At some point it feels like a trap, this life am living. There are days when I want to jump into the Nile, not for death but for the experience of jumping off something high into something dangerous and uncertain, like the days would have a twist to them that actually adds color. That is on those days, and those days have a way of staying long with me. But then I think of the people that would cry, the ones that would laugh, those that would never understand or even those that would not want to understand. Then I hold back in my tracks and re-evaluate, only I am not sure that I am doing so to their tune or the one I would love to call mine.
But what hurts the most is that when I am trying to live according to their way, they are not here to help. Life can be perfect, but the window for realizing that is so short that most of us miss it. When we put ourselves to the task of living we assign ourselves a great responsibility, one not only to ourselves but to all those that share in this experience called living.
I have seen how we are unkind to those that have even stepped off the line for a second, how we are quick to cut them out. I have seen how when we give love, or anything that only a heart can give, we give with many strings, expectations that are heavy and burdensome. When you think about it, after all these years of doing this, the animals may be better at doing it than we are.
Back to jumping off bridges; we all try to make meaning of our existence here, we try to add value to our breath and sense of direction and purpose. Some of us succeed and many still don’t. We are all custodians of our lives, and though many of us know that to be true, we neglect the fact that we are custodians of life, the life around us and the life within us. When we are in pain or hurting, we are and there is no shortcut to that, there is no putting that aside. If we all looked around, it would not be hard to find a soul trying to jump off the high place we have put them to the unknown, a world where they would perhaps find the freedom they quietly long for.
When you think about it all, we have all had our part in putting others to impossible places and when they sought for a change, we have all had our part in frowning at them, or at least projecting the frown as the likely outcome. We have all stood and watched as one of us has stumbled their way to doom and we stood both not knowing what to do and not wanting to know what to do. Society has no space for defectors, and a single defection can be the bars that hold one for a generation, a single moment of attempting to jump or actually jumping can be the poison that slowly kills a soul.
Living is not for the weak, and we have all experienced that. Our faces are scratched every day by the hands of those that love us, we are bruised daily by the advice that is meant to put us on the right track, each day the soils of our burying are added by the warm hearts that mean no harm. And even though we know the intentions to be pure, we do not understand why the thoughts flow in one direction away from us, and why the help is not built into the system as opposed to being added once the wounds have been incurred and are rotting.
After all this time, the animals are better at living than we are:
You see, we have learnt that nature has to balance and that after every giving there should be a receipt, we have learnt that when we wish well, its right and that when we know right, we should be heard. In the process we have silently eliminated the individuals, choice of not only how high the bridge should be and over what river it should be, by also over if they need the bridge or would prefer the water. In the system of living we only build the help that we think would be needed and that we have proved to both be needed and helpful in the moment but we have ignored the creation of help out of the life that exists.
At This Point
I am grateful. Even though my heart longs for things that I do not poses yet, I know that the best things in life are with us, love, Joy, hope and faith. But I also know that just because they are there, does not mean that they are to come out on their own. The interactions we make with other beings bring the best of us out. That said, I think I am in need of such an interaction. We should take a moment each day and thank God for the amazing strength that He gives us to live each day, because while we live in a totally wrong system, we make it to the next day with dreams, accomplishment, regrets, ambitions and even love. We are stronger than we have known ourselves to be. We could have chosen to say goodbye to this place called life, but have some fight left in us, and fractured or not, we face each day, with new mercies and grace.
The mistakes made in a single day can be many and for many of us, they are so many, in the summary of time we shall truly see that we were more than just fighters, or conquerors, we made our way through this jungle. Some ways were short but they were ways none the less. Instead of beating the defectors, let’s show them that even the river has a bottom and an end, not forgetting a start, lets pay tribute to our responsibility to help another soul find their way through here. If you see me bleeding, look closely at yourself, it may be your blood am passing out.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
The Energy
We are humans and that word humans, though I am not aware of its origins touched me so deeply. I sit in wonder of where we get our energy, the energy of though, of emotion, of being and the very many things that we can do and actually do on a regular basis. We are the force that is here to hold things together even though many times we simply break things apart.
