A Significant Leader!
Monday, August 27th, 2007Today I am going to use Nehemiah 5 to discuss on the topic of Significant Leadership! The rise and fall of the society or church is depending on the quality of leader. The role of leaders in the church is to set things in order so that the church will be healthy, and only a healthy church will produce healthy growth. Leaders change the world; they don’t leave the world the same way they found it. As leaders when we are working and building the
Kingdom of God , we are defending the attack from the devil. All the more we leaders should walk in the fear of the Lord and help the church to walk in it as well.
Exodus 18:21
“But select capable men from all the people – men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.”
When Moses wanted to select leaders among the Israelite there are some characteristic to be follow. They must be capable, men who fear God, trustworthy and people who hate injustice. The philosophy of Nehemiah leadership is based on his fear for the Lord and it causes him to walk in holiness. He treats his position with reverence and understands that God is watching over him. In everything he does, he does it with right attitude and justice as worship to God. From Nehemiah 5 we can learned few things about significant leadership, which show that how he prevents sin and injustice going on in the Jewish community.
Before we look into the characteristic of a significant leadership of Nehemiah, it is best to have a preview on Nehemiah 5.
Nehemiah facing a problem while he was focusing building the wall, there is a cry from the poor against the rich. People were complaining because there was a lack of food, they were mortgaging their fields, vineyards, and home to get food and they had to borrow money to pay the taxes on their fields. But when they turn to their Jewish brothers for help, those so called their “brothers” offer their help with term and condition attach on it, that was interest taken for loans. Nehemiah was very angry when he heard the cry of the poor and Nehemiah accused the rich and nobles of violating God’s Law (Ex 22:25, Lev 25:35-37) when they charged interest for their loans. Nehemiah then shocked the listening crowd with the honest admission that he and his own family engaged in the oppression and he accepted full responsibility. At last he firmly while graciously requested the nobles and rich cease lending money for profit and to give back the lands and houses on which they had taken as well as the interest they had collected. The nobles and rich agreed by taking an oath to end the misdoing and to submit to God’s authority. (Verse 6-13) When Nehemiah saw that the people were bearing heavy burdens, he refused to add to them demanding the “food allowance” to which he was entitled. He declares that he was considerate of the people because of the fear of God. (Verse 14-19)
There are 3 area of significant leadership we can learn form Nehemiah 5, which are:
- Nehemiah’s willingness to listen to his people.
- Nehemiah dares to act on the problem.
- Nehemiah walks the talk.
1. Nehemiah willing to listen from the people who been oppress.
Abraham Lincoln once says “Leading is primarily paying attention.” Nehemiah carries the weight of that office and became particularly heavy as he was force to listen to the loud cries of the poor. At the time he have much work to do in order to finished the wall and the enemy was still waiting outside the gates, but he was willing to listen to the cry of his people. As a pastor or leader in our church today we have many things to do, so do we have time to sit down and heard the “cry” of our members? We need time to prepare sermon, attend meeting and planning, do we have time to think about those who are poor and been oppress in the church? We should be aware, for you and I reap what we sow. If we are not willing to listen to our members, they are not willing listen to our sermon as well. People don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care! If there is a will, there is a way. We are busy but we need to manage time for our members to communicate with us. So we need to be willing to listen to them. Pastors can not always hide inside the office and separate ourselves from others. We need to get in touch with the members, knowing their needs and understand their situation. From there we began to pray with them, counseling them and prepare a sermon to show what God think and will do about their needs and situation and then only our ministry will be fruitful.
We might think that listen to their cry is not important but this is not the principle of God. In Exodus 3:7 “The Lord said: I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in
Egypt , and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.”
In 1 Kings 3, Solomon requests wisdom from God so that he could judge and lead the people of God. And on the same chapter we know that Solomon’s wise judgment for the two women is fighting over their son. King Solomon has the wisdom but he need to pay attention to listen to the case before he make the judgment. Even the wisest man in the world need to listen and pay attention in order he can lead the people of God, more over we need to pay attention to our members. People all over the world are looking for people who will pay attention and listen to them. Why today so many young people wearing so sexy, with 5 or 10 ear rings on the same ear and coloring their hair like parrot? They try to get attention from everyone or anyone, because they can not get people to listen and pay attention to them in family, in school or even in church.
When we talk about paying attention to our members, the price is time. We need to make time for our members to communicate with us and during our conversation we need to pay attention to listen. So we need to give undistracted attention to the person, turn off our phone, put down our pen, book and look to them in the eye. Listen, hear what they are saying, and try not to say more than them but listen!
