Strength

Strength

Your strength makes everything possible, God. Make me a strong leader.

God arms me with strength; he has made my way safe. Psalm 18:32

If the mission really matters, the only leader worth following is a strong leader.

A STRONG leader is the only kind of leader I want to follow, God, especially with purposes as important as ours. And it is the kind of leader I want to be. I don’t want to be the boss; I want to be the leader.

I am not asking for the power to make people do what I want. I need some sort of authority, but I don’t care if you give me formal, positional authority or informal, personal authority. I simply want to be the person who exercises decisive influence on the values and directions of the whole group, the one who holds them together and keeps them healthy and on task. I want to be the one they willingly go all the way with.

A weak leader is not really a leader at all, Lord. If you want me to lead, I have to be strong, and you will have to do it. I know you can. Nothing is impossible for you. I just do not know if you will. So I am saying to you plainly that if you grant a miracle of your strength in me and a miracle of your protection on my efforts and on the people I want to serve, then I can be the strong leader we need. Otherwise I cannot be the leader at all because we do not need a weak leader.

We need a leader with great influence, someone almost everyone trusts, someone who can enable us to get the job done. Only your strength can do this in me, and only your grace can move them to accept me as the leader. If you want someone else to lead, show me and everyone else that I am not the leader.

I am willing to lead with your strength, Lord. I think you have prepared me to lead. I have learned to follow well, so people can trust me to lead with a follower’s heart. Help those I lead to be strong and active with me in the leadership process, not passive and simply compliant.

When I step out in leadership actions, either I will be persuasive and effective or I won’t. If your strength can flow through me and make others feel strong when I lead, then you will have shown us again that . . .

Your strength makes everything possible, God. Make me a strong leader.

Reflections

Elder Toews was an ancient and venerated leader with enormous influence. I was the new administrator being brought in to turn things around. He took me to lunch to tell me two things:

1. From time to time a strong outsider is needed to bring necessary renewal. Neither I nor the renewal would be appreciated by the inner circle, so I would have to be strong and determined.

2. As long as I saw miracles happening, I could keep going. When I saw them ending, it would be time to step down.

In the years that followed, he returned to the same points with me often, encouraging me to press on and helping me understand the essence of strong leadership. He told me his own stories, which illustrated how leadership calls for voluntary sacrifice now in search of future excellence. Leadership enables people to risk the safe and comfortable present to gain a significantly different future.

He warned about weak leaders who suck strength out of their followers to keep themselves and the organization going, leaving the followers too weak to help lead. Strong leaders create energy in people, he said. They allow miracles to happen in the organization, helping the fearful to believe.

Shaking his bent finger at me, he made sure I understood that there is no such thing as a weak leader. Strong leadership is not a style or a set of behaviors. It is simply the only true leadership.