Leading and Following

I attend a church that has a huge focus on leadership and offers quite an array of leadership training options. This is a good thing for someone who's a leader in Operation Christmas Child, right?

Well...yes and no.

At my age I sometimes wonder what all the hoopla is about leadership. In the 50s and 60s I don't remember anyone talking much about leadership. Maybe that's because I was just a kid but I don't think I was that sheltered from the culture. I honestly don't remember when we all started talking about leadership, especially in church.  We used to have Bible studies and weekly prayer meetings and then in the 70s we started talking about special methods of discipleship.

But somewhere over the last few decades leadership became a hot topic not only for business executives but for everyone from church laypersons to stay-at-home parents.

I understand. Learning principles of leadership is important. But now that I'm old I'm more skeptical of every new leaning. I question a whole lot more now than in I did back in the 70s. And pretty frequently I question what I'm gaining from all my exposure to leadership training.

Today I attended a quarterly Leadership One Day training at my church. The seminars I attended were well done but they left me feeling like many of these trainings do these days--like I'm missing the boat.

Two of my sessions today were about prioritizing and organizing time. As I learned new tools to help me account for every hour of my day and make sure I'm maximizing the time God's given me I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Truth be told, I don't even keep a good personal calendar let alone get strategically organized.

I learned about how to handle an influx of emails and to avoid looking at them except for certain designated times during the day. I hate to admit it, but I welcome those emails--even the junk ones--because you just never know when Oriental Trading's going to have some fantastic coupon so I can buy cow bells really cheap for our shoeboxes.

We discussed how to avoid letting social media drain hours in the day.  Yeah, that's a valid skill for sure. Sometimes social media is a real waste. But if you're reading this blog it's probably because you saw it on Facebook. In addition to being a time waster social media's also a valuable means of communication and a way I spend time praying for people in my day.

I have some things scheduled in my life but far more of my life in this stage is not scheduled. I'm not sure that's a problem. I mean, I hope it's not.

But as I sat in those seminars today all I could think was how great God is. ONLY GOD could take me with all my low-tech slothful ways and get me to do anything.

And next weekend I have our annual regional Area Coordinators' retreat where I'll get fed even more information I can't begin to assimilate. Cue the violins...

Seriously, though, do you ever wonder how Jesus would function in our society? I know He would have the perfect balance between organizing and maximizing His time and allowing the important interruptions that come from dealing with people. And I'll bet He'd never struggle to figure out how to use google docs.

Meanwhile, I'll keep muddling along in this leadership frenzy while, hopefully, still learning to follow the greatest Leader of all. As much as I need leadership training I need Jesus follower training even more.