Think of a wife in a home were the husband has turned into a stranger. She has to harness the strength to love, may be not the husband, but the children and herself. In the midst of terrible hurt and betrayal she still finds the strength to do the right thing and even though she may not do it all right, there is a strength that pushed her to do some good and right.
A young man dreaming of starting and running his own company. When the resources oppose him and the help is so stretched. He still finds reason to dream on and to hope that one day he is going to touch the dreams he sees in his heart. The list could go on and you will find yourself somewhere on the line. We are embedded, by our creator with certain capabilities that we have never even touched. When we interact with others of our kind, we all experience a lighting that springs not from those others but from our very selves. In us is the energy and we each bring it out in each other when we let ourselves do so.
When we lose for the very first time, we experience a sinking in that many times we think we shall never get out of. We have all experienced loss of some kind, our dreams have shattered right in front of us, we have had moments when we were invalid even to ourselves, but as we kept on this road of life, we awakened the energy on the inside of us, energy not only to move forward but also to regain our dignity, to feel that we are important again.
Cynics have crossed our paths and doubted everything that we stood for; there have even been moments when we doubted ourselves, not because of the magnitude of the task but for the insufficiency of our very selves. And indeed we are insufficient in ourselves. Even the strongest among us has a limit. We all get to the point when we cannot gather the energy to love, to forgive and so on, may be for a season, may be for a lifetime, but we all get to that point. And the maker of the universe made sure that there would be enough energy flowing down here to help us overcome those moments.
When we take a walk in the park, go out with friends or simply listen to the kind of music that we love the most, we tap into this energy. The point is we each carry a bit of the energy I am talking about, an ability to make others happy, free, independent or even confident. We each can help those around us experience these.
The challenge is that we can only do that to an extent and that because we have not lived with people that did this for us, we are not with the experience to do this for any one else. In think that the maker of this universe thought it wise to stretch Himself in all of creation so that we may have a glimpse of Who He is and that we would know what it is like to experience Him in the different scenarios of life. What I am saying is that while we have insurmountable energy on the inside of us, to emit in this life, we can all get a bit more from the one that started it all, the one that is all of it, when we agree to be with Him.
True, our energy can get exhausted and it will at a certain point, we shall rebel against our very selves, go against the norms that we helped create and be the beings we never thought we would be. And in those moments, the people that knew us as the opposite will go against us at a time when we most need to be covered and reminded of the nature that we inherently posses. We are then left alone to wander in the deserts of life, sometimes alone, many times in the company of those very things that led to us being redefined. A redefinition we don’t like and that’s the reason for our being rejected in the first place.
We are much stronger than we think or have experienced ourselves to be. I think the Creator of this universe thought it only wise to put within us the energy that will help us hold things together even when the times are dark and gloom. When our definition has been altered we need all the external energy to re-kindle that on the inside of us, and whatever will seem to present the help will indeed be our friend.
When we have lost, from the inside of us, we are many times without the ability to rekindle our energy. We are impaired so that we are not in any position to move in the right direction on our own, but many times we do, many times we are left to make that walk alone and somehow we all find the ability. Where do we get our energy from? When we fall on the race track and there is no one to pick us up, we pick ourselves up and yet run again. The pain of life will be thrown upon us, we shall be pressed many time, compressed and pressured from within, but we shall not be crushed or perish, we shall live to tell this story and when that time comes, it will be a beautiful story to tell.
Where do we get our energy? From the one that made it all, that is all. When we are forsaken, we are not without help or strength; we are well embedded with it in us. For all our journeys, alone or in company, we shall count on the energy that He provides.