1. Nehemiah dares to act on the problem.
Nehemiah records his response to the outcry of the oppressed. The opposition from pagans was expected but not this interruption from his own countrymen. Nehemiah was angry over the misdoing of the rich and noble just as Wilberforce, who centuries later was angry against the unpleasant evils of slavery in the British Empire, and Lord Shaftsbury, who was angry over the abuse of woman and children in the factories and mines. Nehemiah did not forget what he has heard and he responds on it. Columnist Louis Cassels has said that the hardest moral duty of our time is for man and woman to keep on caring. We are exposed daily to so many human tragedies until we experience what someone has called “compassion tiredness”. Having felt sorry for so many flood victims, earthquake victims and war victims, we simply can not feel the sympathy we know we should have for those victims. Especially we are living in a busy world that are so many thing that are waiting for us to do, we have no time to care for other people, even when our heart tell us to help.
Nehemiah handles his anger in the right way. Nehemiah accused the nobles and rich of violating God’s Law when they charged interest for their loans. Nehemiah dares to confront the rich, nobles and officials. He risks losing their support when the job of rebuilding was only half done. Nehemiah firmly faces these rich and noble knowing that he needs to do what was right. As leaders we have plan and vision for the church and we need lay people and rich people to support us then only our plan can be fulfill, but what if the lay leaders and rich peoples are doing some thing wrong, are we dare to confront them? Or we just “open one eye and close one eye”? So do we have the courage to speak against or correct the rich people or powerful people in our church today? Maybe here we can think about a famous saying “WWJD, What Will Jesus Do.”
In Luke 19:45-48 is about Jesus cleanses the temple. “He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, “It is written, My house is a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” Our Lord Jesus have no fear to correct the people when they have misuse the temple, even when it is against the chief priests, the scribes and the leaders of the people. He has to do what is right according to the will of God, regardless people happy or not. He has no bias toward the religion people.
In a letter of George Whitfield to John Wesley, “Through good and ill report I still rushed on. Nor felt the fire of popular applause. Nor feared the torturing flame in such a glorious cause.” One of the difficult challenges for a leader is the unavoidable criticism. People clothe jealousy and injustice with criticism. If we care too much on what people think or say, we will get hurt. Care less what others think but focus on what God think about us. We can not make everyone happy. Just like Jesus, not every thing that he did every one appreciates it, but He still stay true to the course. So as leaders we need to dare to face criticism and get over it and run the race which is in front of us. There is a saying: “when you don’t know what to do, do what is right.” As long we are doing the right thing, it is worth even we been criticize and losing the support from people.
1. Nehemiah walks the talk.
Nehemiah presents himself as a compassionate person. Neither he nor his brethren burdened the people with food allowance, which was the privilege of the Persian governor. As a governor demanded him to feed and entertain many official visitors, he did not ask the people to contribute for this expense, he used his own resources and shared with the people. He and his brethren committed to the work of the wall and they never request any reward or land. Nehemiah represented a different kind of ruler. He did not claim his rights. When he attributed his good deeds to the “fear of God”, he meant simply that he performed these deeds because he was a spiritual man who lived his life in according with the covenant teaching. The book of Deuteronomy calls upon Israelites to fear and love God. Fear and love in the Bible often have around the same meaning that is loyalty to God and His teaching.
As leaders in the church do we really led by an example? Did we divide the duty to our members and make sure we are doing the same amount as well? Did we manipulate our authority in order others will serve us or we serve others? Did we taking advantage of others by misuse of our leadership? Bad leader uses pressure to manipulate others into action. Nehemiah has been a very different leader in his time. He really has the heart for his people and never taking advantage of his people. Not only he didn’t take advantage of his people he use his own resources and shared with the people. He has been generous enough to his people and generosity is a foundation for greatness.
Nehemiah was very kingdom minded he is willing to sacrifice for the
kingdom of God . Lots of church leaders are not willing to share their possession with others. They have very narrow mindset by thinking that if they share with others they will enjoy less. But they will preach to the members about sharing. They will encourage members to share their property with other but they are not doing it. We leaders can not only inspire people to give and we ourselves must be a giver.
We can not preach about how important is the family and we ourselves is neglecting our own family. There are too many pastor facing the problem of family communication breakdown because the pastor have been too busy ministering in the church and have no time for the family. Too many pastors preach on love but some even hate his brothers and sisters in the church. Too many pastors preach on simplicity but they are driving a brand new BMW or stay in a big bungalow. We need to learn from Nehemiah to walk the talk, start showing our members what we preach.
Conclusion
In the Body of Christ, we need to walk in holiness because our God is a Holy God, He do not wish to see unclean thing in our midst. As leaders we need to prevent “unclean thing” which is sin and injustice going on in our church or community. Lots of churches suffer under bad leadership. We leaders should be like Nehemiah, in our word and deed must honor God and walking in integrity to express our fear and love for God.
Significant leaders are people who are willing to listen, dare to correct and lead as an example for this is the way to fear the Lord.
