Calling and Leadership

Today I had the opportunity to attend the videocast in Pittsburgh of The Global Leadership Summit, an international leadership training event sponsored by Willow Creek Church. Leaders from a variety of different fields shared their vision with over 150,000 Christian ministry and business leaders from around the world. The speakers were amazing, including such people as Mama Maggie Cobran (a leader working among the poorest of the poor in the garbage dumps of Cairo, Egypt), Michelle Rhee (a public education reformer and the former superintendent of the Washington DC school district), Dr. Henry Cloud, Bill Hybels, John Dickson, and Erwin McManus. Every one of the speakers was inspirational, and their content was excellent.

It takes a lot of guts to get up in front of a huge worldwide audience and share from the heart about the difficulties of leadership in a complex world. The issue of calling was a theme that ran throughout the course of the day. Some of the speakers had been called by God to work among the poorest of the poor, while others had been called to work with business leaders and CEOs of some of the largest companies in the world. An important distinction to make is that none of the speakers' callings were more important or needed in the world than any of the other speakers. God works through all kinds of people in all kinds of different contexts, from the dirt streets of the poorest communities in the world to the board rooms where millions and sometimes billions of dollars are stewarded.

It was fun to debrief that paradox of calling with a group of leaders from North Way during our lunch break. Sometimes it is great to attend leadership conferences like this because people open up about their unique callings and call all of us to join into something much greater than ourselves and what we personally think we are capable of. It's also difficult to attend leadership conferences like this because we must take a long look at what other leaders are doing around the world and question whether or not we are living up to the callings that God has given us (or sometimes if we have even heard a calling from the Lord at all in the midst of our faith journeys).

A calling is a powerful thing, and someone else communicating the details of their unique calling (whether to the poor, the rich, or anyone in between) is one of the most powerful things that we can experience as adults. We either become disoriented in our lives or inspired to continue on in the work that we are a part of. That is the tension that all Christian leaders live in every single day that we wake up and face the day. If we are real with ourselves, we wonder if we are doing enough to live deeply in the calling that God has given us. If we are living deeply in that calling, we wonder just how it is that we are supposed to sustain ourselves in the midst of the strain, suffering, and difficulties that come with tough callings (God is in the habit of giving us those tough callings if we are really listening to him). At the end of the day, it is important that we take all of our issues to our Heavenly Father. We stand before him, and him alone. We should not gauge success by worldly standards, and as I learned again today, the best leaders are those who are able to live out the calling that God has given them regardless of the costs during this short life on earth. We only have one shot at this life, and we need to live life to the fullest according to God's purposes no matter where he has called us.