Advertising an Independent Sector School

Advertising an Independent Sector School

We are so persuaded by the ‘normal’ and what is perceived to be the right approach that those of us who do it differently always expect to have to swim upstream, to move against the odds to climb the mountain or whatever other metaphor you can think of to demonstrate an alternative.

Then to persuade people to join you is difficult; I always find the story of Moses and the release of the Israelite's from slavery interesting.  The Old Testament gives us a clue to some of their thinking.  They were all slaves; their next door neighbors were slaves, their friends where slaves, their wives and children were slaves, slavery was the norm.  When you have been brought up like that it’s very hard to be convinced of ‘freedom’ or for my purpose in what I am saying about education any other way of doing or thinking.  The Old Testament Scriptures tell us that they were mad with Moses for trying to set them free, what did you have in your slavery?” was Moses’ question, “well” they responded, “we had Leeks Onions and Cucumbers”.  The problem was they were not looking for freedom they were looking for bigger onions!

So when people consider putting their children into our school many of the cultural, the expected, and the ‘norm’ is not there!  How many classes do you have they say?  We don’t have class rooms, or classes, it’s an individualised method of education!  What GCSE’s do they take, is often the next question. Well, we don’t do that either, our students enter the ICCE certification.  More problems, all people really want is a bigger onion!

Does the system work, what does the school deliver, should be the next question, or from my point of view maybe the first question.  We are interested as an education establishment in not only good education for our students but also good character development.  We want them to know God, we want them to become leaders in whatever area of life they end up in, and we want them to become the best that they can.  So the big question should be do we succeed in those aims.  Not always, but let me tell you about our recent school leavers.  At the moment the school is around 40 students and growing, so I thought what I would do is look at the last two year’s leavers and tell you our results hoping that will help you to assess us and decided if we are successful or not?

So in 2010 9 students left our school, when I say left what I mean is that they had reached full school leaving age, I of course am not counting leavers who left mid education because they move area or changed to another school or things like that these are the student that one would count because they are completers.  Incidentally, in 2010 only one student left without gaining some paper qualification.  But let me show you what the full age students left with.

First those 2010 9 students:

A = foundation ICCE certification, went on to work as an Estate agent after college

B = Foundation ICCE certification, onto college to take Btec in IT

C= Intermediate ICCE certification, Canterbury university, degree in Business and accounts

D= left with nothing went on to an access course on to university

E= intermediate ICCE went to Kingston university to study Accounts degree

F= General ICCE certificate, went on to take level 3 NVQ CCLD and work with children

G = General ICCE certificate, went on to be a home maker

H= OCR basic certificate went on to a college course

I= General ICCE certificate then did access course studying English Now at London university doing a degree in English

Then in 201l we had 6 student complete:

J= General ICCE certificate, went on to Music college now taking a degree course there

K = Foundation ICCE certificate, went on to do Btec in IT

L= General ICCE certificate, went on to do a degree in Photography

M= Advanced ICCE certificate, went on to Brunel university to study medicine

N= Foundation ICCE certificate, went on to do Btec in IT

O= General ICCE certificate, went on to complete a Diploma in Music

So there are our leavers for the last two years what do you think?  Does it work?

Here are some comments from some of the students who have left us:

I asked one student how his first year at Canterbury University had gone. 

He responded, “I missed my London friends but the studies were fine.” 

I asked him for his opinion of our school system; here are some of his comments. 

“One of my uni modules is accounting, I had already done that subject for my Intermediate exam with International Certificate of Christian Education (ICCE), so of course I had that down as one of my options from the advanced level course.  However, when I saw the stuff at University I had to laugh and I said I wish my school studies had been this easy!”

I asked him if there was anything else he had noticed about his uni studies.

He said, “The Algebra, as with accounts, I wish that the school stuff had been as easy as the university material.”

