Leadership in Discipleship

Hi friends,

 

We are getting ready for Passion Play and I so very much appreciate the prayers you are offering and the prayers you are leading your groups through.  We are all working hard and working smart, and then painfully aware of how absolutely, completely dependent we are on God's Holy Spirit to do all the work we cannot do that makes all the difference.

 

I was recently reading from Seth Godin, the world's most read blogger and a speaker coming to Leadercast (just over 50 tickets left!; don't forget that if you bring a non-Christian friend, we cover your friend's ticket!), about underdog leaders.  Godin writes, "Leadership almost always involves thinking and acting like the underdog.  That's because leaders work to change things and the people who are winning rarely do." 

 

When I put on my theologian's cap for a moment, I like what Godin is saying.  Christians are called to a victorious mission--indeed, one whose destiny is already assured because of the Ascension of Christ--but we are also called to build for a Kingdom that always requires help beyond ourselves.  The Holy Spirit is always drawing us into deeper relationship, greater love, more faithful friendship, more effective leadership.  As a result, we are always working to change things; we are never in the position where we are in perpetual state of winning.  We are always working for change and always relying on God's Spirit to do that work. 

 

Thanks, friends, for being in that precarious spot of working for change and relying on the Spirit to do the work of change.  It's a wonderfully impossible place to be and when you get a glimpse of God's Spirit doing something that resembles but so far surpasses what you were trying to do, it's a reminder of why we were created.

 

It is a pleasure to serve with you.

 

Grace and peace,

 

Aaron