Isn’t He a beautiful God?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Today am Loved
A story is told of a man who lost everything and on every front. His was the kind of loss we all pray we never get to experience. From the love of his wife to the wealth that he had once prided in accumulating, even the warmth of friends perished in that time. When you think of a man whose children have died, a husband whose wife’s love and adoration has been replaced with despise, a businessman whose every investment has vanished, we think of this man though not completely.
Losing as we know it is not an experience worth looking forward to, in our life time, however short that may be, we encounter situations and moments when what we have held so dear is now distant and never to be attained. When we lose the company of our peers or an opportunity that may have propelled us to the next great level, we get a taste of the undesired.
The heart can be deprived and it will learn to leave in the deprivation, but to rob it is indeed to torment it to no end. Our days are short however many they may be, so when we meet that which satisfies our hearts and souls we are greatly attached to it, when we find and oasis of comfort in a world of unease we want to own it. But such is the challenge of the heart that while it can be touched, it cannot hold. While we may have desires granted, we are not sure that we shall hold on to the satisfaction for long, to know the love of another human, to experience the presence of such comfort that comes with it is indeed priceless. We may be doomed to spend a lifetime searching or to be content with the little that we have, but to experience that satisfaction that comes with such a love is indeed priceless. I have once met with such love.
Yet persuasive as it may appear such love is not always sure love. To invest our lives in the satisfaction that comes with love of humans or the security of things is to set the standard for satisfaction way to low.
There is a love that will stay, that waits and longs for us. That love is deeper and greater than all the human love, its satisfaction endures far greater than that of all the humans alive. For some reason we all see shades of that love in the people of this time and world, and some times, our hearts experience the satisfaction that it comes within the things of life, though not in its fullness.
I have been fooled once to pursue a satisfaction that demanded me to abandon myself, or so I was willing to do. But even though I would want that satisfaction again, I have learnt that nothing is more precious than the love of God. His is a love that has stayed, that has watched me in my downward movements and yet stayed and loved on, but most importantly, His is the only love that I can be sure to stay and give long after I have grown weary, I can count on His love and the satisfaction that comes with it.
Even though I will still long and wait for the human love, I will always know that the strength and passion of the love of God, is greater than the billions of love in the whole wide world. And as we think of the man that lost all he loved and owned, we should remember that he never lost the love of his creator and for that reason, even though it seemed like he really lost, in reality, in his time of loss was the certainty of the replacement and the continuation of that sure love and loving. And if you must know, everything he lost was replaced.
The best love we can give is the love that we have learnt and received from the greatest love of them all. When open our lives to be loved by the greatest love, we set ourselves in a better position to love those that may later walk into our lives. I have witnessed both a great fall and the greatest Love, and the greatest love still prevailed. If you ask me, nothing is worth it if we are firstly going to lose the love of God. And love is greater than right and wrong
Losing as we know it is not an experience worth looking forward to, in our life time, however short that may be, we encounter situations and moments when what we have held so dear is now distant and never to be attained. When we lose the company of our peers or an opportunity that may have propelled us to the next great level, we get a taste of the undesired.
The heart can be deprived and it will learn to leave in the deprivation, but to rob it is indeed to torment it to no end. Our days are short however many they may be, so when we meet that which satisfies our hearts and souls we are greatly attached to it, when we find and oasis of comfort in a world of unease we want to own it. But such is the challenge of the heart that while it can be touched, it cannot hold. While we may have desires granted, we are not sure that we shall hold on to the satisfaction for long, to know the love of another human, to experience the presence of such comfort that comes with it is indeed priceless. We may be doomed to spend a lifetime searching or to be content with the little that we have, but to experience that satisfaction that comes with such a love is indeed priceless. I have once met with such love.
Yet persuasive as it may appear such love is not always sure love. To invest our lives in the satisfaction that comes with love of humans or the security of things is to set the standard for satisfaction way to low.
There is a love that will stay, that waits and longs for us. That love is deeper and greater than all the human love, its satisfaction endures far greater than that of all the humans alive. For some reason we all see shades of that love in the people of this time and world, and some times, our hearts experience the satisfaction that it comes within the things of life, though not in its fullness.