His final comment was, “When you have been to a school using the ACE system a fundamental element that you learn is how to manage your study time and how to complete work within a given period. I am finding that my stuff gets done whereas lots of other students seem to have problems completing work and bringing it in on time.  We all have the same amount of time, and I think some of them are possibly brighter than me, but what they lack is the discipline that has been put into me over the years to complete the work on time.”

I also had the chance to talk with one of the lads who had completed his General Certificate at ICCE level, and asked him how his college studies were progressing. “Great!” he said, “but what is funny is how the other students don’t seem to be able to complete work on time, I have just handed in one of my first essays, the  lecturer said 1,000 words, I was about 400 over so I went to him and asked how critical the word count was?”

“Oh” he replied, “I only ask for 1,000 as most of the students cannot get anywhere near that number, I am happy with anything up to 2000 words, but I would be surprised if many can even achieve 800.”

I asked him if he had made any other observations since he had left school.

He said, “A friend asked me if I could help her with her GCSE material as she had to take an exam in Maths, so I said I would come around and try. I was very surprised at the level, and helped her to complete the work and showed her how to work out the material.  I then asked if I could take a copy of the paper with me.  She agreed and explained that it was an old exam paper used for practice.  I took it home to my younger sister, she is just 13 years old, and said can you do this maths? She said, ‘Oh crumbs, yes of course, I am doing that stuff now.’”

For those who know anything about the system this girl is on PACE 1083 which according to ICCE is two units below where we would say a student is who has begun General certificate work.

There was another young lady at the New Year’s Eve party who had been to a school using the ACE system, but not at one of the schools that I run; she is currently reading English at Liverpool Hope University.  I asked how she had found it, and if anything she had learnt from the system was useful in ongoing university studies.  Her reply was amusing, “Well,” she said, “I am the only student in my group who knows how to  break down an English language sentence into its component parts, the whole class were saying, ‘we don’t even understand what we are being asked to do.’  So I ran my own tutorial group for my friends.  They asked how I knew how to do this, and I told them that I did it all when I was quite young in my Christian school, that it was standard practice.  I am just surprised that such basic things are part of this English course at university.”

Flack or no flack, the results speak for themselves.  You might say to me, are you trying to sell your system to us?  The answer to that is; you bet I am!

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Adrian Hawkes for adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

Edited by Gena Muoria

Adrian's Blog

Adrian’s Blog

I just thought you might find it interesting to know a little more about the Blog you read.

Why write a BLOG, and I guess that people do it for all sorts of reason, to tell friends, to advertise their wares, to just put their thought out there.  I guess for some people it’s almost therapeutic.

But for me, well yes I would like to put my ware out there, I have six books I would like you to read, but that’s writing as well isn’t it.  I guess the real reason for writing is that I want to see change in certain things.  I also think that I would like to use the words to make the world a better place. I also actually like to introduce lots of people to ‘the Word’ because I know having met the Word, that it changes life, our outlook, our culture perspective, and our value stem in fact everything for the better.

The other thing that I though you would like to know is who reads this Blog, that is quite fascinating to me, I am sure you know that these days with the internet you can track and analyse all sorts of things, and my Blog is no exception.  Here are some of the interesting data to date, well I think it’s interesting anyway and I hope you might too.  As you would expect as I live in the UK most readers come from that area of the world, on today statistics it’s so far to date 1877 of you in the UK have had a look at it.  The next country, which probably isn't such a surprise as we speak the same language and I have many friends there, but I suppose what does surprise me is how many, as of today’s date the stats tell me that in the USA  1409 of you have taken a peek.  Not so far behind the UK. 

What really does surprise me is country number three and four a long way behind in terms of numbers but hay welcome all of you from Russia, and South Korea who have had a look Russia is 189 and South Korea is 135.  I would really love you to click that comment button and just tell me what you think. 

I will of course say thank you to those of you who have joined my discussions and journey from Germany, Brazil, Slovenia, Slovakia, Kenya, Taiwan, Netherlands, Norway, France and Switzerland.  Thank you all for joining me and for reading my comments, now all I need is for you to join the discussions. So far almost 5,000 have joined me at some point thank you for that.

