Spiritual Leadership Today by Mel Lawrenz

Author:Mel Lawrenz [Lawrenz, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2019-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

One of the greatest responsibilities leaders have is to guide people into clearer understandings of reality. To see things the way they really are. To see faults and failures for what they are, and hopes and horizons that are realistic as well. Leaders can only do that to the degree that they themselves distinguish true and false versions of reality. This is the skill and gift of discernment: clear perception and penetrating insight leading to good judgment.

How much we all need incisive leadership today! Incisive is a great word, the root of which means “cutting” or “penetrating” (from Latin incidere: to cut into). It is exactly the idea of the New Testament word for discernment (Greek diakrina), which means separation or distinction. The discerning leader approaches challenges and opportunities with a mental and spiritual scalpel. To be discriminating without being discriminatory. To judge without being judgmental. To separate without severing.

Discernment is delicate work.

The discerning leader looks at a situation, not rushing to judgment but being bold enough to eventually make a judgment by separating reality from perception. Good leaders know that perceptions matter and have to be dealt with, but what really matters is the truth — reality. We can be tempted to think of spiritual life as quite subjective, especially given the axiom today that there are many “truths” (even apparently contradictory “truths”) in a given situation. But a surgeon in the operating room has to sever exactly the right tissue, a pilot navigating a valley needs to discern exactly the terrain of that valley, and an engineer needs to decide on exactly the right material to build a stable skyscraper. If incisive discernment is necessary in physical matters, how much more so in spiritual matters. No one benefits when we speak into a world that does not exist.

While errors will happen, they should never be because we were too quick or too lazy to do the scanning, probing, testing, balancing, consulting, praying work of discernment.

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