Reflection: Leaders are Sinners with Glorified Titles
Leadership scholars found that enhancing self-efficacy is a primary means to develop leaders. Yet leaders who have developed higher self-efficacy can easily turn into insecure overachievers or bullying tyrants (or both) precisely because of their sinful self.
Here is the problem. Boosting leaders’ self-efficacy may sound like a positive thing until we are confronted with the fact that the self is the main problem.
That is why the gospel matters. That is why leadership should never be detached from the gospel. At the core of leaders’ fall from grace is their complete ignorance of or unbelief in the gospel.
What is the gospel? Simply put, the gospel is the good news that God is renewing all things in creation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The gospel is relevant to every leader of all shapes and sizes because it shows the futility of appealing to one’s self-efficacy. When the individual is successful, it will lead to hubris, and when the individual fails, despair.
Competencies might take leaders to the top, but without the gospel leaders will not be built to last, no matter how effective and efficient they appear in the beginning.
In the final analysis, leaders are merely sinners with glorified titles. Even redeemed sinners are always prone to succumb to temptation this side of heaven.
Prayer: Merciful God, I tell myself that I am different because I am smarter and stronger, hence deserving more than the rest. Remind me that I am merely a sinner saved by your grace, and need to be constantly saved by that grace.