It is also interesting to see what you are all reading, and the stats tell me that the most read Blog is the one put up in October 2009 on the subject of woman, and I didn’t even write that one baa!  It was written by my good friend Dan Wooding of Assist News Service, he is a professional news hound so I guess I am happy that you like to read his stuff. For those who like tit bits, he was also our best man when we got married.  Check out his news service at www.assistnew.com  it is worth the time.  It also fun to note that my second most read is the one entitled Beer and bandits which I posted in May 2010 does that tell me something about you or about what I write about?

Venezuela 

I like the fact that you are still reading those Blogs that I posted some time ago, again thank for that.

I could go on and tell you which search engines and what referring sites you use, but I won’t enough already.  Just to say again thank you, hope you enjoy, and most of all I hope together we can effect change for the better. Don’t forget would love to hear from you.

Adrian Hawkes

For Adrian Hawkes Blog spot www.adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

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Edited By: Technicolour text

Leadership - Vision

Leadership – the book, Vision

Talks for UCB 3 min

 I always  feel sad when I come the end of my chance  to talk with you. I hope you have found our times together helpful, as I have chatted about the subject of leadership. I have written a book on the subject and in it I cover many other areas that I haven’t had time  to talk to you about in this series.   I looked through all the subjects in my book, ‘Leadership and…’ to decide what to share with you during this last talk, should I tell you about decision makers or small groups of people, or perhaps the platform? Goals? Work or loyalty? And I was very tempted by the chapter on Solomon’s clothes,  there’s one I wish I had time for right now,  but as I pondered it became very clear what should I talk about  during our final time together.  I decided it has to be vision.

Scripture says that where there is no vision, people perish.  Now maybe it’s just the people I mix with but there has been a bit of a backlash against vision.  Maybe you are not aware of that and if not don’t let it worry you.  The thing is that people, and I understand why they do, react against the fact that leaders want everyone to buy into their vision, and sometimes   they exhaust people in trying to see things achieved and the vision reached, and why their vision anyway? Why not mine?

Well here are some answers; firstly do you have a vision?   People regularly   come and chat with me, seeking advice about the direction their life is taking, or not, as the case may be, they may say things like, ‘ I don’t have a vision, I really would like one, what should I do?’  I’m sorry but I have a stock answer which is, ‘get on board someone else’s vision!’  Don’t forget that scripture says, without one people perish

Secondly   as leaders, aren't we all called to lead?  Yes we are, but we are also called to follow. Scripture states that we should be under authority, and if we are all practicing servant leadership then things will work really well.  I would also hope that as a leader you are following  a vision God has given you,  one that reflects what Jesus would say,  ‘I must be about my Father’s business.’ Or let’s put it another way, the Father’s vision is what I plan to accomplish. 

So let’s think again about those who have no vision, if it is the Father’s vision that your leader is following, why not get on board? A key point to bear in mind is that the Father’s vision is broad enough to encompass other visions.  For the church community to function smoothly and effectively, you will all be following a God given vision but that does not eliminate the possibility that God can also give you a vision, at which point  you should be able to say to the leadership, ‘ hey I really want to do this and accomplish what I believe God has shown me,’   and if we are all under authority, in close relationship with the Father and his purposes, it should be equally possible for the leaders to say, ‘That’s great! That extends the vision in this area and makes things work better in that area. How  fantastic that we are going in the same direction.’   Often when we cannot respond in that way, then  perhaps what is wrong is that the vision is too small.

In many ways God has given us the broader visions, outlining them several times in scripture. He wants us to catch His vision, the top priority he give us is to ‘seek FIRST the Kingdom of God  Then we are told, ‘tell the good news.’ I know you know it, but let me say it again, the good news is about a person and that person is Jesus. He is the good news. We are told to, ‘tell it in Jerusalem, in Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world.’  That’s a big job, a big vision isn't it? 

