The Call to Leadership
Almost every call to leadership constitutes a detour from the life-path we plan for ourselves. It is often an interjection, a rude disruption of well-scripted personal agendas. We hear God’s call as we hear a heckler, and respond to him as one: we just want Him to shut up and let us go on.
We insist on our way, only to run into the rushing river of God’s purpose. Human nature demands that we build a bridge over the river so we can continue walking on the “sure” ground of our own plans, but “The Heckler” invites us to step in and be swept away.
Abraham stepped into it in the book of Genesis, and was carried to unfamiliar territory where God’s promise was fulfilled. Moses collided with it in the book of Exodus and became the deliverer of God’s people. The encounter forced Gideon to choose “presumption” over “responsibility” in the book of Judges and connected him to God’s power so he could fulfill God’s purpose.
Why does God go through the trouble of calling us? Surely He is capable of fulfilling His purpose without us? The Scriptures tell us He can cause rocks to sing His praises and transform donkeys into prophets. If that is the case, then why does He call us?
Whatever reasons great theological minds might proffer, the important thing is that He chooses to need us, and it should please us that He does. Why? Because of who He is, and given what He has done for us. When we respond to His call, we are honoring His choice to need us. What should surprise us is not that He calls us, but that He would even give us the right to choose whether we want to serve Him or not!
Consider Isaiah. After his glorious encounter with God in Isaiah 6, the prophet heard God express His need:
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” (Isaiah 6:8)
As far as Isaiah was concerned, there was only one way to respond. Surely God had not revealed Himself to Isaiah in a glorious way so He could send someone else. Isaiah would not even make God wait for his answer while he consulted endlessly with friends and family. He made his availability known immediately:
“Here am I; send me”.
Let me hasten to add that our availability must not depend on having a supernatural encounter with God. David did not wait for a visitation from God before stepping forward to challenge Goliath. To David, the taunts of the Philistine and his defiance of the armies of the living God were a call to leadership. When His older brother Eliab tried to stop him, David responded:
“What have I now done? Is there not a cause?” (1 Samuel 17:29)
David never heard a voice from God telling him to go against Goliath. What he heard was the voice and call of the cause. It was the same voice and call Phinehas heard in Numbers 25 when one of the men of Israel brought a Midianite woman into the camp and took her into his tent to lie with her. At that moment, the children of Israel were at the tabernacle seeking God’s forgiveness for committing whoredom with the daughters of Moab. Phinehas was incensed. He took a javelin, followed the man and the woman into the tent and killed them both.
God was very pleased with Phinehas for turning away His wrath from Israel, and rewarded him with His covenant of peace, “even the covenant of the everlasting priesthood”.
Phinehas heard the call of the cause and was rewarded by God for responding.
Neither the call of God, nor the cause makes it easy for God’s people to remain in their comfort zones. Men and women of God who respond to the call to Kingdom leadership must accept the “inconveniences” that come with it. We cannot respond to the cries of the lost and the hopelessness of humanity when we charge past the wounded on our way to our Sunday morning fixes, to the entertaining theatrics of the hirelings in the pulpits and the minstrels on stage. We cannot respond to the call if we find it beneath us to stoop to raise the weary and to commit precious time to the need that disrupts the program. We cannot respond to the call of God if what is most important to us is the organizational efficiency in our churches that results from cutting out the “waste” of involvement, relationship, and practical compassion.
The call to kingdom leadership is not a call to comfort. It is a call to serve.
By Dr. Noah Manyika
Hello Tim and Laurie…this is Dr. Noah Manyika, author of The Challenge of Leadership. Thank you for posting the excerpt from the book. Would love ot know more about your work in Kuwait. Any possibility of conducting a Frontline Leadership Seminar at your church?
Blessings. I can be reached at nmanyika@nexusglobalserve.org By the way the book is now available as an e book.