In a small but successfully growing business, where the company owners are accustomed to doing everything themselves through multi-tasking, the idea that they are the only people who can do things right…has a measure of validity.
If the small company owner is doing everything through multi-tasking and they are doing it well enough to produce business growth, then it can be said that they are in-fact doing things right.
But successful hands-on performance by the company owners has practical limits. It only works as long as the enterprise remains manageably small.
The owners of the single flower shop on the street corner, the small town bookstore, or the specialty butcher shop in the downtown section of a city, can successfully remain in business for decades as long as the owners are directly participating, are personally likeable, and their products are high-quality and reasonably priced.
The commendable attitude of the small company owner who correctly says: “I can do everything because I am doing everything” can slowly morph into the business management stifling attitude of: “I have to do everything myself because I am the only one who can do things right.”
This mindset will hold back the growing company.
The successful company owner’s philosophy for growth is: “other people can be trained to perform as well as, or even better than I can currently do things.”
The living God of the Bible is the penultimate leader. His aim is to download His considerable expertise through the lived-experience of brilliantly crafted journeys of faith, while establishing a close relationship of loving camaraderie with His followers that brings out the best in commitment and dedication to the inspired tasks at hand.
This is a novel, ahead-of-its-time leadership and management concept embedded within the ancient biblical narrative stories of faith.
It is a very sophisticated concept even for today.
God-composed journeys of faith recorded in the Bible encapsulate the very real contemporary management challenge that confronts every small-business owner as a normal part of the process of growth…the challenge of changing from a solitary, capable doer of the work…to a leader of the larger organization who can inspire other people to willingly and cooperatively assume some or all of the workload at their highest performance level.
This is precisely what God does in the large and complex enterprise of the unfolding saga of human redemptive history.
When Jesus calls Peter to leave his familiar Sea of Galilee surroundings and occupation as a fisherman to become a “fisher of men” (Mk. 1:16-18), Peter had no idea then that this new expanded adventure of faith would someday lead to Peter standing before the intimidating Jerusalem governing body called the Sanhedrin council, boldly speaking in self-abandoned courage and in the divine liberation of Holy Ghost fire…at the risk of his life…that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
Similarly, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Ruth, Daniel, and Jeremiah had no complete idea how the precise mechanism of their journeys of faith following God…would lead them through their individual, called-out missions.
This is by God’s purposeful design. It reveals an architect of immense skill and foresight, providing all of the required information upfront in the blueprint plans that will be needed as each phase of the construction proceeds, as each page of our lives is turned.
The biblical narrative stories of faith reveal a leader and a manager with such an enlightened business model for growth that every conceivable contingency has been planned-for ahead-of-time…through a proactive, far-sighted vision of incredible insight and accuracy.
The Cross in the Christian Life 