Dare Great Things

What difference is there between a Christian leader and a non-Christian leader?  Does being a Christian impact leadership?  Understanding the ways that it does is vital for us who are called by Christ to lead in our world today.  One place we can look to see what it means to lead as a Christian is the life of the Virgin Mary.  In this final segment of our thirteen part course on Mary’s leadership, we take a deeper look at what it means for her to rule as Queen of Heaven and Earth.

All of us need models for leadership.  Amongst the many candidates the Virgin Mary certainly merits our special attention.  Even though she held no office, did not run a company, and did not have a rank in the military, the mother of Jesus is believed by Christians to be the Queen of Heaven and Earth.  But what makes her leadership so special?  In this twelfth of a thirteen part series on the Virgin Mary, I look at her Assumption body and soul into heaven as an indicator as to what is greatest in her leadership:  the fact that it was totally focused on love. 

Our culture today is at a turning point in many ways.  In general, we are deciding whether or not to allow our Christian faith to continue to inform and direct our cultural decisions.  It seems very tempting to go the route of secularism.  A neutrality with respect to faith, at least in public, in order to let religion be a purely private affair.  But is this the way for Christian leaders?  What value does our faith have in the public sphere?  Surprisingly, the life of the Virgin Mary can help us find the way. 

Let’s face it, leading other people is never an easy proposition.  There are some really dark moments.  If we are honest with ourselves there are times when we would rather quit – stop leading, stop trying to influence others.  Bad things can happen in our lives and moments when it makes us think if it is really worth it.  This is where our Christian faith can be of especial value to us.  Our Lord led us through the cross.  And He has graced His cross to be the power and the strength of those who lead in His name.  The Virgin Mary shows us this in her own life.

Christian leaders follow Christ – even though it seems contradictory to say leaders follow – this is what makes our leadership special.  It’s not about us.  It’s about Him and the influence He gives to the world through us.  The Virgin Mary demonstrates this admirable in her own life.  She is Christ’s perfect servant by doing everything that she can to make Him known and loved.  We can see this throughout his apostolic life but especially at two key moments.

Sometimes even the best leaders can forget that in the end leadership isn’t about them.  If we are leading our people, it’s to lead them to something bigger than ourselves and sometimes we have to die to ourselves in order to bring people to something that will really be good for them.  At Cana in Galilee the Virgin Mary triggers a series of events that will lead to our Lord’s crucifixion and death.  She hastens the hour of its coming even though that means that she will have to say goodbye sooner.  She teaches us how to lead even when that means saying goodbye.

Leading others is not easy.  Sometimes our road is marked by sorrow and hardship.  The same was true in the life of the Virgin Mary.  Her role as mother of the Son of God was marked with sorrow.  In particular when she was forced to flee into Egypt, taking her son with her Mary had to carry the sorrow of the persecution and death of the Holy Innocents, the children in Bethlehem who were killed by the king.  Mary had to play her role as mother with a broken heart but she led all the same.

Anyone moved by the love of God wants to Dare Great Things For Christ!  But ironically most of our time is spent by doing little things.  When we look at the life of the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, we see that much of her life was spent doing little things.  Does this mean she wasn’t a leader?  Or in fact is leadership not best expressed by the way that we do the small things?  The life of Jesus and Mary in Nazareth before the beginning of his missionary life is an example of leadership in the little things.

One of the reasons many Christians don’t feel comfortable assuming the role of leadership is that we think it makes us egotistical.  Following, obeying, complying, and supporting seem much more consonant with Christianity.  But why do so many of us equate those terms with a lack of leadership?  By looking at the Virgin Mary as a model for leadership, we can see that a big part of being a leader is following God.  Mary gave the very best of herself to Jesus and so she becomes the leadership model for all the followers of Christ.

Many gifted people struggle with the temptation to draw all the attention to themselves.  The allure of leadership is that it puts us in positions of power and therefore esteem in the eyes of others.  A leader who is Christian needs to resist this of course and dedicate themselves to really enhancing the lives of others around them as a servant.  In this fourth of our thirteen part series on Mary, we look at how she lived as a servant leader as she visited her cousin, Elizabeth, in the hill country of Judea.

