TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER, Part 2

Welcome Back to Middle-Earth for the Summer!

As a summer break for me and, I hope, a fun treat for you, I'm going to spend some time here excerpting from my last book, Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World of Middle-earth.

Helping someone else to the top.

Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World

by Jill Richardson

CHAPTER THREE

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER 

(GANDALF) Part 2

Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him.

“What is it you want?” he asked.

She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them.

“Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

“We can,” they answered.

Jesus said to them,“You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”

When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20.20-28).

What does James’ and John’s mom want? Why do you think she wants it? Do James and John agree with this request? How do you know? 

Why are the other disciples mad when they hear about this? 

How does Jesus say people in power usually act? Why do you think they act like this? 

Are you ever tempted to let people “see” that you’re a leader? Do you ever want to show off some position you have? Why? How does it make you feel? 

How do servants and slaves act? What is their job? What do you suppose they typically do in a day? 

Church people have created a name for the kind of leader Jesus is talking about here: a servant leader. What exactly is that? Well, it’s what He says: someone “in charge” who chooses not to act like an overbearing jerk but instead asks other people, “How can I help you?” “How can I make your job better?” “How can I make sure you get credit for a job well done?”

That’s the opposite of how we think. We think we have to make ourselves look good. We think if we don’t make it clear who’s in charge, no one will give us the credit we deserve. We think like the other ten disciples: “Hey! Who do James and John think they are to try to get top spot?”

Letting someone else shine brighter.

Do you know that Jesus, who, let’s face it, clearly has that top spot by a landslide, told His disciples they would do greater things than He did? He didn’t even try to keep all the glory to himself. He wanted it shared around. He wanted those who He taught to be able to shine brighter than He did. Why? Because the “big picture” mattered a lot more to Him than who got the credit. The point was to make sure as many people as possible heard about being saved and living for God. Jesus didn’t care who got the credit for that happening!

Gandalf knows that the big picture matters more than anything. Yes, the smaller picture of returning the Lonely Mountain to its rightful owners has to happen first. The reason, though, is that it’s part of the giant picture of returning all of Middle Earth to its rightful goodness. The dwarves’ adventure is part of the story, but it’s not the story. Individual glory has to take second place. (Thorin and Boromir never quite grasped that... and they died. A lesson to be learned there, I think.)

The best way to make any “big picture” plan happen, as both Gandalf and Jesus know, is to equip and encourage as many people as possible to do the job well, not to boss people around and always be in charge. Sometimes, we need to step out of the way and let other people do it. That might even mean being happy when someone else becomes the hero in the end.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

If you were in charge of a group, what would you do to act like a servant? How do you think it would work?

Write down a place where you are a leader, whether it’s in an official position of leadership or as a role model to someone. List some things you can do to become more like Jesus tells us to be and less like everyone expects us to be.

_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ 

Bonus Question: What do you think it would look like if world leaders tried this radical idea?

Words to remember

“. . . not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.” 

(1 Peter 5:3)

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Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World is a devotional using twenty J.R.R. Tolkien characters. It looks at what makes those characters who they are, where Scripture talks about the same kinds of people, and what it all means to a young person today. Interactive application and fun side additions included!  

 If you would like to find the book for yourself or a teen/young adult you love, you can purchase it here:

Paper Copy

Kindle

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER, Part 1

Welcome Back to Middle-Earth for the Summer!

As a summer break for me and, I hope, a fun treat for you, I'm going to spend some time here excerpting from my last book, Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World of Middle-earth.

Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World

by Jill Richardson

Chapter THREE

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER 

(GANDALF) Part 1

Vital Stats:

Age: Don’t think he really remembers.

Color: Grey... white... who knows? It keeps changing. 

Best Line Ever: “I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm!” (You definitely need to use this line someday.) 

Best Line He Should Have Said: “Didn’t I ever tell you? Balrogs bounce!”

You can't say you weren't warned.

A leader who takes charge by... leaving? Who chooses the village idiot to help with an important job? Who just fades in and out randomly, but always shows up when needed? What kind of leader gives cryptic instructions and then leaves his followers to figure it out on their own? A good one, apparently.

❖

“Then they knew that Gandalf was going to leave them at the very edge of Mirkwood, and they were in despair. But nothing they could say would change his mind. ‘We may meet again before this is all over, and then again of course we may not. That depends on your luck and on your courage and sense; and I am sending Mr. Baggins with you. This is your expedition after all. Good-bye! Be good! And DON’T LEAVE THE PATH!’” (The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 139)

❖

Gandalf takes charge by not taking charge. Like that’s going to work, right? Except, it does. He could have waved his wand (excuse me, staff ) around a lot and solved most problems himself. But he never does. That’s because the best leaders know something average leaders never quite get: it’s not good leadership to always call the shots and tell people what to do. That’s not leading; it’s herding. Any idiot with a loud enough voice and a border collie can do that.

