Dare Great Things For Christ

Leaders are caught between two worlds.  On the one hand it seems like our faith wants us to be meek and humble.  On the other hand the challenges that we face require us to be courageous and bold.  How do we find the balance between these two?  St. Peter had to face the same challenges.  Let’s see how he met them.

Leaders are those who make a difference.  But making a difference requires having a vision.  What was the vision inside of St. Peter?  What was driving him as he led the Church?  Understanding and getting a glimpse into God’s purpose for St. Peter we can better understand the role of vision in our own lives as leaders and how we can capture it.

I think leaders often get a bad name.  We are portrayed as people whose vision makes us hard and whose clarity makes us intransient. But a Christian leader is called to be something more.  The Acts Of The Apostles show us St. Peter as a leader who is vulnerable, who is emotionally engaged and, therefore, who is even more effective.

Without a doubt St. Peter and St. Paul dominate Church history – their names are as synonymous with Christianity as Our Lord’s own name or that of His Blessed Mother.  But how did the two get along and what was their relationship like?  If you were a leader how would you lead a church with someone like St. Paul in it? St. Peter gives us an example of a charismatic leadership – humble and empowering.

A lot of people expect leadership to go smoothly and when it doesn’t they think that they have done something wrong.  This can of course be true but is it always this way?  How do we lead in a suffering and tragic situation?  Simon Peter shows us in the Acts of The Apostles - giving us a great example.

Every leader has to face trials.  Every leader has to face suffering.  Even St. Peter in his leadership in Acts of The Apostles goes through very hard times. What are the secrets that his leadership shows us about how to cope with the sufferings involved?

There are many philosophies about leadership.  Some hold that the leader needs to keep themselves at a distance from the people that they lead – that the leader always needs to stay aloof and one step above. Others hold that leadership needs to be an exercise from within a community – almost like a shared charge that’s passed around.  What’s the truth?  How do we reconcile the need to lead forward and at the same time belong to the people that we serve?

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.  It’s the same with the business leader today.  If we look backwards we can sometimes allow our mistakes to overcome and overcloud our vision for the future.  Simon Peter obviously had to do the same.  How did he deal with his own sinfulness and brokenness?  How did he become a leader through it all? 

Bruce Lee once famously quipped that in order to win in martial arts you had to be like water.  Willing to find any crack, any way and being irresistible in your motion forward.  We see the same thing in the life of St. Peter and we see the same thing in the life of every successful business leader.  Let’s look at how this applies at our spirituality today.

There are so many reasons for us to be upset today – to be discouraged today – but there are even more reasons for us to be hopeful.  And St. Peter, the leader, demonstrates the role of leadership in inspiring and encouraging hope even in the darkest times.