Why I don't lead well

I've come to a point in my life where I realize I need to step up my game in the leadership department. Whether spiritual or not, my leadership abilities are not where they should be given where I am in my life. I have knowledge of what it looks like to lead, but I have a hard time putting that into practice. Whether at work, discipling a younger believer, or being a man I need to be a leader in some regard.

As I look back at my life, I know there have been some events in my history that have shaped the way I approach leadership. I can think of more examples of times that have led me further away from true leadership than I can of times that have pushed me towards.

First off, I feel like I have a right to blame society, at least partially, for my leadership or lack thereof. I feel like in today's society men have become more passive. I see a lot of that coming from the push for equal treatment of women and their lesser dependence on men. I see some of it coming from a society that embraces choice and freedom of choice making it hard for men to choose an absolute answer in fear of stepping on feet. But I would be remiss if I blamed society for my personal downfalls.

I have never been in a friendship where I was the decision maker. From childhood I chose to be around people who chose for me. My best friends from high school are both doers. They want it, so they go and get it. That translates to my life by going with the flow. I rarely, in high school, decided what the group was doing because my friends did that. To this day, most of my friendships are still that way. I'm comfortable with being in those friendships because that is what I'm used to.

I've never been in a relationship. As admirable as that sounds coming from a Christian mindset, I think that has done me an injustice. By not being in a relationship, I have yet had to prove myself to be the leader of the relationship. Often times my lack of decision hurts my relationships with my sisters in Christ because they desire for me to be a leader, but I'm too easy going and indecisive to be the leader they want.

This is compounded even more by experiences in high school that have shaped my confidence. The two times I desired to go to a school function dance with a date, I put myself out on the line and the girls took advantage of that. The first one agreed but ultimately did what she wanted to do for the night, and the second agreed and then went back on her word. I think those two interactions have really shaped who I am today. I never was comfortable with putting myself out on the line and after those events I disliked it even more. While I realize that to base my whole life on two high school girls' actions is ridiculous, I find it hard to put into practice.

My family takes a big part in this as well. I love my family dearly and thank God for them, but I have never felt like I've been able to make my own decisions. Sure my family lets me make decisions, but my decisions have been unintentionally narrowed down for me. My parents still support me, so ultimately I have to abide under their leadership. My older brother paves the way so certain things are expected of me. All of these "good" things in my life have created a barrier to develop another "good" thing; leadership.

I have had one major experience that has taught me most of what I know about leadership. That experience was going to Summer Training Program with the Navigators. I was in the unique position where I worked under the program director while it was still in the planning phase. I had access to my campus' list of who was going, and the director left it to me to spearhead uniting the participants of our campus. I learned probably more about leadership in the 2 months prior to leaving for the program than I learned in all of my first year of college. I further learned more about leadership once I was at the program than I had just learned in those 2 months prior to leaving. To this day, I still rely on my leadership experiences from that summer.

How does knowing that I need to be a leader translate into doing? I know that my answers need to be centered around God. I know that Jesus is the ultimate model. I know that he calls me to be a leader. Yes, all of that motivates me, but my heart is still scarred by my past. I know my scars will heal, but the time factor is what hurts the most.

Singleness revisited

So 2 years a and few months ago I wrote about my "current" state of singleness here. Today I still sit single. Some things have changed, others have not. First, the things that haven't changed.

In some ways I see myself in much the same limbo as 2 years ago. I'm still in a state of transition in my life and my convictions on leading are still not up to par. Those two reasons are so paramount that I haven't seen a reason to date yet. But my convictions have somewhat changed in that I no longer see dating as the end means. I have used 'date' to mean 'court' and I no longer feel convicted to use 'date' to take the place of 'courting'. At the time when I was convicted to use the term 'courting' I was younger than 18. I am now 23 and any dating I do has a potential to lead to 'courting' or marriage. I think I was using my definition of dating to hide behind my insecurities of stepping out in faith to ask someone out. That being said, here are the changes in my life.

