We spend a lot of time in my line of work attempting to determine which young folks will make the best leaders as they grow, experience, and mature. We lean heavily on things like academic grade point averages, standardized testing, and such. As I glance through some of history’s greatest leaders it strikes me time and time again–they didn’t always have the highest marks in the way of such pedigrees.
This AM, I am pondering a fisherman in ancient Galilee called Peter. This guy was a piece of work…almost no education, from what I can tell…perhaps a tad arrogant and probably pretty content to live the remainder of his life in total obscurity out in the rural countryside. I’m pretty sure the “leaders” of the day would not have thought Pete was destined to become a passionate leader of a global movement.
I’ll bet Pete’s GPA and SATs were pretty low…so what happened? From what I can read–looks like Pete met Jesus and his focus, his life, his vision, and his priorities began to change. Jesus came into Pete’s life and Pete had to learn how to put first things first–he had the ultimate role model. Reading history…it looks like there were a lot of inconsistencies in Pete’s behavior and he made several irrational decisions, he probably would have received low marks in his AS100 year of ROTC. But…it appears the more time Pete spent with his mentor, Jesus, the more he learned the difference between mere activity and accomplishment–the more he learned about leadership.
So perhaps this is not about GPA and SAT scores, perhaps this is about mentoring and pouring our lives into people. Maybe this is about passion, drive, desire, and leadership—all of which are very tough to measure and all of which take a great deal of time to develop and nurture. Maybe this is about focusing passion on what’s most important… and THEN we see leaders develop and climb to new heights.
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