Leadership Lessons From A Crazy Old Man

In today's culture of megachurch marketing, rockstar worship teams, multi-million dollar Christian conferences and tv personality pastors, I want to pay tribute to someone who,  while he never wrote a best-seller or had his own television ministry, was one of the single greatest leaders I have ever had the privilege of knowing. He forever impacted my life not only by what he taught, but by how he lived. 

   The only thing older than he was, were his suits; which never matched and could perhaps have been carbondated to the Mesopotamian era.  He had a thin gray goatee which he stroked with one hand while holding his elbow whenever he was deep in thought, which was often.  He drove his beat-up excuse for a car around our college campus never going over 25 mph and stopping every few yards to talk to students through its rolled down windows.  

Leadership Principle One: Who you are is more important than how you appear.

Leadership Principle Two: Always move slowly enough to communicate value to the ones you lead. 

   He was a bit of a rebel, or at least anti-establishment. When the college administration insisted all professors wear suits and ties reflective of the slick business approach they were trying to replicate, he decided to model his absolutely outrageous collection of bowties.  It was always one of the highlights of the day to see what horribly mismatched bowtie he would be wearing.   It was not uncommon for him to announce that we were all going to cut class (himself included) and then proceed to treat the whole class to hot chocolate in the student lounge where he would regale us with stories or engage us in a theological debate.

Leadership Principle Three: Sometimes a sense of humor sends the most serious statement.  

Leadership Principle Four: The best learning often happens outside the classroom.

     He single-handedly funded a library for Bible School students in India primarily by donating all of his lecturing honorariums and by routinely passing around a styrofoam cup with "India" scribbled on its sides to which we would gladly surrender our last dollar and forfeit our morning coffee in order to contribute. He could reduce a classroom full of college basketball players to tears by sitting on top of his desk, one leg folded underneath him, unwrapping the beauty and wisdom contained in a single scripture verse as he deftly wove his brilliance for Greek exegesis together with a gift for storytelling that kept his students enthralled.   We hung on his every word, not only because of his brilliant command of scripture, but also because we knew that this man had been wounded not only in war (he usually taught holding his elbow due to shrapnel wounds), but he had been deeply wounded in life.  ( He lost his only son to a tragic car accident when his son was just 16 years old).  His voice would still break and his eyes fill with tears on the few times he spoke of it and yet there was no bitterness, no raging at God, no "life isn't fair" refrain, only a melody of "it is well with my soul" which could not but break us in the listening of it.

Leadership Principle Five: When it comes to sacrificial giving, others will follow your example.

Leadership Principle Six:  The impact of your message will be determined by the authenticity of your life. 

   While, a deans list GPA was important to most of us, the highest honor we could receive was a nod from him and his iconoclastic compliment of "you're okay."  There was no  greater honor, unless of course, you were one of the "few" to have received one of the books from his prized personal library.  Books were the only treasure he allowed himself and he made it a self-imposed discipline to give them away to his students, always with a hand-scrawled note of encouragement inside their cover.

Leadership Principle Seven:  Give away what you most love to those you love most.

     While he could have been teaching at much larger universities making a significantly greater salary, he chose to spend the end of his career at a small, obscure Bible School in Pennsylvania pouring his love for learning, his passion for God and his commitment to truth into his students. His name was Hobart Grazier or "Brother Grazier" to his students.

     In a culture where evangelical popularity often comes wrapped in designer suits, announcing it's own importance with slick seeker-friendly marketing, on made for tv customized sets, wisdom can sometimes go unrecognized.   God wrapped His greatest gift of wisdom in swaddling cloth.  Sometimes wisdom comes in moth-eaten, mismatched suits with ridiculous bowties. I thank God for that wisdom.  I thank God for Brother Grazier and the lifelong lessons he not only taught, but lived.
    

    

How I Lost God In A Megachurch (and found Him in a cafeteria)

   

      As a staff member  at a growing megachurch, every week I sat in pastor’s meetings where we dissected the worship service bit by bit, like a frog in a high school biology class.  Every piece was systematically analyzed, discussed and reviewed to death.  Week after week, as if God’s presence could be categorically formulated with just the right selection of music, the exact style and selection of vocal pieces, the flawless presentation of multi-media.  As if God showing up was something any of us had any control over.  Perhaps, it was in hopes that if God didn’t show up, no one would notice as long as the musicians were talented, the vocalists were amazing and the lighting and media created the right ambiance.

            Somehow when the Holy of Holies is pinned down to the dissection table, the essence of what makes it holy disappears.  The goosebump, shivers down your spine, God-is-in-the-house thing somehow refuses to be captured and put in a jar like the pickled specimens in a science lab.  Even in a megachurch with a multi-million dollar budget, ivy-league educated executive pastors, half-a million dollars worth of theatrical lighting, state of the art sound equipment and recording quality worship bands, the presence of God remains sovereignly in His control and refuses to be manipulated or exploited, even by our best intentions.  Yet there we sat, week after week, every Tuesday morning, dissecting the worship service as if God showing up depended on our analysis.

            And somewhere in and amongst all the dissecting, analyzing, reviewing and debriefing, I had lost Him.  I had lost God.  I could market Him, I could make Him seeker-friendly, I could wrap Him in a creative, entertaining package that would draw crowds of thousands, but I couldn’t find Him; not for myself;  not for real.  Not in the way that I had found Him when I was 13 and I would cry as I felt His love wash over me like gentle ocean waves.  I had lost God in the middle of a megachurch.  I knew it, but I was too scared to admit it.  So I continued to sit around the dissection table every Tuesday morning, poking and prodding and…pretending.

            Maybe that’s why I was so surprised when God showed up…unannounced…in a cafeteria.  I didn’t even see it coming.  A hot Indian Summer night in a tiny little excuse for a cafeteria with a handful of moms and dads, toddlers and teens, watching three of my dance students dance to worship music from a $79 boombox under fluorescent lights in sweatpants and t-shirts.  God showed up, and as the music played, I watch those three young ladies dance as if they were on stage with the New York City Ballet.  I tried hard to swallow the lump in my throat and hoped that no one would notice me trying to hold back the tears.  Until I looked around and realized that tears were flowing all over that little cafeteria.  On the faces of moms grateful for young women who weren’t embarrassed to dance with abandon as an act of worship, on the awestruck faces of little girls who dreamed of one day doing the same thing, in the almost embarrassed admiration of Dads who recognized they were standing on holy ground…in the middle of a cafeteria.  God showed up.

            Isn’t that just like God though?  His presence, that sense of something so much bigger than anything our minds can fully comprehend, yet so personally intimate with the true essence of who we are, refuses to conform to the towers of Babel we try to build to reach him and instead shows up when we least expect it, a burning bush in the middle of our everyday to-do list.  May we never grow too busy or too calloused to recognize the Holy in the midst of the mundane.  May we have the wisdom to know that when this happens we need make the time to remove our shoes and acknowledge that we are in fact standing on holy ground.  May we always be watching with eager anticipation for those moments, when God shows up.