Written in Heaven

I enrolled in a graduate school program through Seton Hall University with the focus in Strategic Communication and Leadership. Sounds cool right? I love leadership – talking about it, strategizing about leading, identifying and developing leaders, all that. So when I was accepted into this program, I was completely thrilled. Part of my excitement was the fact that it was a secular school that would be teaching leadership from the secular world’s perspective.

I arrived at the orientation weekend feeling way out of my league. Members of my class included: a Secret Service agent, a DEA agent, a White House Communications Correspondent, as well as executives from NASA, Boeing, Verizon, and about every major pharmaceutical company in the United States…and a pastor. I was pretty excited though, to be learning with and from people from so many different disciplines.

Our first lesson came out of a book called “The Leadership Challenge” by Kouzes & Posner. These guys wrote this book after interviewing thousands of leaders from all of these different disciplines and compiling data to find leadership best practices. They said they that after all that research they could summarize leadership into one word: relationship.

When I heard that, I initially pretty steamed. I mean, I’m paying a pretty hefty bill for you to tell me something that is fairly obvious. But as they went on to describe this relationship, they were describing a leader who looked an awful lot like Jesus Christ – in fact, identical to him. Jesus led the way by being a servant leader: knowing exactly where he was going by God’s hand and leading others with him, while at the same time tending to those following with sensitivity and care.

That’s the way we should operate as leaders. Model our lives after Christ. Spend significant time in prayer, leading boldly, and all the while caring for those around us. Our relationship with Jesus is what makes us a leader worth following.