Dare Great Things

Sometimes even the best leaders can forget that in the end leadership isn’t about them.  If we are leading our people, it’s to lead them to something bigger than ourselves and sometimes we have to die to ourselves in order to bring people to something that will really be good for them.  At Cana in Galilee the Virgin Mary triggers a series of events that will lead to our Lord’s crucifixion and death.  She hastens the hour of its coming even though that means that she will have to say goodbye sooner.  She teaches us how to lead even when that means saying goodbye.

Leading others is not easy.  Sometimes our road is marked by sorrow and hardship.  The same was true in the life of the Virgin Mary.  Her role as mother of the Son of God was marked with sorrow.  In particular when she was forced to flee into Egypt, taking her son with her Mary had to carry the sorrow of the persecution and death of the Holy Innocents, the children in Bethlehem who were killed by the king.  Mary had to play her role as mother with a broken heart but she led all the same.

Anyone moved by the love of God wants to Dare Great Things For Christ!  But ironically most of our time is spent by doing little things.  When we look at the life of the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, we see that much of her life was spent doing little things.  Does this mean she wasn’t a leader?  Or in fact is leadership not best expressed by the way that we do the small things?  The life of Jesus and Mary in Nazareth before the beginning of his missionary life is an example of leadership in the little things.

One of the reasons many Christians don’t feel comfortable assuming the role of leadership is that we think it makes us egotistical.  Following, obeying, complying, and supporting seem much more consonant with Christianity.  But why do so many of us equate those terms with a lack of leadership?  By looking at the Virgin Mary as a model for leadership, we can see that a big part of being a leader is following God.  Mary gave the very best of herself to Jesus and so she becomes the leadership model for all the followers of Christ.

Many gifted people struggle with the temptation to draw all the attention to themselves.  The allure of leadership is that it puts us in positions of power and therefore esteem in the eyes of others.  A leader who is Christian needs to resist this of course and dedicate themselves to really enhancing the lives of others around them as a servant.  In this fourth of our thirteen part series on Mary, we look at how she lived as a servant leader as she visited her cousin, Elizabeth, in the hill country of Judea.

Something special about every act of leadership is that it makes us alone.  The famous phrase, “it is lonely at the top” applies well to leader in every state.  But is this just an accident?  Or is it in fact a blessing?  When Mary was chosen by God to be the Mother of God, she had to fill the task no one else could fill.  But she embraced it as being chosen by God and therefore holding His hand into the great unknown that he would lead her.  And so she becomes an example for Christian leaders in every age.

If we look to sacred scripture for examples of great leadership many names come to mind:  St. Paul, St. Timothy, St. John, but what about the Virgin Mary?  Doesn’t her life have anything to teach us about leadership?  Independently of the various faith traditions out there what can we learn about leadership by looking at the life the bible presents us?  I think we can learn a lot.  In this second of a thirteen part series I want to peer into the leadership lessons of Mary’s early life and the solitude that made her strong.

Applying our Catholic faith to the demands of leadership today is a demanding and sometimes harrowing experience.  We look around to see if someone has done it before - where our models could be found -  and when we look for models we need look no further than the Virgin Mary to find the very best of them all.  This could be surprising.  What does Mary have to do with our modern situation?  Our new twelve-part series will try to answer that very question.  And so we begin by looking at the Virgin Mary as the inspiring figure that she is.

How did Jesus Christ form his apostles to be bold proclaimers of His word?  One way was by sending them where they thought they could never go – into the darkness and into fearful places armed with nothing more than his word and the powers of His priesthood.  And yet they were not alone.  In fact he promised that he would be with them always.  Doesn’t he do the same with us today?  In this final segment of our ten part series we look at the way he formed his apostles to understand how he trains us for leadership today.

There’s a lot written about leadership today and one of the most popular themes is the question of how to motivate people to follow.  It seems like pretty much everyone agrees that people like to follow winners.  That doesn’t surprise me considering the fact that our Lord himself gave that lesson to his apostles.  He is the ultimate victor and he sends his apostles forth to proclaim His victory.  What does that mean for us practically today in our businesses and in our families?  How can we make Christ’s victory present for the people we lead?

