Today's Gospel

Become a Great Leader

It seems obvious, but Jesus knew how to build a team, didn't He? He knew it was going to take a movement to birth the church and change the world. And that's just what Jesus did: He built a team. And He gives us some great leadership lessons here. Let me just point out three. First, great leaders inspire action when they provide a clear, common goal. It takes a team. You see it all the time. My wife, Anita, and I were at a wedding not long ago, and there was a florist, an organist, a bell choir with six people, a vocalist, a coordinator, a caterer, mom of the bride, nine bridesmaids, nine groomsmen, two flower girls, a jeweler, a photographer, a tuxedo person, a dress person, a limo driver, a printer of the invitations, and the priest. 39 people, all together with one goal: a marvelous wedding experience. For Jesus, the first team He built, He chose just these 12 men: common, uneducated, and ordinary men, according to the Book of Acts. And He invested, and He poured into them. They prayed together, they ate together, they traveled together, they learned from Him and from each other. And here in the gospel today, Jesus is sending them out two by two for on-the-job training, and He gives them a clear, common goal. Here it is: preach the gospel. Preach the gospel. He gives them authority, "You're not on your own here, guys. You have my blessing and power." If you're building a team and you want them to work together, a clear common goal. Second, Jesus teaches us that great leaders embrace servant leadership. Jesus emptied Himself of his place in heaven to pursue God's plan for you and me. He gives us a critical insight into leadership. It's all about service.

What does a leader look like? Well, let me tell you about Agnes. She was born in 1910 in a little, tiny corner of Yugoslavia. She grew up comfortable, fairly well-off in a loving family. At the tender age of 18, she heard God calling her to give her life over to Him. Two words, "Serve me," she heard. That was the goal: serve me. So she did. She became a teacher in a Christian school in perhaps the poorest city in the world, and Agnes taught in that school for 20 years. She was faithful to her call to serve the Lord. Then it happened one day, as she walked down the street and she came upon a woman dying in the gutter in front of the hospital. From then on, she knew her life was for the poorest of the poor. Then God moved in a new way and told her to move to the streets of that poor city to serve the poorest of the poor firsthand in trenches, slums, and gutters with a clear goal, serve the poor, and that she did. She spent 24 hours a day with lepers, with the poor, with sick, abandoned children, and the hungry on the streets and in the slums, and she gave herself completely over to the Lord. Pretty soon, other people began to be attracted to her, and they began to help her. They just showed up. Agnes was a small, tiny woman, but had a strong spirit wholly devoted to God and given over to complete service, and that single fact made her a leader. She had a goal, and she was given over to it, serve the poor with God's help. She understood it. The more you give your life away, the more you have, and pretty soon other people began to follow her. She became a leader. It's called servant leadership because we all yearn to give ourselves completely to God. Think about it: 50 years after she met that dying woman in the gutter and completely gave herself over to God, Agnes had assembled more than 3,000 women in 517 mission settings, hospitals, homes, hospices, in 100 countries without recruiting a single one. Servant leadership. Mother Teresa, Saint Mother Teresa, Saint Teresa of Calcutta understood that. For a leader, size is measured in service. Mother Teresa did that and people lined up to serve alongside her. Lesson number three from Jesus. Great leadership is saturated in humility. In other words, it's not about me. When Jesus comes into the world, He tells us all things are possible with God. This movement is about God, and it begins with these 12 ordinary guys, members of the team. It's not about them. It's all about God. Remember that great business book, "Good to Great," about leadership? You remember the biggest finding they found about teams and corporations and businesses? The key for leadership, the number one key? Humility. It's not about the leader. It's about the team. It's all about we. It's not about me. Something even greater here. With Jesus, it's the team plus God. How much gets done when no one cares who gets the credit? They're just trying to reach a goal here.

It reminds me of when I was a young man in my 20s and I was leaving the business world to go into full-time ministry. And my grandmother, who'd been a Methodist preacher's wife for 60 or 70 years, said, "Alan, let me just tell you something. God may use you, but He doesn't need you." My grandmother was trying to teach me humility. She understood that that's when great things happen. Think back to World War II and the darkest days in Britain. There were very, very few men who wanted to go to work in the coal mines. Most wanted to give up those dirty, thankless jobs in the dangerous coal mines to go join the military and be on the front line fighting the Nazis. The public was praising and supporting those men. Yet the work in the coal mines was indispensable. It was critical to the success of the whole war. No coal meant the people at home and the people in the military would be in trouble. So Churchill faced thousands of minors one day and he painted a picture of what it would be like when the war ended. He said, "I want you to envision one grand parade to honor the people who fought the war. And first in that parade are the sailors of the Navy, and then along come the pilots of the Royal Air Force who fended off the German Luftwaffe. Then the soldiers who had fought at Dunkirk, then last of all, will come the coal dust-covered men in miners' caps. And someone might say, 'Where were you during the war?' And the voices of those 10,000 men will ring out, 'We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.'" With tears in their eyes and their resolves stiffened, the men returned to their inglorious task because they knew they were playing a role in a noble goal of preserving the freedom of the West.

The goal is more important than the role. Those three things Jesus taught us, a clear common goal, servant leadership, saturated in humility. So the disciples went out two by two and they delivered the goods. They preached. They cast out demons. They anointed with oil and they healed the sick. And the results were a mighty and wonderful work. The mission succeeded, and then it grew into a movement that became the church. The church that's still here today. There's no other way to explain it. Jesus knew how to build a team. You want to do something great? You're going to need a team.