A real leader knows how to help people learn to do things themselves. He understands that picking good people and letting them follow their passions works better than doing it all yourself. He realizes that letting people figure some things out for themselves makes what they learn stick better. Has your mom or dad ever let you make a mistake so you’ll learn something, even though they could have stopped you? Sure, they could have done it for you or not given you a choice, but then you wouldn’t get the experience of solving the problem. They know you won’t make that mistake again because you’ve had to work through and fix it yourself. That’s leadership, Gandalf style.

Jesus also knew that the best leaders think more about the people they lead than themselves. He had to teach that lesson to his own disciples, more than once.

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Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World is a devotional using twenty J.R.R. Tolkien characters. It looks at what makes those characters who they are, where Scripture talks about the same kinds of people, and what it all means to a young person today. Interactive application and fun side additions included!  

 If you would like to find the book for yourself or a teen/young adult you love, you can purchase it here:

Paper Copy

Kindle

Is Safe Overrated?

Fear. Risk-taking. Change. Becoming. All words in popular use right now. All words I use a lot in ministry. Words that, today, I want to put into the perspective of parenting.

I can't say my parents were the overprotective sort. As the parents of seven kids, they considered crowd control their main activity and lack of injury on any given day a bonus.

As the last of those seven, I basically flew under any radar that remained. I could have done just about anything. But I didn't. Like Binkley, I lived with a closet full of fears that didn't make a lot of sense if one examined them, but I never did.

Naturally, with that background, I followed the masses who tried to make certain no nasty beasties harmed my wonderfully special children. I covered their ears; I fought their battles; I slapped helmets on their heads and blinders on their eyes. It made sense. Then. (And bicycle helmets still make sense—let's be quite clear on that, my children.)

Now, I have children who want to skydive and take flying lessons and go on archaeological digs in the Middle East (and that's only one of them).

I have a theory. Maybe this regeneration of thrill seeking and risk taking is a result of a generation that has been trussed in bubble wrap and carefully structured from sunrise to bedtime since the day they were born. It's their rebellion against the can't-be-too-safe paranoia of their parents. I don't really blame them.

In fact, quite often I've joined them. It's been terrifyingly freeing. Honestly, you don't know what you're capable of until you're zipping down a mile-long cable over the Costa Rican canopy.

I wonder--maybe all the half-pipe skiers and shark swimmers are one big reaction to American paranoid parenting.

And now, we have studies like this one that surprise us by showing that, when we allow kids to be kids and use their common sense around risk, they actually do better. They are less bored, less violent with one another, and more engaged learners. Maybe, we were wrong to take away the slides and dodge balls.

Might I turn a corner and suggest this is also true spiritually?

With three-fourths of youth leaving our churches and not intending to return, we have to ask the reasons. And while they are complex, I wonder if one of them might not be that we focused too much on protecting said youth.

We spent too much of our time holding their little ears lest they hear a bad word and too little of our time opening their ears to the world around them and their place in it as God's person.

Young people are turning away because, according to Barna surveys, they find the church too judgmental and too ingrown. Might that be code for “You taught us to stay away from what was wrong but never told us how to make those things right? You kept us in our sanitized Sunday school rooms and homeschool classes but never accepted the messiness of honest life? You kept us safe but pointless?

(I am NOT blasting homeschooling here. Let us be clear on that. Only some of the reasons people give for doing it. I believe it's a great alternative for reasons other than protectionism.)

Our kids want to go down giant metal slides and feel the wind and yes, sometimes feel the concrete beneath. They want to get on the dodgeball court that is the real world and see if they have what it takes to play hard and long. They find our Holy Grail—safe—overrated. They are leaving the church that has told them that safe is their highest goal. I don't blame them. We lied.

I see two choices for the church and parents. We can equip them to take on their yearnings with Christ, or we can retreat and let them go at it alone. We can guide them toward the battles worth fighting and the thrills worth seeking, or we can let them jump off cliffs for their thrills, desperate for a feeling but devoid of purpose. We can smugly watch them “get it out of their systems,” or we can point them to the heart worth following, the one that took a giant risk to love us and live among us.

They will go at it. This is a generation that believes in blasting the door off the anxiety closet. If we want them back in the church, we've got to stop steering them away from the doors and instead put the light sabers in their hands. 

I read another blog just today that put it well.

"If you want to push the next generation away from your church, refuse to release them to lead. They want to be trusted to fulfill the task that has been given to them. If you micro-manage them, treat them like a parent, and refuse to believe they are capable of being leaders because of their age and lack of experience, wisdom, etc., they will only be at your church for a short season. Millennials will not allow age to keep them from leading…and leading well. If you refuse to release them to lead, the next generation will quickly find another church or context where they can use their talents and gifts to their full capacity."

 And honestly? If we want to be taken seriously in that, we've got to go through a couple doors ourselves.

And there's one of my terrors. Going up stairs

you can see through. Many, many stairs.

Afraid? Try ziplining somewhere. It will put you in the mood.

Setting our youth free to minister is a topic explored in Jill's book, Don't Forget to Pack the Kids: Short-term Missions for Your Whole Family.

This article previously appeared on her blog.