THE LOST ART OF RELATIONSHIP
men and women are here with you to lead this community. You would do well to build a relationship with them, trust them, and bring them with you. Authority means nothing without influence.”
I had been successfully rebuked, and rightly so. I had allowed my fear of leading through this transition to guide my actions. As we so often do at times, we feel the more we take control in a relationship, the more we will “feel” as if things are going well.
Relationships cannot be successfully controlled. But they can be influenced. In leadership, sometimes the best we can hope for is that through relationship someone decides willingly to look to us because we have proven to them we care for them and have their best interests in our thoughts and decisions; that we are consistent in our lives and have a relationship with God.
After that much-needed conversation with me, he sat down with the board at the next meeting (his last with us) and passed the baton over to me as the interim senior pastor. At that moment, I watched as he used his influence with the leadership team to delegate authority to someone who probably did not deserve it.
I realized something important at that moment. If I could consistently live in relationship with others, thinking of myself soberly and with good judgment, people could decide to allow me to lead them. This relationship with them would make it easier to say, “I will walk with you. I will fight alongside you. I will support you. I will live life with you.”
If my relationship with God is not in the right place, which takes consistency and persistence on my part, then I could not maintain focus on my relationship with others, serve them in humility, and lead them with God-honoring confi- dence in His ability to lead me.
I learned more in that first year of ministry outside of college than I had in all my previous years of education about relationships. Specifically, I had learned that influence is earned and that authority means nothing without influence.
Our Influence as Salt and Light
“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. You are the light of the world – like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in