Good Leaders Get Out of the Way

For most of my adult life I have heard people use the phrase "he was his own worst enemy" without ever thinking it might be applied to me.

How wrong I was.

By God's grace I have had the privilege—and the responsibility—of being a leader. Nearly twenty years ago I founded a literary/arts journal that showcases the best contemporary art and literature in the Judeo-Christian tradition. That journal, Image, is now one of the highest-circulation quarterlies of its type in the world, and has grown into a multi-faceted arts organization. In a sense, I've become what might be called a nonprofit entrepreneur.

Now don't get me wrong: my problem has rarely been outright arrogance and pride. I try to be diligent in acknowledging the help I have received from coworkers, donors, friends, and family.

But pride can be a subtle sin. It can sometimes masquerade as false humility.

Here's how I discovered that truth in a palpable way. For over a decade, I resisted the process of putting a serious, active Board of Directors together for Image. I wasn't necessarily afraid of losing control—I've always turned to others for advice in decision-making.

Rather, I thought I didn't have the right to ask busy, accomplished people to come hundreds of miles and spend hundreds of dollars on airfares and hotel rooms, to work on my small, fragile enterprise. Making sacrifices oneself is one thing. Asking others to make them is another. Or so I told myself.

When I said this to some of my closest associates, they protested, but it took a long time before I could hear what they were telling me. Eventually I heard them saying something like this: So what you're telling me, Greg, is that it's all about you. You don't have the right to ask people to help you with your project. But did you ever stop to consider that it isn't really your project any more—that you are really only the servant of something far larger than you? If you fail to invite others to participate in this work, you are holding things back.

Looking back, I realize that I learned this lesson just in time. Had I persisted even another year or two, the enterprise would, in fact, have collapsed.

That's why I've developed a deep affection for the apostle Paul. He, too, was a strong personality—a leader of men. He had a mission, and he pursued it with a kind of intensity some would call obsession. In his letters, you can see him struggling to acknowledge that he himself might at any moment become part of the problem, not the solution. His mission was to proclaim the salvation of Jesus Christ, not the salvation of Paul.

He wrote to the Corinthians: What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.

As a servant leader, I had to learn how to get out of the way, how to perceive that my desire for humility could be a subtle form of self-centeredness. But now I can see that I planted the seed, my Board waters it, and God makes it grow.