I have been fooled once to pursue a satisfaction that demanded me to abandon myself, or so I was willing to do. But even though I would want that satisfaction again, I have learnt that nothing is more precious than the love of God. His is a love that has stayed, that has watched me in my downward movements and yet stayed and loved on, but most importantly, His is the only love that I can be sure to stay and give long after I have grown weary, I can count on His love and the satisfaction that comes with it.
Even though I will still long and wait for the human love, I will always know that the strength and passion of the love of God, is greater than the billions of love in the whole wide world. And as we think of the man that lost all he loved and owned, we should remember that he never lost the love of his creator and for that reason, even though it seemed like he really lost, in reality, in his time of loss was the certainty of the replacement and the continuation of that sure love and loving. And if you must know, everything he lost was replaced.
The best love we can give is the love that we have learnt and received from the greatest love of them all. When open our lives to be loved by the greatest love, we set ourselves in a better position to love those that may later walk into our lives. I have witnessed both a great fall and the greatest Love, and the greatest love still prevailed. If you ask me, nothing is worth it if we are firstly going to lose the love of God. And love is greater than right and wrong
Thursday, June 17, 2010
I think
There is a song which says that,
‘These are the times we all wish for,
The moments when less means so much more….
We don’t have to do a thing at all,
We just take a time and talk
And this is the way things need to be,
No pressure from you
And none from me……..’
I sit here thinking of those words and though they were in particular written for people in love, they cut across all aspects of life. There are days when we awake and yet stay in the sleep, when the things and people that usually bring us joy, mean a lot less than they usually do.
There are people that come into our lives and when the time to leave comes, they walk away with most of us. There are pursuits that we embark on and devote our strongest emotions to and yet when we finally hold that which we have been looking for, we find little worth in it.
The strongest love, I have been told, will wait for us. Wait when we pour ourselves to worthless causes and when we come to the realization that they were worthless. But again we find ourselves in those moments when even the strongest love, though all sufficient, is not wanted.
Could it be true that some times in life, the more we give the less we feel, the more we receive the more we need, could it be that the greatest satisfaction will fade on some days and lose its greatness at others?
Life as we know it is a continuous process of lessons, today we hug with smiles and tomorrow with tears, today we rejoice in our accomplishments, and tomorrow those very accomplishments are the pain we are talking of. To assume that one aspect is going to be the source of our joy is in itself a lie, to assume that something out there is all that’s missing is to set a trap to our death.
In all my quests, I have learnt, that what we pursue we will eventually get, happiness can be pursued, but joy is received. And I have come to realize that we choose when to receive it and when not to. So as I walk through this valley of death, (it’s not the shadow) I will set my heart to receive the joy of the Lord and not postpone it to some future event or moment.
‘These are the times we all wish for,
The moments when less means so much more….
We don’t have to do a thing at all,
We just take a time and talk
And this is the way things need to be,
No pressure from you
And none from me……..’
I sit here thinking of those words and though they were in particular written for people in love, they cut across all aspects of life. There are days when we awake and yet stay in the sleep, when the things and people that usually bring us joy, mean a lot less than they usually do.
There are people that come into our lives and when the time to leave comes, they walk away with most of us. There are pursuits that we embark on and devote our strongest emotions to and yet when we finally hold that which we have been looking for, we find little worth in it.
The strongest love, I have been told, will wait for us. Wait when we pour ourselves to worthless causes and when we come to the realization that they were worthless. But again we find ourselves in those moments when even the strongest love, though all sufficient, is not wanted.
Could it be true that some times in life, the more we give the less we feel, the more we receive the more we need, could it be that the greatest satisfaction will fade on some days and lose its greatness at others?
