Leadership You Don't See Today

If you want to measure ministry and/or leadership effectiveness, look at Ezra. Ezra is not known for powerful miracles or wise administration, although he did possess the latter. The main effect of Ezra's leadership was his humble obedience to and reliance upon God. Notice how the last chapter of the book opens:

Ezra 10:1 (ESV) While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly.

Ezra is still broken up about the intermarriage among Israel's people, especially that of her priests. This was a huge no-no and the original reason for the demise of the country. Led by Solomon centuries earlier, the nation was joined both spiritually and emotionally to pagan women who led their men away from the Lord. Now Ezra, on behalf of the people's evil, makes confession and humbles himself in prayer for the nation. And notice what it says: "a great assembly... gathered to him".

I know of Christian leaders who can gather crowds to hear them teach or preach. I know of Christian influencers who can gain a large-scale following on Twitter or Instagram by posting a "larger-than-life" persona on those platforms, but to gather people around you through prayer and fasting is a level of leadership sorely lacking in today's celebrity-influenced Church culture. 

Ezra doesn't just pray and gather people, however, he takes drastic moves to call the people back to God:

Ezra 10:6–8 (ESV) Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles. 7 And a proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the returned exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem, 8 and that if anyone did not come within three days, by order of the officials and the elders all his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from the congregation of the exiles.

This is also another key of leadership - doing the unpopular, and perhaps "unkind" thing. Today's Christian church wants to be coddled as the world desires. Instead of being challenged to commit, they want to be celebrated for their "gifts" and "callings" and "passions." I find in my own experience of leadership, those on stage get very possessive of their platform in the name of "ministry." Leadership by nature does what people do not expect and what does not make them comfortable. That's what makes you a leader. Leaders challenge people's sacred "cows", those things they hold on to as if they were defined by them. Ezra throws down the hammer and change begins. The people turn from their ways and turn back to God, pledging obedience. 

However, the last part of the story illustrates another key to leadership found in Ezra that is sorely lacking today. The gift of follow-through. Many start, few finish. Ezra is confronted with the size and span of the task for the men to put away their foreign wives. After all, this had gone on for generations. So Ezra gives them time because of this and the heavy rains. 

Ezra 10:16–17 (ESV) Then the returned exiles did so. Ezra the priest selected men, heads of fathers’ houses, according to their fathers’ houses, each of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter; 17 and by the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women.

You find that this whole event took 2+ months to complete. Ezra sees it through. Today leadership is minimized to sound bites and tweets. Biblical leadership engages in the long-term follow-through of the Lord's leading. 

God give us Ezra-type leaders who lead people back to you, lead them in the unexpected and perhaps uncomfortable, and follow through!

Amen.