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As foreign tanks rumbled and bombs hissed and boomed across Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered one of the more quotable I’ve heard in quite a while. It came in response to the U.S. government’s offer to evacuate him from his country in the face of an intensifying Russian onslaught.
“I need ammunition,” Zelensky said, “not a ride.”
And so he stayed, and remains there as of this writing.
It’s hard to stand firm in the face of a fire, isn’t it? Pastors and church leaders know this all too well. Zelensky’s courageous stance—his literal, iron-clad refusal to move—should remind us of something we all know in ministry but seem to forget at the most inopportune times: leadership takes guts. I say “inopportune” because the moments that make us want to flee are the same moments I believe God intends to use to strengthen and mature us.
Leadership isn’t anchored in good ideas, although good ideas certainly help move the needle. It isn’t achieved on the strength of enthusiasm or passion alone, although, again, those seem to be universally necessary elements for effective leadership to happen. It’s not even about having an outgoing personality or polished oratorical skills.
Leadership is about taking people and organizations from where they are to where they need to be, from Point A to Point B. The challenge is, people systems typically consist of two kinds of people: the kind who are willing to be led, and the kind who have their own ideas about how to lead and who are willing to fracture the group to achieve their own goals.
In other words, the kind of people who make you want to flee from the leadership to which God has called you.
"Leadership takes guts. It’s going to require you, at some point, to stand firm in the face of a fire that’s a lot hotter than you’ll like. In that moment, you’ll essentially have two choices: You can go, or you can grow."
Think about Moses. God called him to lead the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land. Moses didn’t ask for that job, tried to ask himself out of that job, and in the end, didn’t even get to reap the benefits of the mission accomplished. Moses wasn’t going to set a stage ablaze with a fiery speech; Scripture tells us he had what most scholars consider a speech impediment.
Add to those shortcomings the people God called him to lead. They were lifelong slaves with a severe case of short-term memory loss. It only took hunger and thirst to make them wish they were back in chains. Rather than worship the God who turned a sea into a sidewalk, they grumbled. Later, in the book of Numbers, Moses faced challenges in his leadership from people who thought they could do it better (Aaron and Miriam, and then several hundred led by Korah).
And yet Moses stood firm. You can almost hear him saying, “Yes, I know you don’t like the menu. Yes, I heard you say you had it better with your last leader. Yes, I know some of you don’t think I’m a very good leader … now, let’s keep going. God’s got somewhere for us to be.”
Don’t get me wrong: the effectiveness of your leadership will rise and fall in direct correlation to the quality of your personal walk with Jesus in any given moment. That is a battle leaders fight every day, especially in the church. It’s a battle I fight every day.
But beyond that, leadership takes guts. It’s going to require you, at some point, to stand firm in the face of a fire that’s a lot hotter than you’ll like. In that moment, you’ll essentially have two choices:
You can go, or you can grow.
