Effective leaders understand the importance of having a vision and communicating it to our organizations. Without vision, an organization goes through the motions of completing its daily work, but with no unifying core values, sense of purpose, or direction.
What about us as individuals? Is having a personal vision important? What is the difference between an organizational vision and a personal vision? What is the purpose of a personal vision?
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This is one of my favorite times of the year because I love Christmas music, especially hymns. One of my favorite hymns is Joy to the World! I have a hard time signing this hymn without a lump forming in my throat and a tear forming in the corner of my eye.
Joy to the World! was written and published by Isaac Watts in 1719 in his book Psalms of David Imitated. It is a paraphrase of Psalm 98. So let’s take a look at this important Psalm that inspired Joy to the World!
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Does leadership involve both accountability and responsibility? This can be a confusing question simply because a lot of people use the terms accountability and responsibility interchangeably.
If I am accountable for something, I am the one who is ultimately answerable for the activity or decision.
If I am responsible for something, I am the one who actually completed the task.
Generally speaking, the leader is accountable, the one who is ultimately answerable for the activities and decisions they make. The leader may also be responsible if they are the ones carrying out the decision or task.
The result of a leader not being accountable or being held accountable can spell disaster for an organization. Over the span of my career, I worked with only two managers who tried to avoid being held accountable for their actions.
While the Bible provides several examples of leaders who were not held accountable for their actions today I want to look at what happened to King David.
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No leader is perfect. We all make mistakes. Even the good kings of the Old Testament made mistakes and God still used them. Which is good news for me, because that means God can use me even if I’m not perfect!
Three weeks ago our topic “What to do when you are stuck cleaning up someone else’s mess” examined seven lessons we learned from King Asa as he cleaned up the mess left by his father and grandfather ( 2 Chronicles 14-15).
Asa’s heart was “fully committed to the Lord all his life” (2 Chronicles 15:17). Things went well for Asa for about 35 years, but in the 36th year of his reign things changed. Baasha, the King of Israel, fortified a city just a few miles north of Jerusalem. This gave Baasha the strategic position he needed to watch Asa in Jerusalem while preparing to mount an attack.
Asa stripped the gold and silver from the Temple treasuries and made an alliance with his enemy Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria. Ben-Hadad broke his treaty with Baasha and attacked several cities in Israel. Baasha retreated, and Asa plundered the cities that Ben-Hadad had conquered for him. Asa then used the plunder to build up the cities of Geba and Mizpah (2 Chronicles 16:1-6).
From a human perspective Asa’s actions appear to be reasonable, and in some ways very successful. He made an alliance with a troublesome neighbor, he paid his neighbor to go to war against his enemy, and he took the spoils and used them to build up two important cities. Sounds pretty good right? Too bad it’s not what God had in mind!
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I was in a neighborhood restaurant with my family recently when a framed poster caught my eye. It was from the Coca-Cola Company and pictured a Navy crewman serving his buddies Coca-Cola on board a destroyer during World War II. The caption read, “Any place, anytime, the pause that refreshes.”
As I stood there reading this phrase for the fourth time I suddenly realized that in our hectic, go-go lives we seldom take a break to refresh ourselves; to think about how we are living our lives, about our Christian walk, and whether we are centered in God’s will.
Of course, we could refresh ourselves “anyplace, anytime” but you know what happens; you get busy, and “anyplace, anytime” never happens.
We need to take a moment every once in a while to review ourselves in light of God’s unique plan for us, and make sure that we are still on track. So let’s take a moment now to “pause and refresh.” When you are done, if you want to learn more about developing a fulfilling, authentic relationship with God read Bill Hybels’ book, Honest To God? Becoming An Authentic Christian.
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