Leadership - Investment Into People

Leadership 5 - Investment into People

3min Script for UCB

One day, a little boy was being driven by his Mother along a motorway.  In front of them was a large lorry filled with rubbish, it was obviously not going very far as lying spread-eagled across the tarpaulin sheet used to cover the rubbish, was a man.  At a guess he was doing this to save the time and trouble it would have taken to rope the tarpaulin to the sides of the lorry, instead the man lay on top of it to stop it from flying away as they drove along.

The little boy studied the lorry and the man spread out on top of the rubbish, he was puzzled by the almost lifeless form of the driver’s mate, suddenly a gust of wind lifted one corner of the tarpaulin causing the man to react quickly to bring the large sail under control by throwing his arm over the offending, flapping corner.  The little boy turned to his Mum and said in a horrified voice, ‘look mummy, somebody has thrown away a perfectly good man!’

Leaders must never throw away perfectly good people.  Scripture reports that Jesus said, ‘I will not quench a smoking flax nor break a bruised reed.’  What exactly does that mean?  I reckon it means that Jesus will not put on one side even the weakest or most damaged person, rather he will use them; they too are leadership material.

Sadly many are tempted to throw people away because they’re not clever enough or too clever by half, the wrong colour, the wrong culture, funny, silly awkward or just plain weird.

Leaders work with people and need to get them motivated, activated, committed and following us because we are following Jesus and of course helping them to develop into leaders themselves. If we, even in our thoughts, dismiss people, mentally throw them away then that is completely opposite to the Jesus style of leadership.  Scripture is full of success stories about people whom others had thrown away. If you want to lead Jesus style then you will want to discover people whom others have thrown away that, if taken and carefully nurtured and polished, will turn into diamonds whose bright light will dazzle you.  These people, you will find by careful handling, will not only become useful kingdom seekers but also powerful leaders, kings, prophets, priests.

We must learn to love others, be good at directing people, never deriding them, there to help in whatever way possible.  Jesus came, we need to remember, to lift people up not to push them down.

We actually need to make people, other people, our offering of worship to God.  God has great things in store for all of us, we are called to be his leaders, his prophets, his priests, he kings.  All of us! God has put great value on us. He seems to know the value of every person and he is never willing to discard them, he will never throw them away.  The only way they can be thrown away is if they throw themselves away. Jesus never throws people away, he died for people, all people and we should never forget that.

For UCB 3 Min Script

Adrian Hawkes

Editor A Brookes

W. 550