Finally we are told to, ‘make disciples of the nations.’  I think that gives most of us enough to do for the rest of our lives don’t you?

A vision keeps you fresh; it actually keeps you alive and moving forward.  I have a little saying that some puzzle over; it goes like this ‘the worst enemy of better is very good.’  The thing is that when things are bad you can usually see that there is a need for some vision to make them better, but when things are going well that can put you in the danger zone.  Unless you are alert, you could end up settling down and dying off.  Don’t do it!  We have not arrived; the kingdom has not yet come, there are still dreams to dream and a vision to have. 

Get a vision of leading, forging ahead, keeping going and kingdom seeking!  If you haven’t got one then get on board with someone who has.   There is a promised land to be possessed, there is a Kingdom to be found and we have the power to bring it to earth if we know our God, that’s why he told us to pray and work, ‘your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’  Happy seeking!  Thank you for listening God bless you as you dream and vision His plans.

Adrian Hawkes

Editor A Brookes

For UCB 3 min Script

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Leadership - Getting it Wrong

Leadership – Getting it wrong

Talks for UCB

3 min.

I hope you have remembered what I said at the beginning of this series which was that all of us are called to be leaders; or to put it in Bible language, we are prophet’s priest and kings.

Alongside this universal calling there are always several people in each church community who take special responsibility for others, and that brings with it all sorts of pressures. One of those pressures is the problem of being right.  I guess you have all seen that joke that sometimes sits on a manager’s desk which says, ‘Rule number one. The boss is always right’.  ‘Rule numbers two, if the boss is wrong, refer to rule number one’.  The reality is that being in leadership does not always mean that you are right.

That in itself presents another pressure, one of our culture and our age.  Generally people do not like or expect anyone in leadership to be wrong.  Just watch what happens when a politician tries to admit to being wrong and misses the mark; the response is rarely,   ‘that’s great they have admitted they are wrong, lets forgive them and move on’. Usually it is quite the reverse immediately there is a flurry of frantic digging in order to reveal further failings  and  we demand they resign, no that’s not enough, die, and even that is not enough, we want to dance on a their grave.

 Coupled with the possibility of being wrong, there is also the cultural pressure whereby we want our leaders to know the answer to everything.  I am a leader, and sometimes I am wrong and sometimes I do not know the answer and what is worse sometimes I can see a problem, which I am sure everyone else can see. I know this because they come and tell me, often in conspiratorial tones, ‘there is a problem’.  I know there is problem and I didn’t need anyone to tell me what I already know,  what I  need is for someone to give me an answer to the problem, as I don’t have one.

So what can we do?  Firstly I think that it is very helpful to admit we are wrong as quickly as possible and learn to put up with people’s reactions and disappointment. We should also look for help both from God and our fellow travellers; perhaps when they see us admit that we are wrong  it might encourage them in their own struggle to get things right.

Secondly all of us need to treat those who lead us with respect when they say that they do not have an answer to some particular conundrum; maybe accepting and believing that they simply do not know.

Thirdly, and this is a hard one, I am convinced we need to learn to say ‘I am sorry,’ that can be a great help to all.  But isn’t it a hard word to use? 

Let me finish by telling you a positive story to illustrate what I mean.

For more than thirty years I have been involved in running independent Christian Schools and in two of them I hold the role of principal. A while ago a young lady of around twelve years old was brought to my office for some misdemeanour, it was my job to tell her off; I did so, very sternly and the young lady ended up with tears running down her cheeks.  She left my office very, very subdued and quiet, so I thought I had down my job well.   The next day, to my horror, I discovered that I had reprimanded a totally innocent person, who was in no way guilty of any wrongdoing.  What should I do?  I asked a member of staff to find the young lady and bring her to my office as quickly as possible.  She walked in with fear in her face, I asked her to sit down and she did so, very carefully, her hands folded meekly in her lap.  I explained to her that on the previous day I had made a terrible mistake when I told her off and I said I wanted to apologise. I looked into her fearful eyes and said, ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me’.  The transformation was instantaneous, the fear disappeared and the young lady burst into the largest smile I have ever seen, I was afraid that her face would come apart if she smiled any more.

