By Bro. Eli Soriano, Presiding Minister of the Members of the Church of God International
The notion that because somebody is being followed by others does not automatically mean that he is a leader. A person may follow somebody because he is being paid, intimidated, forced, or may have been deceived.
A leader, as far as my experience and scriptural knowledge is concerned, is someone being followed willingly and faithfully by a wise follower. The best example of a leader is the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not force anybody to follow or to obey him, although he has all the powers to do so—even to change the minds of anybody by force. His kind of leadership is echoed in his teachings recorded by the apostles in the Bible. To be the first, you have to be the last; and to be served, you have to be a servant; and to be a leader is to be a good follower. By this, we can see that God had prepared something better than our first state or condition in life. There is always room for improvement, as the saying goes. The human person is an adaptable organism. It can, by its might, adapt to extremes of situations around him. This leads us to the fact that learning to be lowly, and learning to be small will make us great someday.
There is a great host of leaders recorded in the Bible. If we have to learn their ways, faith, principles, and beliefs, we will come to the inevitable conclusion that these great leaders like Moses, Noah, Peter, Paul, and many others, were found to be able and successful leaders because they have learned to accept that they are nothing; that the Creator is able to produce great things from nothing. Nothingness is the best place and idea to start a creation. When we do something out of something that already exists, we fashion it in a manner by which we always consider the kind of material that exist; but everything is possible, and every idea can be freely conceived if you create something out of nothing like what God have done.
A leader, in the truest sense of the word, must be someone being followed intelligently by followers of understanding. The kind of people that follows reflects the kind of leader someone is. Blind followers that follow blind leaders are sure to end up in perdition. A leader, by his leadership, must be able to produce other leaders. A chain has its start and then followed by parts linked together, and so on.
A leader must be compassionate to his subject – understanding that he has a goal to attain, and that is to produce his like. Since time immemorial, history will prove that there are really born leaders, but history will equally prove that there are leaders made by able and compassionate leaders.
May I humbly say, with all modesty, that I am a leader! Whether I am born a leader or not, I am not very sure of, but one thing I know is that I became one because of the able leadership of my Lord Jesus Christ; and I am most specially grateful to learn that people who follow me are more intelligent and compassionate than I am.
Ang Dating Daan | Ang Dating Daan | Ang Dating Daan | Ang Dating Daan | Ang Dating Daan | Ang Dating Daan | Ang Dating Daan
The Old Path | The Old Path | The Old Path | The Old Path | The Old Path | The Old Path | The Old Path | The Old Path | The Old Path |