As we enter the new 2018 calendar year, all one sees on social media is the hype and glad handing of “making this your best year yet”. Best at what exactly, existing?

The constant desire to be seen and heard and  known for an endless array of encouragement and self-propagated wisdom is a dangerous road to travel for the christian leader. Our role, if it be anything at all, is to point the needy, the downtrodden, the lost – to Jesus in every form and way possible. It is not to be the best or get followers or likes or retweets.

To even feel the need to record this reality seems to me, to be at best, a reflection of how wide our allegiances have drifted in social era of popularity driven leadership. And for those who are quick to draw down on this commentary, I am not speaking against the many, many faithful who serve without recognition or even those who receive it ad-nauseum. But only to the very real allurement that this type of branded leadership thrusts toward the church each and every day.

Bill Hybels is quoted as saying, “Leadership in the Church is one of the biggest challenges facing the Church because without strong leadership the church rarely lives out is redemptive potential.”

And isn’t the ‘redemptive potential’ of the church to be it’s purpose as well? But perhaps that is the main jist. Redemption is hard work and does not fit in 280 characters.

Men and women, God does does not invite in the “good and followed”, but the “good and faithful servant.”