Suffice to say   she went away very happy, and I must admit that I also felt good.  Being wrong and saying sorry really made my day and I think it made her day too. I am pretty certain that the story got repeated many times to her schoolmate’s. 

Did being wrong in that case make me a lesser person?  I don’t think so; I think dealing with being wrong after the event in the right way made a positive difference don’t you?  Unlike how some of us react to our fallible politicians she didn’t want to kill me, it was just the reverse, I think she thought she had a received a fantastic present. Don’t kill people for being wrong, be like our God; full of grace and forgiveness.

Adrian Hawkes

For UCB 3 min talks

Editor A Brookes

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Leadership In The Big Wide World

Leadership 8 – In the big wide world

3 min script for            UCB

I have been looking at leadership in these short talks in the context of those who are followers of Jesus.  However I  hope that I  haven’t give the impression  that these skills of servant leadership are  only relevant and appropriate to the church community.  If I have given that impression let my try and correct that today.

I have spent a large chunk of my life establishing some independent schools, we have two in North London, one in Sri Lanka and one in Nakuru, Kenya.  When people ask me what is their purpose, I answer that I am interested in affecting the thinking of young students, but also I want to produce tomorrow’s national and international leaders.

I hope you don’t think what I say next is too strange, but even if you do, I believe it to be so. If you really are a follower of Jesus, and you are walking with him then certain things will apply.  First of all you are in touch with wisdom, I do not believe that wisdom comes from any other source but from God, he is the source of wisdom. Knowledge on the other hand can come from a variety of sources.  If you are a follower of Jesus then you should have a world view that gives great credibility to any leadership role into which you enter. Followers of Jesus also have a clear perspective about the future, where it’s all going, why we are here and what is our human purpose is.  You are also in touch with the ultimate law giver, ruler and therefore understand what it means to have a moral base.  Scripture talks about our thinking producing who and what we are, and that can, should and does reflect into the wider culture locally, nationally and internationally.

I learned a lot of my leadership skills as a follower of Jesus rather than from management training, or other training schemes. But I have discovered that it is very easy to transfer those skills into what we sometimes call the secular world, although I don’t like the word secular, as I know that the Kingdom of God can be found in every area of life and do not like the false dichotomy of secular and spiritual. I have been able to use the leadership skills obtained as a follower of Jesus in social service, education and business to name but a few.

Just the other day I was listening to a discussion about an emerging economy and they were talking about how the country could be improved by business, by politics, and by new laws.  But there was an element that was missing from the debate, there was no mention of how people think, the philosophy of a nation if you will.  In the UK, whilst I would never want to call us or think of us as a Christian nation we do have a strong Christian heritage which can be seen in our laws and the way the country works.  This heritage is, I believe, currently being rapidly squandered, but some of it is this is still there, which tends to make us generous and caring; and affect levels of honesty and corruption. If you look at national cultures in other parts of the world then you will see clear differences to the UK culture, due to the underlying philosophy, for some there is a lack of concern for others outside of their own country, some place a low value on human life and some have very corrupt systems.  Now I am sure business, law, politics and education can all help those things if they are wrong, but ultimately you don’t really change things unless you change the thinking and the underlying philosophy.

As one American president once said, ‘if you educate an evil man who was stealing from the railway, it doesn’t change his actions it just makes him clever, so instead of stealing from the railway he steals the whole system’.  What we often see as requiring a structural change actually needs a change of heart, or from my point of view, Jesus style leadership in all areas of life.  So how about you, where do you lead?

