“Nations have great men only in spite of themselves. They direct all their efforts to not having them. And thus the great man must have, in order to exist, a force of attack greater than the force of resistance developed by millions of individuals.” — Henry David Thoreau

There is no doubt about it; faithful leaders are hard to find, but not for the reason you may think. Faithful leaders are hard to find because, in truth, most people really don’t want faithful leadership; they want puppet-leadership. Most of us are happy with a figure-head leader who does what we want, when we want it, and the way we want it done. But, when those leaders try and take us down a difficult path, we oust them for a new one who will think our way and will do our bidding.

Faithful leaders are willing to follow God’s vision and not Man’s opinion and that means sometimes faithful leaders don’t have faithful followers. In our culture of success over substance this may be hard to understand, but some of our greatest leaders don’t have mega-churches or mega-radio shows, or mega-book deals. What makes leaders great is not the number of followers they have, but how faithful they are to God.

Moses constantly had problems getting the people to follow his leadership. It is not that he was a bad leader; it was more like the people were bad followers. No matter how many victories or how much food God provided, Israel always ended up complaining that Moses was taking them down the wrong path.

“Then they [Israel] set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. The people spoke against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we oathe this miserable food.”” (Numbers 21:4-5, NASB95)

It is hard to be a faithful leader when every time you turn around the people are plotting a coup d’état in favor of the next guy who will lead them into hedonistic pleasure instead of heaven-sent pain (see Exodus 32).

Even Jesus had trouble. Sure Jesus was a spectacular leader, he was God after all, but he could only get 12 guys to follow, and every single one of those guys left him in the lurch when things didn’t go their way. Jesus was not real popular with the powerful and none of the other leaders would have voted him as a top 10 leader for the magazine polls. (In fairness, I should point out that Jesus was a good writer and published quite a few books. Although most of his stuff was misunderstood and abused by the masses. Jesus did most of his work as a Ghost writer and the guys who did the leg work got killed and beat up a lot–but that is another story for another day.)

I can hear your protests now, “certainly this cannot be true today in our most enlightened age?” “We have leadership seminars, leadership conferences, and guys can earn advanced degrees in leadership.” “How can it be possible that faithful leaders are hard to find in the land of plenty?” Paul gives us a little hint.

“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:1-4, NASB95)

People are always willing to overthrow a faithful leader for one that will tickle the ear and embrace the status quo. We have small churches and mega-churches full of fickle followers and faithless leaders. But leaders who are led by God know that there are always people out there willing and waiting to tear them down. That is why we cannot base our leadership success on the size of our crowds or the sale of our books. Rather, our success as a leader must be measured by our faithfulness to follow God’s vision and not Man’s opinion.

Thoreau was right; the only way to be a great leader is to have a force of attack greater than the force of resistance. In our case, as followers of Jesus Christ, the force of our attack rests in our ability to retreat into God and let His Word reign. Our leadership power comes from following Jesus and doing His will; regardless of the consequences. Leaders, be content no matter how few, or how many, chose to follow. All you can do is lead with faith and let God establish His will for the crowds that will listen.

“Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13, NASB95)

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