Those of you who have never been involved with the corporate world are not yet familiar with corporate training sessions. I remember well the beginning of my summer job every year at the dam—we always had to watch some training video on hearing loss, followed by a sleeper about how to mix chemicals (never mind that we were tour guides). Now, I know that all these training sessions are very necessary, and exist for a reason. I support anti-racism training, sexual harassment training, and even training videos on how to mix chemicals. That doesn’t mean I always enjoy attending.

Yesterday I began a whole eight weeks of mandatory training on how to be a good manager (of the one employee I share with another staff person). Yet I actually found the three-hour session quite relevant to life. Its question? What makes a good leader? How can we all have a positive influence on another person?

Our training person, Sandy, told us that good leaders share the following seven traits. Leaders…
· Have vision
· Listen
· Earn trust
· Uplift others
· Maintain humility
· Have fun
· Serve
We never talked about them in a theological context, but these traits do fall in line well with Christian models for leadership. Having vision, maintaining humility, and serving others are pretty obvious ones—Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, anyone? But some of the others get ignored when we talk about spiritual leadership.

Take listening, for example. We tend to see leaders as those who talk a lot, the spokespeople for the movement. But leaders are also those who listen to others. Think of Elijah, whom God told to wait and listen at the mouth of the cave. In fact, think of all the biblical prophets; their whole job was to listen for and convey to the people the Word of God. A truly effective leader listens to the aspirations, frustrations, and ideas of those around her, and uses those to move the team forward. It ties in to our commitment to consensus decisions in NNPCW. We listen to others in order to find creative ways to meet everyone’s needs.

Another one that often gets overlooked is having fun. Every good leader knows that there is a balance between getting stuff done and enjoying one’s self when doing it. Now, I must confess that I can’t think of any “fun” scenes in the Bible off the top of my head—they must have omitted the disciples’ group outing to Disneyland following the feeding of the 5000. But we are told in Scripture to live our lives joyfully. And it is hard to be joyful without throwing a bit of fun into the mix.

So next time you’re facilitating a planning session for your Bible study, commit to asking others to talk about their dreams, to take ownership. And this next one is for me, too—don’t forget to enjoy the ride. Even Jesus kicked back at the wedding in Cana (Yay! I thought of an example of fun in the Bible!)

“Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” --John 13:5

Kelsey