This Thursday we celebrate the national holiday of Thanksgiving. This week’s posts will focus on various aspects of Thanksgiving. Today let’s turn to being thankful for being leaders. Depending on your worldview, every good and perfect gift is from God. That’s my worldview. I view leadership as a gift from God. The Apostle Paul spoke of the spiritual gift of leadership in Romans 12, and we certainly find leaders who were gifted by God to do amazing things from cover to cover in the Bible. If your worldview is similar to mine, then we have a great deal for which to be thankful to God when it comes to being leaders.
That we are leaders is reason for giving thanks. Leadership is a blessing and a responsibility, a sacred trust to be used to advance the cause of our business, our church or whatever organization we lead. While your worldview may see none of that, even a purely evolutionary worldview would acknowledge that leadership is an opportunity to have greater impact on the environment. While such a worldview doesn’t really promote the idea of gratitude other than as a motivator to live more effectively, even that is worth celebrating. I’m not being facetious when I say being in a leadership role is a reason for giving thanks.
This weekend, I had the opportunity to thank the New Life Christian Ministries family for the privilege of being their lead pastor. Having served as a pastor for more than thirty-two years, I know the challenges of that leadership role. As with all leadership roles, it is often extremely difficult to serve as a pastor. Having the vast majority of those you lead, being volunteers means motivating them to follow must be much more about the vision of the ministry than anything else. After all, they aren’t receiving a paycheck, so they must be motivated more intrinsically then extrinsically.
Whatever your leadership role, think of the blessings of that role. Think of the reasons for which you give thanks that you are leading. The reasons may be more secular than spiritual, but that’s okay. What are the reasons? When we stop from time-to-time to say, “Thank you!” whether to God, or just for our circumstances, we find ourselves in a better frame of mind for our work. I’ll be talking about an attitude of gratitude on Friday, and that attitude goes a long way to providing greater satisfaction in our lives whether as leaders or as followers.
My goal today is to help us understand that whether we’re leading an organization that is extremely effective and “easy” to lead right now, or we’re going through difficulties that make it challenging to get out of bed each day, leadership is a blessing, and taking the time to say, “Thanks,” to God, or for our situation is helpful. I hope you will take time to sit down (or stand up) and reflect on the blessings of your role as a leader, and take a moment to offer thanks for those blessings. I have and it has already given me a better perspective on the tasks that lie ahead.
Here’s to leading better by taking the time to say, “Thanks” for the opportunity to lead–today!