I honestly can say that I'm not bitter about being single. I think the bitterness of 2 years ago came from the fact that nearly 3/4 of my friends were either in a serious relationship or engaged or married. In other words, I was jealous that they were in relationships and I wasn't. Now that all of those friends are married I think it's a different ballgame. I'm not bitter, but I do think I'm missing out. With my married friends, they have distanced themselves away from me, and I from them. I never liked being a third wheel when they were dating, and even moreso now that they're married. So instead I've surrounded myself (and maybe this is the work of God) with single people who have the same battles as I do. I have 5 solid guys who are encouraging to be around, and who share my singleness.

Over the past two years, as mentioned above, I've been to about 20 weddings. Sure, after going to each wedding I realized that I was still indeed single and another set of friends were moving on into 'married bliss', but for me the weddings weren't hard save for one or two. I mostly saw them for what they were; two of my friends uniting into one under God. That thought trumped any other thought that came into my mind. The hardest one for me was the last one I went to this fall. Not only were some of my friends there that had been married for almost a year, but there was also another one of my friends there who was single. She has had it rough. All of her close friends have gotten married over the past two years and she still isn't in a relationship. So, it rubbed off on me.

The biggest reason why I'm no longer bitter is that I realize it's my fault for still being single. Unlike my friend who is still a single lady, I can do something about my singleness, which is to sack up and ask some girl. Yet, here I sit, still single so I must not want to date right now. In fact, this past year I have done more than a lot of my married friends and for that I'm not envious of them. I still continue to learn more about myself each and every day, thanks to the Holy Spirit working in me. I'm confident that God is using this time in my life to prepare me for a future relationship. I don't know if that relationship will end up in marriage or in friendship, but I know that it will be in God's timing not my own.

Grace in Life

It's amazing how God works through life's trials. This past week the Spirit has been convicting me on too many things to list. One of the areas that the Spirit's been teaching me is in the area of grace. I know this because not only did I come across grace through talks with friends, but this weeks bible study was about God's Grace and Sufficiency. To a non-believer that seems like a lot of coincidence, but for me that's a God thing.

In bible study we talked about the difference between grace and mercy. A.W. Tozer puts it this way in Knowledge of the Holy. "As mercy is God's goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is His goodness directed toward human debt and demerit. It is by His grace that God imputes merit where none previously existed and declares no debt to be where one had been before." And again, "Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving."

That is very comforting to know that God bestows grace upon the undeserving such as me. I only hope that as Christians we too can hand out grace to each other as generously as God does.

Confrontation and the Status Quo

This past week was difficult for me. As I now see, it was hard because my character was challenged. This last week was the first time in a long time I felt like I could have blown up on somebody; saying things I did not mean to say, yet saying them because I was so frustrated with the situation. During my weekly accountability time with some of my brothers in Christ, they saw me in a different light. A light that I choose not to show very often. As one of the guys put it, he saw fire in my eyes.

As the week unfolded, I felt like my willingness to serve had been taken advantage of. While I am in a unique situation to bear a large amount of responsibility, I found it hard to accept all of the responsibility handed me.

The problem I saw was that I was handed the task of making a huge part of an event fall into place. Sure I can handle that in a normal situation; however I was given 4 days to make it happen. It would have been fine if I had been part of the planning from square one, but it's an entirely different ballgame to assume the load 4 days from the event.

That was the problem. How did I react? I'm not sure. I would like to say I reacted rationally and clear headed. But I'm still not positive that's how I approached things. Given the short notice of my problem, I tried to confront the problem on short notice terms. My justification was that things would continue down the path of me taking more and more responsibility; unless I said something quickly. I was given the responsibility on Tuesday, gave it a day to become a little more level headed, and on Thursday I confronted the situation.

My current struggles arise from how things panned out. I realized Wednesday as I was rationally thinking through my actions that some of my frustration came from past wrongs that I decided to let slip. So Thursday's confrontation was more than confronting the current situation to encompass past and present problems. In my speech, I thought I was level-headed and non-condescending, but firm.

