Dare Great Things For 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.