaging to hearts and lives and the work of God.  Leadership, especially in the family and church, ought to honor God and serve others by dealing honestly and obediently with truth in the midst of present reality.  This kind of leadership is critical, even when, especially when, sacrifice, hardship or suffering are a part of reality.

Jesus summed up the Leaders Litmus Test best in Mark 10, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” This seems quite different from what is often seen in the worlds of family and church.

When the primary goal of leadership becomes protecting the status quo then, regardless of what befalls a leader or a movement …despite how long it might take to transpire, the greatest damage has already be done.  The greatest error of self-serving leadership is the attempt to elevate the wishes of man above the will of God.  It didn’t work out for the nation of Israel under king Zedekiah and, in the long run, it won’t work for the church or the family.  Self-serving leadership won’t always cause something bad, but it will definitely compromise God’s absolute best!

I have to say that I’ve learned this lesson the hard way before …but I’m hoping (by God’s grace and not my effort) not to repeat it in the future again!