Leadership Legacy

We are back in Romania and I am preparing for a talk on Situational Leadership at the University of Economical Science in Pitesti. I was just working with my host and friend Alex, to translate some simple slides for the presentation. The first slide, the title, was "Situational Leadership" which he translated to "Leadership Situational". I asked him about this, "leadership" didn't seem like a very Romanian word. He said, "No it is very common to use this word. We didn't really have a word for leadership. We had a word for boss, but not really a good word for leadership, so we have used this word."

I see this as just another example of the leadership legacy of the soviet system, which certainly knew a lot about bosses and workers but was impoverishing of the economies, institutions, and the individuals within its corrupt and corrupting system. The Romanians have just recently gone to the polls, as people in the US will today, to elect new leadership for their governments. I do pray that real godly, servant leadership is found among those who are elected, for both countries are in need of true leaders today.

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Update: Here's the photo that was posted to Facebook by one of the event organizers, Ana Ilie, who also translated for me and made it possible for me to have any ministry at all. There were about 40 people in the room, about 20 of which were people who were not familiar to the student group. We gave out a color-printed paper handout that included the graphic above, and we told people they could have an electronic version of the handout if they left their email on the response sheet. Almost everyone left their email address, and as a result, they were invited to the followup event the next evening where I spoke about the Leadership model of Jesus, looking at his teaching from John 10 about being the Good Shepherd, and looking at the contrast models in that passage of the stranger, the thief, and the hired hand. We talked about contemporary examples of good shepherds, as well as contemporary examples (not by name, but by description) of hired hands, thieves, and strangers. (For example, a "stranger" is a leader who tries to exert authority on the basis of some title or position he occupies, but he doesn't really know the people he is trying to lead. A "thief" is someone who is only in his or her leadership position to gain things for himself or herself, such as money, power, status, or some extrinsic reward of leadership, and has no genuine concern for the sheep. A "hired hand" is one who looks like a shepherd when things are going well, but who has no courage and flees in the face of danger.) About 30 people came to this more explicitly Jesus-focused event, including three new people from the night before. The organizers were pleased with the events, both the content and the turnout.

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