Leaders Probe for Potential
Theme of the Week: Fruitful Leaders Are Follower-Focused
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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Key Bible Verse: "Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him (Mark 2:14). Bonus Reading: Mark 2:13-16
As a high school coach with no paid staff, I learned to choose volunteers carefully. A good student manager can handle many logistics of running a team without your involvement. He can be a coach's eyes and ears among his players like no one else.
A wise old athletic director warned me never to choose an attractive, outgoing, popular-with-the-girls candidate to be student manager. He advocated selecting the smart but shy, introverted kid with few friends. This type, he reasoned, would be so grateful to you for plucking him out of obscurity that he'd work like a beaver with unfaltering loyalty.
In choosing Matthew (Levi), Jesus looked behind his unpopular tax-collection profession to teach us an important lesson: a wise leader selects his team based not on appearance and appeal but on deeply, prayerfully considered values. Jesus demonstrated that a leader should seek diversity of talent, temperament, and experience. A team that thought alike because of similar backgrounds and experiences would have been easier to manage, but weaker. Jesus wasn't afraid to choose for his team men who naturally would have been at each other's throats.
—Bob Briner in The Leadership Lessons of Jesus
My Response: If challenged, I believe ____ could blossom into a strong team player.
Thought to Apply: The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who come from the best family. —Blaise Pascal (French mathematician & philosopher)
Adapted from The Leadership Lessons of Jesus (with Ray Pritchard, B&H Publishing, 1997, 1998, 2008) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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