Life as we know it is a continuous process of lessons, today we hug with smiles and tomorrow with tears, today we rejoice in our accomplishments, and tomorrow those very accomplishments are the pain we are talking of. To assume that one aspect is going to be the source of our joy is in itself a lie, to assume that something out there is all that’s missing is to set a trap to our death.
In all my quests, I have learnt, that what we pursue we will eventually get, happiness can be pursued, but joy is received. And I have come to realize that we choose when to receive it and when not to. So as I walk through this valley of death, (it’s not the shadow) I will set my heart to receive the joy of the Lord and not postpone it to some future event or moment.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Leadership Theory
To understand leadership I have decided to focus on the following areas that I believe constitute the essence of leadership;
1. What is leadership?
Leadership is a continuous process by which an individual (the leader) with the help of the group (the led) make progress on a certain aspect of their environment with the aim that at the end of a period, they will have arrived at a desirable destination or set a standard for the proceeding group to make it to a desirable destination.
Now, until I joined the School of Community Leadership, I was not aware of spiritual leadership which I believe should be the standard for any leadership if we are going to lead for God.
This concept of spiritual leadership makes it obvious that the desired destination for the leadership process should be that which God wants for a particular group of people. This is why the individual who assumes the leadership has to firstly consult with God and always to so as they lead the people.
2. What Does Leadership Involve
a. To be effective, the process of leading would involve firstly understanding where the target group is at the moment. Let’s say the leader will have to carefully consider the spiritual, economic, mental and any other stand point of the group basing on what improvements he wants to make. A marketing manager may want to make sure the company gets more presence in the market or that the customers consider the company product as the only solution to their need. A church leader may want to increase a church’s involvement in the community of to develop more of the peoples spiritual gifting. Whatever the case, first understand where the group is at the moment.
b. Set the goal to be achieved. Any leader without a goal to achieve is merely wasting time, his, the peoples and God’s. This goal could be a based on the vision that he has or on what the group believes is their desired point of destination.
Spiritual leaders will have to get their goals from God. This means that the leader will have to go there before the people have been there. He has to believe in the desired destination as if that destination were already here with us. That’s why when he communicates it to the led; they have no option but to believe as well.
c. Identify with the people to be led. Every leader has got to identify with the people that he is leading. The people have got to feel that he is one of them and is for them. Sometimes this unique identifier exists even before the leader emerges but there are times when the leader has got to come to the people to identify with them.
Ghandi was a well educated lawyer who probably would not have suffered the injustice the average Indian suffered at the hands of the British, Moses too was a prince in the palace but these men came down to the standard of the people they were to lead, they forsook some sort of prestigious and privileged positions to lead.
d. Communicate the task and motive of your leadership at every step.
Every leader would have to keep the direction of the led open to them at every step of the way. It has got to be so clear to all the people involved that no mistake about it can go unnoticed and uncorrected. This communication too has got to be continuous at every new development or correction.
This communication will also involve communicating ones influence and power while leading. Influence has got to be communicated well for people to follow; power has got to be accurately communicated for people to trust. We want to follow one that we believe has the power to make the changes desired but that one has got to be in position to influence us and the other authorities involved in achieving the desired destination.
NOTE: These are also my core values when leading now.
e. Involve the led.
Although it may be hard to imagine, the leader has got to find more ways of involving the led to participate in the leadership. Not everyone can be a leader but all of us need to take part in the leadership. The citizens of a country register to vote leaders into power, the members of a church need to make it a habit to pray for their leaders, children in a home make sure the chore are done, they respond to the instructions of the parents. At whatever stage, the led need to be encouraged to participate in the leadership. It could be participation in decision making or simply response to the necessary actions to help achieve the desired destination.
3. Who is a leader?
After looking at leadership it’s easy to understand who a leader is. Not everyone can be a leader at the same point, we all cannot be presidents of a republic or general managers of a company only one can lead from that point, but we all can contribute to his leadership and we can lead at other points or stages depending on the hierarchy of authority in the organisation.
