Here’s an article I wrote for Relevant Leader - a niche ministry publication by Relevant Magazine for leaders. Maybe that’s obvious:
I am a signpost. I admit it. It goes entirely against my job description, but time and again, I end up resorting to what comes easiest. Hence the signpost.
I am supposed to be a guide. I am called to be one who is on the journey with the community I lead. Instead, I usually just stand and point the way, showing the correct direction to go. I will just catch up with you all later. But for now, I will just let you all go ahead and experience what God has for yourselves. If you need me, I will be right here, pointing the way.
This analogy struck me not long ago and I haven’t been able to lose it. It stays with me at night. It distracts my thinking. Why? Because I am guilty. And I don’t think I am alone in all of this.
As leaders, we already know that we are supposed to be going where we are asking our people to go. In fact, we should have already been there in some places. If we ask our people to give to the cause we are in, we should already be giving to it. If we ask our people to live lives of faith, then we should have already been exercising our own along the way. If we ask our people to pray on a regular basis, then my knees should already be tired from my own time with God.
Instead, if I am to be honest, I end up simply pointing the way at times. It’s much easier than actually doing it. And because spiritual leadership usually keeps us too busy trying to look slick and distant, we keep people far enough away where they just have to assume that we are guiding them instead of being the signpost that points the right way.
Many of us have been raised in the church, so we already know the answers. If we don’t have a personal experience to pull from with regards to what we are teaching, we can easily pull a story from someone else. So why should we do the hard work of experiencing it personally, when we can simply sit back and be there when someone needs advice?
But we are not meant to be signposts with an arrow. We are meant to be guides leading people to the places that God is calling us to. It is shameful that I would ever preach to a group about the spiritual discipline of fasting without seeing it produce fruit in my own life. But this happens all the time, as week after week, I take part in calling people to exercise faith, spend time with God, give up their earthly treasures, sacrifice for the Kingdom, and overcome their fears—yet my own life is littered with a lack of spiritual discipline, a low level of faith, and my failures to sacrifice when needed.
As leaders, we are called to a higher level of responsibility and I believe a huge part of that is to lead by example. After all, what better example is given to us than that of Jesus found in Philippians. It is there that we are told that we should consider the example of Christ who took on the nature of a servant and that the Most High humbled himself. It is in this way that He created the ultimate example to follow. In other words, it is not that God simply pointed the way to a holy, righteous life and commanded us to do so. Instead, God himself chose to send his Son to prepare the way for us, to mark the trail with his own sweat, his own tears, his own blood. And as leaders of our various ministries, it is our job to do the same, following the footprints of those who have so bravely gone before us.
You and I need to be willing to explore the caverns of faith before inviting our community through the entrance. You and I need to be intimate with our Father before trying to tell others what He is like. It is in this way that we become the leaders that God has called and gifted us to be, when we become an example in the same way that He did.