Ramez Attalah, general director at The Bible Society of Egypt, attended an international conference (the Lausanne Conference) for Christian leaders in 1974. He was thrilled to be with top-notch leaders from around the globe—sharing and reading interesting papers on important subjects—but the most meaningful insight actually came to him on the flight home:<\/p>\n\n
It was a long flight back to Canada, and I had many papers to go through. I had taken a lot of business cards from all sorts of [important global Christian leaders] that I had met. We all know we collect these cards, put them in our pockets, and often forget about them. As I looked through my cards from Lausanne, I noticed one that was not very well printed, and I looked at it carefully. I still get emotional when I remember this story. It broke me.<\/p>\n\n
At Lausanne we had small groups every night. About ten of us met in our dormitory rooms to pray and share together. The first night we introduced ourselves: president of a seminary, pastor of a church with 2,000 people, and so on. Everybody was showing how great they were. I said I led the InterVarsity movement in the province of Quebec. It was actually a very small ministry, but it sounded good. One African man who was with us said, "I'm a pastor in Kenya." During the week we all listened to each other. I didn't pay much attention to the pastor from Kenya; I wanted to get close to the important<\/em> people. But I was moved by the Kenyan pastor's stories of how God had touched him as a school teacher during the African revival and changed his life. I thought he was a deep man. I pictured him working in a humble little village in Africa.<\/p>\n\n But when I picked up that business card on the plane back to Canada I discovered that it said "Festo Olang, Archbishop of Kenya." Olang was a man who could pull rank on anybody in our group. He was a bigwig. But we didn't know it, and he didn't tell us. He did not use his position to secure his identity. He was a simple pastor who loved Jesus. I am still moved to the core when I remember this incident thirty-two years later. I said to myself on the plane, that's the kind of leader I want to be. That's leadership, Jesus-style.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3508,3595,3848,3941,4125,4191,4203,4351,4353,4449,4469,4604,4807,4952],"tax_ctp_topics":[388],"class_list":["post-43727","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-boasting","tax_ctp_tags-christian-service","tax_ctp_tags-ego","tax_ctp_tags-faithful-service","tax_ctp_tags-haughtiness","tax_ctp_tags-humiliation","tax_ctp_tags-identity","tax_ctp_tags-leadership","tax_ctp_tags-leadership-of-the-church","tax_ctp_tags-meekness","tax_ctp_tags-ministers","tax_ctp_tags-pastor","tax_ctp_tags-reputation","tax_ctp_tags-servanthood"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"\n