The Five-Tooled Leader

This is the third post in a series called "Leadership in the Crucible", a profile of leaders trained for a special anointing.

In baseball, you hear the words to describe the one of a kind player "He is a five-tools player". What it means is that the player can hit for average, hit for power, can run the bases well and with speed, can field well and has a cannon for an arm. In Cleveland, Shin Shoo-Choo is this type of player. He can run, hit, and field. The fielding also means that he has a power arm. Since these are natural skills (generally you can't run fast unless you are born with it), there have been many who have the natural skills and instincts, but don't work hard to improve upon them. In the advanced caliber of professional baseball, you must continue to work hard to advance your skills or you will be left behind. There are many examples of five-tool players who languished in the minor leagues. They also may experience an injury that takes out one or more of the tools out of of play such as a hurt arm or leg. 

I think of Moses as a five-tool player. Acts 7:22 says he was "a man of power in words and deeds". Further, it tells us in the same verse that he was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians. In baseball vernacular, he honed his skills in the bests baseball academy. So he had the best natural skills and the best training. We expect to see him leading some cause that would harness these natural abilities. I would venture to think the Moses also thought that. He hadn't forgotten where he came from. In 7:23-25, we find him ready to take on the cause of leading the Israelites out of their oppression. In star-like fashion, we see him defending an Israelite against an Egyptian, and struck down the Egyptian man. A rescue was in the making. 

There is a problem for leaders when they expect to lead and a little problem occurs on the way to the leadership banquet. There are no followers. It is hard to be a leader with no followers. Acts 7:25 is a pivotal verse "and he (Moses) supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand" (emphasis mine). This was the start of a 40 year downhill spiral into the crucible for more leadership training. This time it would be not under the tutelage of Egyptians but far away in the wilderness.

The problem with "natural" ability is it tends to glorify us, not God. There was just a little too much Moses and not enough God. Every person that God uses has to realize that we are only useful to God when we come to the realization it is about Him through us and not our own natural abilities. For some of us, a wilderness experience might be brief, but for others of us, it is a long process, one that is full of pain. God does not do this to hurt us, but to make us better. Like the five-tool player, we have to be refined. I am very thankful for my wilderness experiences because it made me a better leader. It is also critical to see how God will refine us in a way to make the results attributable to him. In a small way we see an example of Tim Tebow who had to look downright awful at times to at the right time experience success in a way that seems almost supernatural. I don't know pretend to presume God in this small situation, but it sure appeared that way. 

The last issue is one of presumption. None of us should presume to be leaders. The best leaders I know don't set out to be leaders. I am on the leadership committee that appoints an award to leaders in the executive MBA at Case Western Reserve University. For the past five years we have interviewed candidates and most everyone that we talk to questions why they would be nominated. They found themselves to be leaders almost by default for doing what they found natural. Generally this was just helping people, what we call "servant-leadership". Those that presume leadership generally don't end up there. As someone once told me, "a true leader is one who turns around and sees people following him".

A Gifted Man

This is the second post in a series called “Leadership in the Crucible”, a profile of leaders trained for a special anointing.  

I went to high school with a guy who was just a natural.  He was a multi-sport athlete, good looking, and smart.  He just had it all.  And he knew it.  Girls loved this guy.  We all have these types in our high schools.  But we know a good percentage of them struggle later in life.  In the movie Friday Night Lights, the star athlete Boobie Miles is injured in a career threatening injury and life stops for him.  If you have ever seen the movie, you remember this touching scene (forgive the brief language).

Moses was that type of person.  And he was anointed and protected.  The first part of Moses’s life, you would almost swear was on the path to greatness.  He had it all, like Boobie Miles.  A complete natural.  Further, the Bible tells us in Acts 7:22 that he received all of the benefits of being educated as an Egyptian aristocrat.  It says he was “a man of power in words and deeds”.  Yet, he had not forgotten his roots.  He knew that he was a son of Israel.  He knew that he was lovely in the sight of God.  He knew he had been anointed for leadership for a purpose.  You know guys that know they are good.  They know that they have special talents, skills and abilities.  Moses wasn’t cocky – in fact he was an admirable man.  And as we see in the next post, he is even contemplating the big picture.  God wants to use him in a special way. 

Each of us are special creations made in God’s own image for a purpose.  God wants each of us to be used in that special way for him.  We naturally want to be part of that larger purpose.  Who wouldn’t?  God wants us to be a part of something big.  He really does – don’t you believe it?  I do.  I greatly anticipate how God will speak to me next, how he will use me.  Moses was indeed anointed and I think you and I are as well.

But as Boobie Miles, our anointing is not based on any special gifts God gives us – the gifts are the means to the end.  It is God who works in us and through us so that He can receive the glory.  Moses needed to learn that lesson.

Leadership in the Crucible–Introduction

I have to admit I have a fascination with leadership characters in the Bible.  I particularly have a fascination for characters that God has put through the crucible, whom God is preparing for something big.  These are characters that spent a large part of their life as complete nobodies but all of the sudden come onto the scene.  Characters like Joseph who was sold into slavery as a seventeen year old and emerges as a thirty year old man of character.  Paul meets the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and spends some 14 years in obscurity before going out on his first missionary journey.  Moses spent a third of his life as a nobody as a shepherd in Midian.  What was God teaching him?  What did he have to learn?

What does God intend to teach those of us who aspire to be leaders?  I know the risk of presuming some intent by God to mold character.  You have to draw some before and after pictures.  Moses flees to Midian and we pick up the story 40 years later.  What was he like before and what do we see after?  Like the before and after pictures of weight losers, we see a different person.  What changed?

We see many in leadership crash and burn due to their sin.  These people render their leadership and ministry ineffectual.  Yes, they can emerge from it, but they are mostly tainted.  That is not the case with Moses and many characters in the Bible.  Yes, Moses committed murder but that was the symptom that put him in the desert.  It was pride that put him in the desert crucible.  He was not useful until God caused him to look upward.  We will look at this in the coming weeks.

The crucible of God’s leadership training program is painful.  It can also mean long periods of ineffectiveness, almost boring monotony.  Do you aspire to be a leader in God’s program?  You will go through it, I can almost guarantee it.  Why?  Because as flawed human beings, we want the glory.  It is only when we become weak that we discover the unbelievable strength that God provides.  To be successful in sports, you must pay the price for training.   The gymnasium is painful, but it produces fitness.  So we see how God will train these leaders to be godly.  I hope by looking at their stories you will appreciate the opportunity to go through the same program knowing it will make you a better leader at the end.  Stay tuned!