Part One: Entitlement and Trust
Part Two: Servanthood
Part Three: Promotion
I spend a lot of my energy promoting my favorite teams. The Twins, the Vikings, the TWolves (not much to promote there these days), the Huskers, the Blue Devils. I’m real good at throwing in a little trash talk to a conversation. In many ways, leaders today are doing the same by promoting themselves in every place possible. Some politically call it posturing, but really it is the promotion of self.
I would say that a biblical leader is humbly promoting God, whereas a non-biblical leader seeks to primarily promote self.
2nd Chronicles 16:9 says, “The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely his.” Biblical leaders not only seek to promote God, but God desires for them to offer their lives to him as well.
A positive example of this attribute can be found in the way David provided leadership to Israel. David in a prayer found in 2nd Samuel 7:118-22 says, “Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family that you have brought me this far…How great you are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.”
David was a man who humbly sought to promote God through his leadership.
Os Guinness emphasizes this idea of leadership through self-promotion well: “Being much more subtle, secularization often deceives Christians before they are aware of it, including those in church-growth movement. How else can one explain the comment of a Japanese businessman to a visiting Australian? ‘Whenever I meet a Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man. Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet a manager.’”
Even though non-biblical leadership might be a faster track to a higher place in management through self-promotion, a biblical leader will seek to promote God through his or her actions and decision-making.
In my many years spent in the church as a child, young adult, and now employee I’ve seen far too many men and women who first desire to find a greater position before they promote God.
