The Rewards of Leadership

In every significant event, there has been a bold leader, an object or purpose, and an adversary.

Leadership is most often the means God chooses to fulfill his purpose. When God wants something done, he turns to an individual—Moses, Paul, Luther, Wilberforce, Moody, Mother Teresa—name them. Great things rarely get done by consensus. According to the organizational axiom, "Power is always personal."

Interestingly, the persons God picks as leaders aren't always the ones we would have picked. His leaders would not always have been elected. In a democracy, I doubt the apostle Paul would have made it. Leaders must be willing to be lonely.

Albert Schweitzer, for instance, gave up a prosperous musical, medical, and academic career in an affluent society to obey the verse of Scripture "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." He went to the Congo and spent the rest of his life developing a hospital at Lambaréné. Norman Cousins tells the story of visiting ...