The leader is that person that stands at the front and leads to the desired destination, he communicate to the and helps them not only believe that they can get there but that they have the ability to contribute to the journey to the desired destination. The fact that he identifies with the led enables him to touch their strongest desires and inspire their deepest energies. It should be noted that a leader’s understanding of those he leads helps him lead almost effortlessly because in the process of leading each is placed at the position of both development and expressing of their passions.
I think of a pastor who fails to realise that one of the people he leads is passionate about hospital ministry and instead places him in charge of the youth in the church. That pastor fails to realise that its not just about filling positions but also developing those one leads and helping them express their God-given passions.
NOTE: That’s why the measure of a leader’s success is most accurately got from those that are being led or were led at the time the leader led them.
Life Experiences
My eeliest significant leadership experience was when I was a School council speaker. In the position I was the only student at the ordinary level that sat at the school council that decided which undisciplined students were to be dismissed from the school and which ones would be retained. I know now that I failed to lead well because instead of firstly getting counsel from God on what correct judgement would be, I went with the flow and order of the day. Had I realised that the position I held required the wisdom and counsel of God, I know that I would not only have saved some innocent students but would have led to corrective measures that would have seen many of the boys make more meaning of their lives earlier on in life. Worse still, I was a culprit of some of the indiscipline that the boys were being punished for.
In contrast:
Today am a children church leader at the Watoto children’s village at Bbira and I have already been practicing some of these principles. What I devised was a mentorship and friendship way of leading. I have a team of children that teach with me. They are students and they stay in the village at Bbira.
So I sat with them and agreed to attach ten children that come to children church from the village to each of them. The point was I will follow these five children so that they can follow up the other fifty or so children, I also had to show them what I mean by following them up.
I pray for them on a regular basis because I believe that it would be very useless to lead with a team that one never prays for them. But I also got more involved in their lives; I started sharing myself with them. I go to their homes so that I can get the report about them from the mothers and also started following their academic performance up. I believe the individual should develop wholesomely and that is the reason why I monitor their discipline and academics, I constantly inquire about their spiritual standing, whether they pray and study the Word and how often.
I do this so that I can get to know them very well and this also gives them a chance to know me and ask the questions that are relevant to ask. I want them to learn from me and I pray that I learn from God as much as I should teach them and use for myself.
Challenges;
• I still need to grow in understanding their gifts and callings, their passions and abilities. This I know will take the Hand of God as I seek Him on the subject and about each individual on the team.
• Consistence is the other challenge and area in which I need to grow. Because the time I spend in the village is limited, I find that I fail to make time for all of them at the same time and sometimes I fail to follow up on a particular issue earlier tackled.
1. What is leadership?
Leadership is a continuous process by which an individual (the leader) with the help of the group (the led) make progress on a certain aspect of their environment with the aim that at the end of a period, they will have arrived at a desirable destination or set a standard for the proceeding group to make it to a desirable destination.
Now, until I joined the School of Community Leadership, I was not aware of spiritual leadership which I believe should be the standard for any leadership if we are going to lead for God.
This concept of spiritual leadership makes it obvious that the desired destination for the leadership process should be that which God wants for a particular group of people. This is why the individual who assumes the leadership has to firstly consult with God and always to so as they lead the people.
2. What Does Leadership Involve
a. To be effective, the process of leading would involve firstly understanding where the target group is at the moment. Let’s say the leader will have to carefully consider the spiritual, economic, mental and any other stand point of the group basing on what improvements he wants to make. A marketing manager may want to make sure the company gets more presence in the market or that the customers consider the company product as the only solution to their need. A church leader may want to increase a church’s involvement in the community of to develop more of the peoples spiritual gifting. Whatever the case, first understand where the group is at the moment.
b. Set the goal to be achieved. Any leader without a goal to achieve is merely wasting time, his, the peoples and God’s. This goal could be a based on the vision that he has or on what the group believes is their desired point of destination.