Something special about every act of leadership is that it makes us alone.  The famous phrase, “it is lonely at the top” applies well to leader in every state.  But is this just an accident?  Or is it in fact a blessing?  When Mary was chosen by God to be the Mother of God, she had to fill the task no one else could fill.  But she embraced it as being chosen by God and therefore holding His hand into the great unknown that he would lead her.  And so she becomes an example for Christian leaders in every age.

If we look to sacred scripture for examples of great leadership many names come to mind:  St. Paul, St. Timothy, St. John, but what about the Virgin Mary?  Doesn’t her life have anything to teach us about leadership?  Independently of the various faith traditions out there what can we learn about leadership by looking at the life the bible presents us?  I think we can learn a lot.  In this second of a thirteen part series I want to peer into the leadership lessons of Mary’s early life and the solitude that made her strong.

Applying our Catholic faith to the demands of leadership today is a demanding and sometimes harrowing experience.  We look around to see if someone has done it before - where our models could be found -  and when we look for models we need look no further than the Virgin Mary to find the very best of them all.  This could be surprising.  What does Mary have to do with our modern situation?  Our new twelve-part series will try to answer that very question.  And so we begin by looking at the Virgin Mary as the inspiring figure that she is.

How did Jesus Christ form his apostles to be bold proclaimers of His word?  One way was by sending them where they thought they could never go – into the darkness and into fearful places armed with nothing more than his word and the powers of His priesthood.  And yet they were not alone.  In fact he promised that he would be with them always.  Doesn’t he do the same with us today?  In this final segment of our ten part series we look at the way he formed his apostles to understand how he trains us for leadership today.

There’s a lot written about leadership today and one of the most popular themes is the question of how to motivate people to follow.  It seems like pretty much everyone agrees that people like to follow winners.  That doesn’t surprise me considering the fact that our Lord himself gave that lesson to his apostles.  He is the ultimate victor and he sends his apostles forth to proclaim His victory.  What does that mean for us practically today in our businesses and in our families?  How can we make Christ’s victory present for the people we lead?

Being afraid is a normal response in front of things that are threatening to us.  The problem is not that we have fear – the question is whether or not we’ll allow that fear to become a catalyst for something greater, for courage, or whether we will allow fear to paralyze us.  When Christ formed his apostles he taught them to stare down there fears and he did this by facing everything before them.  Christ led his leaders through the valleys that they would have to face themselves and he does so for us today as well. 

It's lonely at the top.  How many times have we made that statement about our own situation as a leader or had other people remind us about that truth?  It almost makes us ask the question about whether Jesus ever felt lonely and it begs the question as to how he prepared his apostles for the solitude that would be a part of their life as a leader of the church.  When we look back at hos Christ prepared the apostles, he showed them what to do with loneliness.  He taught them to transform it into the seabed of communion.    

There are many philosophies about leadership out there and some of them hold that failure is not an option.  Many leaders in fact are afraid of making mistakes.  However, when Jesus Christ formed his disciples to be apostles to the nations, to be bold proclaimers of his word, he welcomed their mistakes.  The gospels famously recount many of the mistakes the apostles made while they were with Christ.  What lesson does this teach us for our own lives?  What is God trying to teach us by our mistakes?  This is part six of our ten part series on how Christ made his leaders bold.

Anyone who has achieved any level of success in their life knows that much of their success is a result of hard work.  And yet at the same time hard work is hard to do.  Many people don’t see the importance of hard work in forming the character of a leader and yet when Christ formed his twelve apostles he shared the labors of evangelization with them.  And he invited his apostles to embrace labor as a part of their life.  How did this help form his apostles to be the bold leaders they would need to be and what role does hard work play in our life as leaders today. 

It goes without saying that our culture today is facing a crisis of truth.  Ideas and customs we once held dear are being questioned and our young people seem to be bereft of sure guides for what life is all about.  But was it that much different at the time of Christ?  And how did Jesus respond to the difficulty of the people of his day to embrace truth?  When Jesus formed his twelve apostles he formed them as apostles of truth and sent them to teach the nations in his name.  What impact does that have for us as leaders today?