Hitler was a good leader?

 If you are scoffing at the title of this blog I want to clear the air. Hitler was NOT a good leader. 

This was a statement that a co-worker made, and his reasoning to make it was understandable. Leadership is defined by uniting a people around a common goal and fueling their motivations to match that of the leader's in order to accomplish the mission the leader has set out to accomplish. In those terms, Hitler 'lead' the Nazi's. 

Now to counter.. Leadership is not only defined by the description above, though that may be true. Leadership is also determined by where people are being led. To say the leader of the AA meeting was an effective leader because he successful led all of the members of his group to get drunk at the bar would be ludicrous. The AA leader is only an effective leader when he leads the group to the stated goal, the stated mission, the stated purpose, which is to rid the members of the group of their addiction to alcohol. He led them somewhere, but it was back to their sin. . Leadership is defined by the destination. If a shepherd leads his sheep to the den of wolves, yes you could say they followed him and that he led them, but you can also say that all of the sheep are dead. A shepherd is a good leader when he leads the flock to safety, not harm. It would not be hard for me to lead college kids into drunkenness. That would not speak to much of my leadership ability, only to my ability to fan the desires that already existed. For me to lead college kids into abstinence however, or to lead them to a regimented schedule which facilitated success in academics, that consists of leading them to sacrifice their natural desires or to die to a part of themselves in order to pursue something else. 

Leading sinners to more sin is not leadership, it's depravity. Leading sinners to die to their sins to pursue righteousness is leadership. 

The destination is of upmost importance. 

Counterfeit Masculinity

 The following is an excerpt from "Future Men" by Douglas Wilson. A worker asked me for some advice today and I was reminded of this section of this book. I hastened to read it this evening in order to share with him tomorrow the principles found within. Authority flows to those who take responsibility. Furthermore, children learn from their parents example not just their rebuke. Parent's making excuses on behalf of their children is doubly harmful. It is reinforced to the child that excuse making is okay and the child is given the green light to not only make excuses to others, but now to his own parents. The parents have lost authority, and they have bolstered excuse making in their child. 

-"Counterfeit masculinity excels at making excuses. Because the "masculinity" is a matter of pride, not humble acceptance of responsibility, then anything which threatens that pride must be rejected. One of the things which always threatens pride is any kind of failure, and the way that insecure males deal with this is through making excuses. True masculinity accepts responsibility, period, while false masculinity will try to accept responsibility only for success. This is a key distinction and is worth pursuing at some length. 

Suppose a young son is playing left field, and in the course of the game, he drops an easy pop fly. Suppose further that he says he did so because "the sun was in my eyes", "a bee was near me," "the grass was slippery," "a fan yelled and distracted me," and so on. This should be taken with the utmost seriousness by the parents - this boy is in grave spiritual danger. This pattern of fending off a threat of wounded pride through excuse-making is typical of males in sin, and yet is thoroughly unmasculine. A refusal to make excuses is right at the heart of scriptural masculinity. 

Boys need so much practice at this that they should be taught to accept responsibility even when the sun was in their eyes. Unfortunately, many boys are schooled in the techniques of avoiding masculinity by their parents. When a boy does not make excuses it is frequently because he does not need to - mom and dad do it for him. This is particularly the case when there have been consequences for the failure, whatever it is. Suppose the coach substitutes another player, or the boy is dropped from the team because he is on academic probation, or some other fallout occurs. Parents are often ferocious in "explaining" why this shouldn't happen. The son is in the background, taking notes. So when they, the parents, confront him about something, he does to them what he has already learned from them. What he has learned is the practice of refusing to take responsibility. He has learned how to reject masculinity. This can all be done in a loud vice, and with hairy chest, but it is still shirking a duty assigned by God. "-

A Heart for the Nations

 To have a heart for the nations, is to have a heart for your nation. 

To have a heart for children and families, is to have a heart for your children and families.

Why is it that when a youth group plans a mission trip, they tend to leave either their country, their state, or their community? Is it because their school is full of believers? Is it because their county already praises God?

Why do we sneak out of the castle to fight enemies in far away lands when we have a whole army of enemy combatants battering at our gates? Is the war being waged in distant lands more pressing than the one being waged in our own? Perhaps it is less embarrassing or less of a risk if you lose? After all didn't Jesus say in Luke, "Only in his home town and in his own house is a prophet without honor."

But when we were told to go to every nation, we were told Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest parts of the earth. Evangelism starts at home. It starts with where we are right now. 

It may be easier to evangelize someone in a far off place who doesn't know about your history, doesn't know how you spend your Tuesday nights and where your children spend their Tuesday nights. When we go to far off places our lives are under far less scrutiny, and therefore we are held to some extent less accountable for the fruit we bear each and every day. When I witness to my coworker, that time I cussed out my boss for keeping me late on a Friday will come to his mind, and if I was not repentant about that situation, or if that is a regular occurrence, my message will be in contradiction to my life. 

So evangelizing where you are requires your life. Not a few hours of your time. Living our faith is in general one of the great ways to evangelize. Our actions speak much louder than our words. No one wants to hear about serving a God that the message bearer himself doesn't obey 6 days out of the week. 

It starts in the home, it starts with our own children. Then our communities and workplaces, and the overflow both generationally and geographically has no limits. We should not neglect the garden God has placed us in to go and tend to another. No matter how trimmed a garden is, when left alone, will become weeds. Raise up cultivators, raise up gardeners. Raise up son's like Jeremiah who held in their left hand a trowel and in their right a sword. Son's who can both build up and fight away. 

To have a heart for the nations is to have a heart for your own.