Spiritual leaders will have to get their goals from God. This means that the leader will have to go there before the people have been there. He has to believe in the desired destination as if that destination were already here with us. That’s why when he communicates it to the led; they have no option but to believe as well.
c. Identify with the people to be led. Every leader has got to identify with the people that he is leading. The people have got to feel that he is one of them and is for them. Sometimes this unique identifier exists even before the leader emerges but there are times when the leader has got to come to the people to identify with them.
Ghandi was a well educated lawyer who probably would not have suffered the injustice the average Indian suffered at the hands of the British, Moses too was a prince in the palace but these men came down to the standard of the people they were to lead, they forsook some sort of prestigious and privileged positions to lead.
d. Communicate the task and motive of your leadership at every step.
Every leader would have to keep the direction of the led open to them at every step of the way. It has got to be so clear to all the people involved that no mistake about it can go unnoticed and uncorrected. This communication too has got to be continuous at every new development or correction.
This communication will also involve communicating ones influence and power while leading. Influence has got to be communicated well for people to follow; power has got to be accurately communicated for people to trust. We want to follow one that we believe has the power to make the changes desired but that one has got to be in position to influence us and the other authorities involved in achieving the desired destination.
NOTE: These are also my core values when leading now.
e. Involve the led.
Although it may be hard to imagine, the leader has got to find more ways of involving the led to participate in the leadership. Not everyone can be a leader but all of us need to take part in the leadership. The citizens of a country register to vote leaders into power, the members of a church need to make it a habit to pray for their leaders, children in a home make sure the chore are done, they respond to the instructions of the parents. At whatever stage, the led need to be encouraged to participate in the leadership. It could be participation in decision making or simply response to the necessary actions to help achieve the desired destination.
3. Who is a leader?
After looking at leadership it’s easy to understand who a leader is. Not everyone can be a leader at the same point, we all cannot be presidents of a republic or general managers of a company only one can lead from that point, but we all can contribute to his leadership and we can lead at other points or stages depending on the hierarchy of authority in the organisation.
The leader is that person that stands at the front and leads to the desired destination, he communicate to the and helps them not only believe that they can get there but that they have the ability to contribute to the journey to the desired destination. The fact that he identifies with the led enables him to touch their strongest desires and inspire their deepest energies. It should be noted that a leader’s understanding of those he leads helps him lead almost effortlessly because in the process of leading each is placed at the position of both development and expressing of their passions.
I think of a pastor who fails to realise that one of the people he leads is passionate about hospital ministry and instead places him in charge of the youth in the church. That pastor fails to realise that its not just about filling positions but also developing those one leads and helping them express their God-given passions.
NOTE: That’s why the measure of a leader’s success is most accurately got from those that are being led or were led at the time the leader led them.
Life Experiences
My eeliest significant leadership experience was when I was a School council speaker. In the position I was the only student at the ordinary level that sat at the school council that decided which undisciplined students were to be dismissed from the school and which ones would be retained. I know now that I failed to lead well because instead of firstly getting counsel from God on what correct judgement would be, I went with the flow and order of the day. Had I realised that the position I held required the wisdom and counsel of God, I know that I would not only have saved some innocent students but would have led to corrective measures that would have seen many of the boys make more meaning of their lives earlier on in life. Worse still, I was a culprit of some of the indiscipline that the boys were being punished for.
In contrast:
Today am a children church leader at the Watoto children’s village at Bbira and I have already been practicing some of these principles. What I devised was a mentorship and friendship way of leading. I have a team of children that teach with me. They are students and they stay in the village at Bbira.
So I sat with them and agreed to attach ten children that come to children church from the village to each of them. The point was I will follow these five children so that they can follow up the other fifty or so children, I also had to show them what I mean by following them up.