So as I start a new week I am searching for an equilibrium level between confrontation (hard love) and grace. I have previously thought that I should abound in grace much like Jesus and leave the hard love for God. But I have experienced this past week that hard love needs to be present. Even Jesus (my ultimate model) confronted the people selling sacrifices in the temple, so that God could shine through.

Guardedness

People say I'm guarded, rightfully so. I choose to be a very guarded person when I'm around people. Not so much around one or two people, but around groups. I tend to view groups as having a different dynamic about them. That as a whole, a group can be less merciful and more eager to pounce on an individual person. I know because in a large group setting that's what I tend to do. I often shift the focus off of me and onto someone else to protect my ego and pride. I can dish the heat much more than I can handle the heat. I would much rather let people think I'm a good and humble christian, than to let them see that I have just as many faults and weaknesses as the "sinners" do. That my life is easy because I'm a "new creation in Christ", but only because I put up a front and say that my life is fine when really it isn't. I know my life is hard, because as a Christian it should be; it should be difficult because we are called to be a light to others in dark places. That in itself is hard, let alone fighting off satan's attacks against my flesh.

I often pass off guardedness as an excuse to be a good listener to others. I would rather "help" someone else with their problems, only to escape my own. I would rather look like a servant by taking care of some else's needs before my own, when in reality I know that it is to keep my pride in tack knowing that other people don't know my faults and my weaknesses.

I often pass off guardedness as an excuse to be an observant person. To look like I notice the little things that people do when others overlook them. Except I'm observant to feed my hunger and quench my thirst for being selfless so I can check that off of my "good Christian deed" for the day and to satisfy my self-righteous pride.

Am I being too hard on myself? Maybe. But then again, I'm not called to be a perfect human, or to be a model Christian for non-believers. I'm here to model Christ through life's good times AND life's trials. But how can I do that when I'm so guarded that nobody knows that it was Christ who got me through the bad times because I never let on that I was going through a bad time?

COFFEE

I'm a coffee addict. Maybe not by the pure definition of the term, but I would deem myself one, and others would probably say so as well. How do I know? Well, by addict I mean that I have done a lot of reading on the kinds of coffee beans, how one should properly make coffee, what types of roasting should taste like, and how other countries make coffee. Besides reading about coffee, I have also tasted many a cup of coffee. From Folgers to Starbucks, to local coffee shop coffee, to imported coffees, to hotel room coffee; I think I have tried my fair share. Within the past year, I have even switched to grinding my own coffee beans instead of buying preground. Coffee addict? I think so!

Becoming more gray

As I live my life I realize that coming from a "small town" in Nebraska means that I come from a very sheltered way of life. Everyday my past worldview gets rocked by a snag in my old way of thinking. Issues that I knew were black and white back in my childhood/adolescents have now become shades of gray. And in most instances I find myself changing my mind from a definitive stance to a fence-riding stance. Case in point; years ago I *knew* that I was not prejudice towards anyone for the simple fact that there was not a person to be prejudice to in my thought process. But now, I face the ever tightening clasp of stereotyping to people I haven't talk to or ever met before.

But by far the topic that has caused me the most dialogue, the most thinking, and the most grief is homosexuality. As a kid, I was sheltered from all aspects of this ever-broadening social stigma. I knew from the Bible that homosexuality was a sin, and that God would judge accordingly. But as I've met homosexuals, I find it hard to accept all that I was led to believe about that community. Yes I still believe that homosexuality is a sin (taken directly from the Bible), but as a kid, I was led to believe that I wasn't to have anything to do with homosexuals. My upbringing was that they were a form of untouchables, people you don't even associate with because they're "marked". But now, after being around more and more homosexuals, I realize that I need to be around them and to love on them, just as much as any sinner. I think though, that some christians have gone too far in accepting them and thinking there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. I'm still in lieu about whether homosexuality is a choice or by birth, but I do know that it will become even more of a gray subject in the years to come as homosexuality becomes more socially acceptable.