Leadership

There are good leaders and there are bad ones.
Some leaders are just jerks, some are super nice. The nice ones can be ineffective. The jerks can get so much done... But they are still jerks.
       I can definitely fall in to the jerk category. "Nice", I don't think is the first word anyone has used to describe me.

The kind of leader I want to become, I think, is balanced.
Firstly, most easily summed up, I want to be like Jesus. Sounds super spiritual, but that isn't my goal. I just want to emulate their him in these few ways:

1. Biblical. The guy knew his Bible. He wrote it, yes, but he had to learn it while on earth.

2. Visionary. Jesus often set the vision by saying what the church is, what I it's supposed to be like. He called people to something far greater than themselves.

3. Compassionate. He came because he loved us, and died to prove it. He rose so we could live it. My problem is, as others have noted, it's not that I don't care about people, its just that because I'm task oriented I don't pay attention to them. I need to learn to stop what I'm doing to help and care for others.

4. I want to remember what it was like as a youth pastor and not take my future staff for granted... Days off, work week hours, paperwork... Etc.

For now, I the think just those few things would be largely beneficial.

Take Inventory

I have a box. That box contains random items from over the years that are both valuable, left over, or just altogether garbage. It sits in a corner, in my closet, out of the way where no one can see it.
One day, my wife takes this box, empties it of its contents and tells me to sort it and put it away.
Why? This, in my mind, was a stupid task that didn't need to even be addressed. There is only a problem now, and a mess that needs to get cleaned up because she pulled it out in the first place.
Did I mention that she also threw out the box itself? Leaving all that junk that I haven't touched for a year and a half all in a pile beside my bed... Then accuses me of not cleaning up my mess.
Naturally, I put it off. This is her fault anyway.
Then the negativity begins. "You said yesterday that you would have it done today." "You said two days ago you were going to put it all away." "It's been a week..." All this is her own doing, so why is she complaining when she is the one that created the senseless extra work?
So, after a week and a half I finally sit beside my bed, sort through the contents... An old receipt, my old case for an old cell phone I no longer have... My glasses case (was wondering what happened to that)... Some old love letters and journals... a Tom Clancy novel... And a check list from 3 years ago. So, I threw out the old check list and receipt, find a new, small box, put it all in, place it under my bedside table and said I was finished.

You see, sometimes the Holy Spirit is going to make you dig out some of the old stuff in your closet and get you to lay it all out and sort it. Often times we just get annoyed because it's stuff that doesn't affect anyone, hurt anything nor even has anything bad or sinful amongst it. But the reality is there is just accumulated garbage and random things that really are just clutter in your life. It doesn't hurt, but if you're honest you know it doesn't help, either.

Many passages in scripture refer to getting rid of the things that hold you back, examining your heart, making sure there's no excess baggage in your life, etc. So feel free to find any of those.
The biblical principle is that we all have stuff in our closet that needs to be dealt with. Again it's not always a bad thing... For Peter, he had to leave the life of a fisherman to be a disciple of Jesus. It's an extreme example to show that Peter had to give up something that wasn't bad in order to pursue God's best.
So once you're finished reading this, take a few moments and pause. Ask the Spirit to reveal to you what's in your closet. The good news is, you may find something useful or something you thought you lost (my glasses case - or for you it may be passion, joy, hope, etc), or you'll be able to eliminate some garbage that literally is just clutter.
Try to have a good attitude about it though, because you don't want the Spirit bringing up the fact that he wants you to deal with your stuff sooner than later, and almost nagging about something that takes less time to deal with if you just deal with it.