I pray for them on a regular basis because I believe that it would be very useless to lead with a team that one never prays for them. But I also got more involved in their lives; I started sharing myself with them. I go to their homes so that I can get the report about them from the mothers and also started following their academic performance up. I believe the individual should develop wholesomely and that is the reason why I monitor their discipline and academics, I constantly inquire about their spiritual standing, whether they pray and study the Word and how often.
I do this so that I can get to know them very well and this also gives them a chance to know me and ask the questions that are relevant to ask. I want them to learn from me and I pray that I learn from God as much as I should teach them and use for myself.
Challenges;
• I still need to grow in understanding their gifts and callings, their passions and abilities. This I know will take the Hand of God as I seek Him on the subject and about each individual on the team.
• Consistence is the other challenge and area in which I need to grow. Because the time I spend in the village is limited, I find that I fail to make time for all of them at the same time and sometimes I fail to follow up on a particular issue earlier tackled.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Up Untill This Moment
Up until this moment I have thought that living is an art that some of us pay attention to and some don’t and yet all of us succeed. I have thought that when you love someone, the music is perfect, the sound is accurate, the smell is delicious and the picture is golden, I have thought that when you love someone you protect them with your everything and that when you hurt them you damage yourself. Up until this point I have believed that children have a light in them that we all have the responsibility to help glow brighter and brighter each day, though many times many of us exercise the opposite power.
There are many thoughts that keep us company, when we hold the hand of a loved one, when we sing our most favorite song, when we sit with the bereaved, we hold ourselves in a certain position and those others to in theirs. The positions that we take in the lives of people and those that we give them in our own lives tell us greatly of who we are, of what makes us who we are as well. The right light can be hard to tell some times, the right window will be missed sometimes. When we find ourselves away from what defined us, apart from those people and things that hold us in one place, when we get to the point of seeking and find no answers, then we are forced to take a closer look to ourselves.
But what does it mean to take a closer look at ourselves? To answer that well, we should firstly understand what looking means and what we means by ourselves. I believe that in looking we consider with our hearts, that we let the gates of the mouth, eyes and ears tell our hearts what they have observed in a way that the heart with speak to them the corrections that should be. Because the heart has a language and the heart speaks indeed. Ourselves will involve our persona, our environment and all that we have set ourselves to.
Speaking of that then will help us see ourselves totally and we shall consider with accuracy. The people that make us understand with our hearts, the moments in life that speak to our hearts in ways that we desire again, that we sing again are those that we have been prepared for both silently and otherwise.
The construction of our lessons is amazing but the result has always been my fascination. Do I drop all that I have believed up until this point? No. up until this point and beyond, I believe that when you love someone you protect them with all that you are and have got. That does not change even when the motives of loving them may change. I am constantly touched by what I consider to be the purest innocence, that of children. Each encounter makes me appreciate life a bit better and also appreciate myself, it makes me review my path in life both retrogressively and progressively and then truly understand what there was or will be or is to learn.
Up until this point I thought that I knew what I wanted but I have been corrected to understand that some wants are forever while others are temporal and that when the change happens, it does not make one want better than the other, it’s just the relevance points that change. Do we stand and asses ourselves against what was or should have been or do we asses ourselves on grounds of what’s right. The most important lessons teach the heart what’s right; the purest deeds are the good deeds. And when we devote ourselves to these, we do right.
The point is, there will always a point at which we realize that what we have held true is either wrong or indeed true and that we needed to understand it better.
New discoveries have always warmed my heart, new frontiers have sometimes intimidated me, but something in me always brought me to take on the challenge. I have been afraid of the changes in the future and then realized that that’s one road I will always take, so I have grown to realize that those are merely moments for me to raise again.
I have been satisfied with love and then found myself in need again, we keep discovering new needs, we keep coming across people that warm our hearts with beautiful sounds and then we realize that the feeding of the heart is ongoing and to stop it for a moment, is to create a vacuum that’s damaging.
That said, I have to say that I have written this article without thinking which direction its going to take but merely writing. From the abundance of the heart, the mouth shall speak.
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