For those of you who usually watch my videos instead of reading the post, I had some technical difficulties in the editing stage. My apologies. Please stay tuned for a future video. In the meantime, feel free to read the post below.
When you think of leading like a shepherd, does David come to mind? It seems a little cliché, doesn’t it? Even if it does (which I agree, it does seem a bit cliché) it doesn’t make it any less applicable, which is how I justified titling this blog post, Lead Like a Shepherd 🙂
In my last post, Lead Like a Mother, we talked about the only female judge in Israel’s history, Deborah. As we dive into the topic of David’s leadership, we might just see a common aspect between the two.
We find rather lengthy accounts of David’s life and leadership in Scripture, far more than we have space to discuss here. So I will only be focusing in on a few key leadership principles that caught my attention as I was studying him.
If you would like to spend more time looking at the life of David, please comment below and let me know. I’d be happy to oblige.
Okay, let’s dig in and look first at how David was chosen as a leader.
God sent Samuel to anoint a king from among Jesse’s sons. Samuel saw Eliab, one of David’s older brothers, and assumed by his appearance (including his height) that he was the one. Alas, he was not. Why? Because the qualifications God was looking for did not have to do with one’s appearance, but rather, one’s heart.
As a petite individual, I’m rather pleased that Eliab’s height was not the determining factor. Lol.
I don’t know about you, but I’m guilty of making assumptions based on people’s appearance instead of doing my best to look at their hearts. Obviously only God really knows someone’s heart, but I could certainly do better to look a little deeper than I sometimes do.
The story in 1 Samuel, tells us that the youngest of Jesse’s sons, a shepherd named David, was the one God wanted Samuel to anoint.
Despite the fact that appearances were not the determining factor for David being chosen, we are still privy to a description of his appearance. In fact, the Bible notes that he was “glowing with health.” Oooh, I might interpret that as radiant! 🙂
As a shepherd, David may have seemed like an unlikely candidate for such a lofty leadership role, but perhaps his experience with sheep (who, let’s face it, are sometimes a lot like people) prepared him well for his future job.
Much like a shepherd would want to protect his sheep, as a leader, he would want to protect his people. I see a similar correlation to Deborah, who led like a mother. In other words, just as a mother would protect her children, so Deborah wanted to protect her people.
The desire to protect one’s people, then, seems like an important aspect of an individual’s leadership.
Another aspect of David’s leadership that caught my eye was his ability to show grace.
We see time and time again in Scripture where Saul is jealous of David’s success and as a result is pursuing him to kill him. Despite his efforts, David manages to elude Saul.
On more than one occasion, David has the opportunity to kill Saul but chooses not to. In fact, at one point he says, “far be it from me to lay a hand on God’s anointed.” Talk about showing a tremendous amount of grace!
If we think about what that looks like in our lives, surely we don’t have people so jealous of our success that they are trying to kill us. However, there is probably that one problem person at work that you have either wanted to fire or wish you could fire.
What would happen if we chose to show a little more grace to people like that?
This week I missed an important leadership meeting. I completely forgot about it (and felt horrible). Normally I prioritize things like that. As soon as I realized what I had done, I emailed the person in charge and apologized profusely.
You know what he did? He showed me grace. What a wonderful and David-like response as a leader.
If, instead of showing me grace, he had given me a hard time for not being there or made me feel worse than I already did, you know what that would have done? It would have caused me to retreat a little and maybe even eventually begin to question whether or not I wanted to continue in that role.
By showing me grace, it actually motivated me to step up my game a bit and not miss any future meetings.
The last leadership aspect in David’s life that I want to discuss is related to his ability to make unpopular decisions.
Leaders often have to make tough decisions, ones that cause them to remember that you can’t please everyone all the time, and David was no exception.
There was a time when David and his men returned to where they were staying only to find all of their wives and children had been taken captive by the Amalekites.
They were so distraught that they wept until they had no strength. David became even more distressed when there was talk by some of the men of stoning him.
But 1 Samuel tells us that he found strength in the Lord His God. Can I just say that finding strength in God, as a leader, is probably the best thing you could ever do? The moment you try to rely on your own strength is the moment you begin to go down as a leader.
David rallied the men and they set off to get their families back. Unfortunately about 200 of the men grew too tired along the way to make it to the battle. David and his men continued and fought from dusk until the evening of the next day.
They won all of their wives and children back and gained additional plunder in the process. The problem was that the trouble makers and evil men among David’s group, didn’t want to share the plunder with the 200 men who didn’t make it to the battle.
David’s response is where I really see him leading like a shepherd. He says, “no, brothers, we cannot do that after what God has done for us and how He has delivered us…”
David wasn’t about to leave the 200 men out. Just like, as a shepherd, he would not have denied grass to the sheep who took longer to get to the field than the others.
He made the decision to be inclusive and to show grace to the 200 men. It probably wasn’t a popular decision among those who suggested he do otherwise. But he did it anyway and it was the right decision to make.
Like all leaders, David didn’t always make the right decision. There were some big mistakes along the way. Nonetheless, he demonstrates admirable leadership qualities that we might want to consider how to apply in our own leadership journey.
So what does leading like a shepherd look like in your context? Would you be willing to share in a comment below? I would love to hear how you might find some of these things applicable in your life.
We have two more leaders to look at in the weeks ahead: Moses and Joshua. So please come back and join me for more leadership lessons from these noteworthy leaders.
In the meantime, let’s go be radiant as we lead this week.
Go Be Radiant 