Luke 5. 1-11 Empowering Leadership

So as the crowd milled around trying to listen to this young preacher and healer,  there they were, washing the seaweed and silt out of their nets, after a bad night when they had caught nothing.  And the preacher climbed into one of their boats and asked the owner, Simon, to put out a bit into the water.  The routines of life were interrupted,  grumpy fishermen for some reason did as they were asked... A boat makes a  great pulpit and still water carries sound, so it was an excellent solution to the problem that only the front few rows could hear. Whether they liked it or not Simon, Andrew, James and John were suddenly involved in what the young preacher was doing.  

The young preacher had a plan and a sense of purpose and direction: he knew what he wanted wanted to achieve.  And he got other people involved.

Then the young preacher, Yeshua ben Yousef, when he had finished teaching the people, told the fishermen “Go out a bit further, into the deep water and do some fishing”.  It was daytime, not the time for fishing. Daytime fishing needed different nets from the ones they had been using at night. It was getting hotter, the men were tired. And they have this young preacher ordering them about.  Simon argues: “Master (Governor!  But in fact it was the gentile Luke's way of translating “Rabbi!”) we didn't catch anything all night. But because you say so...”)

The young preacher pushed the fishermen.  He stretched them.  Floating about in the shallows, using their boat as a pulpit, was OK. It was doable.  It was comfortable.  But daytime fishing after a useless night, that was hard work.  It was going to look daft (and there was a crowd looking on).  It was an act of faith. It was out of the comfort-zone. And it worked.  As they did the crazy, unthinkable, counter-intuitive thing, they made this amazing catch of fish.  Simon and Andrew had to get James and John to come and help.

Simon's reaction was to say “Lord (“kyrie” – the Greed word used to translate the Old Testament “Yahweh” –  the name of God himself) you should leave, because I'm a sinful man. Suddenly he realised two truths:
(1) who he was dealing with.  He was beginning to come to terms with the fact that this man was God incarnate. 
(2) his own moral failure and utter unworthiness to have anything to do with this young preacher who has such authority.

The young preacher, Yeshua, Jesus, is Lord!  He is God the Son.  In what he has done and called the fishermen to do, he has revealed to them the truth about who he is and about their own weakness. 

In coaching and development, there is often a sticking point: the person being developed suddenly feels that the growing is too much to handle; they are never going to make it; there is a sense of inadequacy and cost.  Simon is at that sticking point when he suggests it's time for Jesus to leave – but Jesus responds by saying, “Don't be afraid -  from now on you will fish for people.”  Jesus isn't interested in experiments or experiences.  He is interested in transformation.  He would not have achieved much in the lives of the four fishermen, if they simply had “experimented” with working for Jesus, if they simply had this amazing experience – “Wow – what a wonderful catch of fish”.  Jesus was into life-transformation. 

That's what discipleship is all about.  It is life-transformation.  It involves participation: it involves getting out of our comfort zone.  It involves participating in the things God is doing.  It involves revelation.  It involves transformation. 

So the four of them pulled their boats up on the shore, and walk away with Jesus.  Others could take the boats out and fish.  They were pitching in with Jesus.  Full commitment, following Jesus, participation in his big project, going outside of their comfort-zones, learning to exercise a stretching, at-the-limits kind of faith.  We can call that discipleship. 

What Jesus had done in this first encounter, this initial call of Simon and Andrew, James and John, was set the tone for the rest of their journey together.  His leadership is empowering leadership.  Or to put it another way, it is about discipleship.   And Jesus called his disciples to make disciples.  That is a call to leadership.  It is a call to empowering leadership – for the disciples to exercise the same kind of empowering leadership that Jesus himself exercised.

“Empowering leadership” is one of the Characteristics of a Healthy Church.  It is one of the things, the first thing actually, which needs to be there for the Church to be healthy, catching the wind of the Spirit and bearing fruit.   A healthy Church is one with a culture of discipleship. 

So what do we mean by empowering leadership?

It is more than simply management.   Peter Drucker, the father of the scientific study of management once said, Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Management is about keeping the risks down, using the resources well, laying down the rules, understanding and controlling the processes so that everything runs smoothly.  Management will delegate and harness people's abilities.  When Jesus got into the boat, he was managing the situation.  Later on, when he was going to feed the five thousand, he told the disciples to sit everyone down in groups of fifty of a hundred – he was managing. We need management.  It's a start – but it's not enough. 

Empowering leadership, like all leadership, sees the future, it has a sense of vision and purpose. And it knows what are the right things to do to get to that future.

Empowering leadership is about everyone being involved. It starts with a simple call to perform a simple task.  “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it” says Andrew Carnegie.   But if all Jesus had done was delegate – involving the fishermen by having them row their wee boat out a bit – it wouldn't have been empowering leadership.

Empowering leadership is about challenge and invitation. Empowering leadership will stretch people.  It is not simply about harnessing what people can do easily, in order to get the job done.  It is about enabling people to discover new gifts, to exercise more faith and to see God at work.

Empowering leadership is about revelation. It is about enabling people to see God at work, not just as they hear wonderful testimonies and stories.  One of the outcomes of Empowering leadership – of disciple-making – is that we see God at work, in and through our lives, and we have a sense of humble inadequacy as a result.

Empowering leadership is about transformation. It nurtures and prepares people to take responsibility.  It's about growth, not just in knowledge but in experience and ability and character. 
Empowering leadership understands that such transformation is not just a matter of learning ideas and concepts.  It is about putting these into practise.  So the empowering leader needs to be living the life of the Kingdom himself or herself, putting it into practise.  We cannot lead people where we are not prepared to tread. 

That’s a challenge to those who lead – to exercise “empowering Leadership”. To make disciples who can make disciples.  That challenges us at the level of intentionality – because discipleship, empowering leadership, won't happen on its own.  It challenges our integrity – because we can only lead by example. And it challenges our skills.

It's a challenge to our Church life: we need a culture of discipleship.
 People are not “grunts” to get the job done.  They are not a workforce to keep the Church running.    They are disciples who are learning how to make disciples. 

And it's a challenge to each one of us to and put ourselves in the place of being disciples – ready to be transformed! To develop the art of “follower-ship”. And as we are discipled, to be disciples who can make disciples.

© Gilmour Lilly October  2015