Dr. John R. Strubhar is the Senior Pastor of Maywood Evangelical Free Church of Rockford, Illinois.
Periodically, it is good to do a “motive check-up” as a servant leader. In 1 Thessalonians 2:3 Paul explains: “For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you.” Paul’s leadership motives are neither fraudulent nor deceptive. To the contrary, his leadership is stamped with integrity! King David’s leadership in Israel is marked equally the same. Asaph, reflecting on David’s leadership records in Psalm 78:72 “And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands, he led them.”
Servant leaders of integrity refuse the art of double speaking. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. They put personal and vested interests behind them. Dwight Eisenhower, one of America’s greatest presidents put it this way, “To be a leader, a man must have followers, and to have followers, a man must have their confidence. Hence, the supreme quality for a leader is unquestionable integrity...If a man’s associates find him guilty of phoniness, if they find the he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teaching and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.”
Integrity means telling the truth all the time and not altering the truth for personal manipulation or advantage. It means that we do not change our stories when communicating with people face to face as opposed to when we are speaking about them in the presence of others. It means we “shoot straight” at all times and encourage others to hold us accountable to the “blind spots” which may exist in our own personal lives. Integrity is a life lived by principle, not personal expediency. It is a life totally open before God!
Instead of resorting to deceptive motives, authentic servant-leaders have one agenda...the approval of God (1 Thessalonians 2:4). They are driven by an overwhelming desire to please Him! Not only do authentic servant-leaders seek to avoid “deception,” they also avoid “flattery.” Again the apostle Paul models this transparently... “You know we never used flattery...” (1 Thessalonians 2:5). The late John Stott, quoting Milligan says that “flattery” is a word which describes “the torturous methods by which one man seeks to gain influence over another, generally for selfish ends.”
Chuck Swindoll in his excellent book Leadership sums it up well: “There is a fine and very definite line tween being a leader who gets along well with people and being one who must please people. Few characteristics reveal one's insecurity more than this. And talk about losing respect! Not only do others fail to respect the people pleaser, he doesn’t even respect himself. By fence-sitting, by hedging with the truth and attempting to keep peace at any price (an absolute impossibility), the leader forfeits the right to lead and becomes, as a consequence, a follower who still tries to call himself a leader.”
Authentic servant-leaders will never be able to please all of the people all of the time. Paul found this to be true in his interaction with the Thessalonians, “We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.” (1 Thessalonians 2:6) When our leadership is aimed at people pleasing, we lose our decisiveness in responding to issues. We become a slave to people rather than bond-servants of Christ. I remember during my first pastorate being jolted by Paul’s statement in Galatians 1:10 after a skirmish with people who were never satisfied with anything any pastor or church leader ever did and discovering that no matter what was said or done, it never seemingly got through, the Holy Spirit gently reminded me of Paul’s words, “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Someone put it this way: “I don’t know the secret of success, but I do know the secret of failure: trying to please everybody.” Swindoll is again right on... “No successful leader maintains the respect of others without making decisions that will prove unpopular to some.” Flattery in leadership leads to a dead end. So also does double-speaking and people pleasing. By God’s grace, lets strive to be authentic servant-leaders driven by absolute integrity, unbiased transparency and welcomed accountability!