Adrian Hawkes

Editor A Brookes

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3 min Script for UCB

Difficult People - and the Leadership of Them

Leadership 7

DIFFICULT PEOPLE

UCB 3 MIN SCRIPT

Let’s be honest there are difficult people around aren’t there?   And there are people who claim to be followers of Jesus who think we need to be nice to everyone.  The problem with being nice is that sometimes nice means, in modern parlance, untruthful.   When we are untruthful we need to ask the question are we really helping the other person?

 Let me illustrate where I am going with this; Have you noticed how people who tell you they are Christians sometimes say, and usually very loudly and firmly, ‘you need to accept me  as I am because God says he accepts me just as I am and He tells us to come to him just as we are, so you should do the same’.  And that is the problem with sound bite truth. Of course what they are saying is true, but  it’s not the whole truth or the whole story, but we so love those sound bites don’t we?  The truth is that  God loves us and calls us to come to Him as we are, but then he also calls us to change. This is made clear in scriptures like, ‘be transformed by the renewing or the changing of your mind’ or ‘he plans to conform us to the image of His son Jesus’. These scriptures give us the clear understanding that although God accepts us as we are it isn’t part of His plan to leave us as He finds us.

Can I be honest?  Thank you. Sometimes when people say, ‘love me as I am,’ I’m thinking, (but of course I don’t say it),   you really are horrible and you need to change!’  Then there are people who say, ‘do you know I never have these problems at work or at my book club I only have them when I am here in the church community.’  And the first thing that goes through my head is, ‘Uh oh, they are not telling the truth’. Perhaps they think they are, but actually they are not. 

For many years I have run a school, and sometimes I have a parent sitting in front of me saying ‘do you know I never had this problem with my child in their last school.’ What they don’t realise is that I have a  file on the child from the last school describing the behaviour issues and can also read the problems that the staff at my school  are experiencing;  and I know my staff!  Sometimes, of course, people don’t realise what they are doing, at other times, let’s be totally clear, they are not being honest; they are trying to circumvent their own problems.

That leads me to my next issue with people, that of their problems. There are those who want to dump their problems on others, especially if those on who they are dumping have assumed any form of leadership role.  What happens is this, someone will share their problem with you, and because you care you really put your mind into it. After they have poured out their problems to you, they go home and sleep soundly while you toss and turn and worry about their problem.  It is not good to allow people to dump their lives on you. We need to try and help people to find ways through difficult passages in their lives, and be as helpful as possible, but ultimately it is for them, to work out a resolution.

Scripture tells us that we are to work out our own salvation. That, again, could be a sound bite but of course God is there working with those who have problems, and, no doubt if you are caring leader you also will be alongside them. But don’t allow people to make their lives your responsibility.  God wants us to grow up, to be mature and work with Him as we work through difficult periods in our life, and he promises to turn them round and help us learn from them.  Maturing us and changing our thinking.

Finally to help any of you listening who do lead, and go through those terrible times when some person you have been trying to help turns around and blames you for the problem that they have, even though the problem was there before you even met them. Or they list the terrible problems that they are having with you that sends you home feeling a complete and utter failure and a really useless leader in fact a useless person.  Here is my little formula which I hope might help you.

Ask yourself, ‘do other people have this problem with me?’ If the answer is yes then perhaps the critic is right and you do have a problem.  If the answer is no, and I have to say it usually is no, then you  need to say to yourself, ‘well now as other people do not have this problem with me then it is probably  not my problem but theirs.’

Then ask yourself, ‘in my observation of this person, do they have a similar problem with other people that I know?’ if the answer is yes, again it confirms what I have just said. It is not your problem it is theirs.   Often we end up beating ourselves up when we should not do so simply because we haven’t thought through the situation, we have just reacted negatively to critisicm, and blamed ourselves for something that is not our fault or our responsibility.

I hope today that I haven’t caused you to no longer want to lead, or help those difficult or problematic people. God does love them; I just don’t want you to live in condemnation.  Happy helping and be blessed.