Being afraid is a normal response in front of things that are threatening to us.  The problem is not that we have fear – the question is whether or not we’ll allow that fear to become a catalyst for something greater, for courage, or whether we will allow fear to paralyze us.  When Christ formed his apostles he taught them to stare down there fears and he did this by facing everything before them.  Christ led his leaders through the valleys that they would have to face themselves and he does so for us today as well. 

It's lonely at the top.  How many times have we made that statement about our own situation as a leader or had other people remind us about that truth?  It almost makes us ask the question about whether Jesus ever felt lonely and it begs the question as to how he prepared his apostles for the solitude that would be a part of their life as a leader of the church.  When we look back at hos Christ prepared the apostles, he showed them what to do with loneliness.  He taught them to transform it into the seabed of communion.    

There are many philosophies about leadership out there and some of them hold that failure is not an option.  Many leaders in fact are afraid of making mistakes.  However, when Jesus Christ formed his disciples to be apostles to the nations, to be bold proclaimers of his word, he welcomed their mistakes.  The gospels famously recount many of the mistakes the apostles made while they were with Christ.  What lesson does this teach us for our own lives?  What is God trying to teach us by our mistakes?  This is part six of our ten part series on how Christ made his leaders bold.

Anyone who has achieved any level of success in their life knows that much of their success is a result of hard work.  And yet at the same time hard work is hard to do.  Many people don’t see the importance of hard work in forming the character of a leader and yet when Christ formed his twelve apostles he shared the labors of evangelization with them.  And he invited his apostles to embrace labor as a part of their life.  How did this help form his apostles to be the bold leaders they would need to be and what role does hard work play in our life as leaders today. 

It goes without saying that our culture today is facing a crisis of truth.  Ideas and customs we once held dear are being questioned and our young people seem to be bereft of sure guides for what life is all about.  But was it that much different at the time of Christ?  And how did Jesus respond to the difficulty of the people of his day to embrace truth?  When Jesus formed his twelve apostles he formed them as apostles of truth and sent them to teach the nations in his name.  What impact does that have for us as leaders today? 

Following the way of the Lord obviously is the right thing to do.  It’s a good thing and should make us happy.  Why then is it so often marked by difficulty?  Why wouldn’t God make our path an easy one?  If we go to the New Testament we see that actually it never was easy and when our Lord was forming his disciples to be bold proclaimers of his Word he formed them through challenge and difficulty.  Learning how he did it with them then can make us better leaders now. 

When it comes to making leaders nobody does it better than God himself.  Studying what scripture tells us about how Jesus himself trained leaders is the ultimate pattern for how we can advance in leadership today.  In this ten part series I want to study the elements that are essential to this leadership formation.  Prominent amongst those many features is the fact that Jesus formed his apostles to live in a community.  A veritable band of brothers.  This was no accident but has great fruits for them and for us today. 

When it comes to learning how to lead no one can teach us better than Christ.  And for Christians who are trying to lead their world Christ is the ultimate and best reference point.  So how did he do it?  When he had his disciples to form in order to make them the leaders that he wanted them to be – how did he approach it?  In this first of a ten part series we try to answer those questions.  And let Jesus speak and form us as leaders today.  Christian leadership is the way of every disciple – then and now.

A leader could have the best strategy in the world but if he’s unable to make a choice on how to implement it his strategy will be meaningless.  And yet is precisely here that many of us struggle.  Making a choice seems irrevocable and sometimes choosing one way in preference to another seems like closing the door on perfectly good opportunities.  But then again not choosing is also a choice and it’s a choice that won’t bring us to where we need to go.  How does our faith in God help us with this dilemma?   How does it help us to be leaders who decide?

In the Gospel our Lord tells us to be as cunning as serpents and as simple as doves.  What does it mean to be cunning as a serpent and how could our Lord possibly want us to be cunning?  Anyone involved in leadership knows that leaders need to be strategic.  They need to think ahead of the curve and find a plan for achieving the great things that they set out to do.  Could this be what Christ meant?  How do Christians live and thinks strategically at the service of their love?