Leadership Script for UCB 3 MIN

Editor A.  Brookes

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Adrian Hawkes

Leadership And The Cost

Leadership and the cost - in time and space

It seems to me that there is a great gulf in our understanding of Biblical style leadership. In many ways those of us who think of ourselves as follower of Jesus are more often than not influenced by Greek thinking and philosophy than we are by Judeo-Christian thinking and  influence.  What is worse is that we think that the Greek way of thinking and its philosophy is actually Judeo-Christian and it isn’t!

We are talking at this time about leadership, and the whole Judeo-Christian Greek thing is another issue, but I have mentioned it now because of the way that Jesus led and I contrast that with what is often perceived when we leading in today’s world.  What we tend to do is preach, or perhaps we would use the words teach or even lecture.  Usually that takes place from the front of some building and what is really happening is information is being passed from someone’s brain though their vocal cords out of their mouth and into, they hope, their listener’s ears.  This then is regarded as leading, and of course it is, but actually it’s a Greek style of leadership.

In contrast the Judeo-Christian style of leadership is much more involved, and we see it very clearly in the servant leadership style of Jesus. From out of his many disciples he choose twelve of them, then said ‘follow me’, and for three years they followed him, or if you like followed His leadership.  That ‘following’ is very involved, for Jesus and for the disciples; they are living together, walking together, eating together, watching what Jesus does, sometimes helping him do it, like distributing baskets of bread and fish, and then sometimes Jesus will say ‘off you go and do it by yourself’, and then when they hit problems, they go back to Jesus and say, ‘we can’t seem to do this, please help’.  Jesus also regularly spends time in what perhaps we would now call a tutorial group, talking to them and answering some of their questions, often to our modern frustration, with new questions.  Yes, Jesus occasionally preaches, but actually that is quite rare, most of the time he is walking, talking, doing and showing.

Here is a couple of my stories to illustrate what I’m talking about; some years ago one of our leaders said to me ‘why does so and so do what you ask them to do, but they often don’t when I ask them, and yet I am a leader just like you’.  I didn’t go into detail about leadership but responded, ‘well actually they lived in my house for two years, I saw them every day, they had breakfast with me almost every morning, they came home at night and I was there, in fact I was probably with them more than they were with anyone else so perhaps my life input to them has influenced them strongly and they are therefore willing to help me, or to do what I ask’.  The leader replied, ‘Oh but I don’t want other people living in my house and to be involved with them to that extent.’  To which I replied, ‘well then you don’t get the response from them that I do, which is how it works!’

The second story happened some years ago, a young lady came to me and said, ‘this is my brother’, I said, ‘Hi,’ and then she said, ‘I want to give him to you.’  I looked a little surprised and said as polity as possible, ‘that’s fine  but thank you I don’t want him.’  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand he has been to a Christian camp and he has become a Christian.’ I said, ‘I think that is great, fantastic!’ ‘No, no!’ she said again, ‘you still don’t understand, that happened to him last year and the year before and the year before that, and two weeks after he gets home he is a bad as ever, I know that because I am his sister.’ By now I was very curious and said,   ‘so what do you want me to do?’, she told me, ‘I want you to look after him and take him with  you wherever you go. ‘

And so I did, much to the disgust of my girl friend at the time,  because every time we went out the guy was in tow, it was a pain, but I did try to share with him what little bit I knew, and so wherever I went he went too.   And just in case you’re wondering,  he isn’t following me around anymore but he is still a strong follower of Jesus, and leading others.

Now what I am trying to say, and hoping you get it, is that this kind of Judeo-Christian leadership has at its heart the servant lifestyle to start with, but also it is quite costly, costly personally I mean, for it will take our time, our commitment, and to have people  us a lot can sometimes be a real pressure.  What you are really giving to the  people that you are leading is, in fact, your life. When you think about it the person we so often claim to be following did just that, gave us his life, that we might live, and lead others.  Do you want to be a leader? Can you give your life?

Adrian Hawkes

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Editor A Brookes