The High Cost of Leadership
Tom Shrader examines Nehemiah 5:14-19, contrasting Nehemiah's selfless leadership with the former governors who exploited the people. He challenges believers to examine their own motives in leadership roles, emphasizing that successful leaders give rather than take, serve rather than exploit. The teaching applies these principles to modern workplace situations and compensation decisions.
“Successful leaders are givers, unsuccessful leaders are takers.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Just Do It (2010)
Recorded: 2010
Duration: 42 min
Themes: leadership, service, humility, motives, sacrifice, stewardship, integrity, character, workplace leader, business owner, pastor, parent, team leader, struggling with power, new to leadership, making ethical decisions
Scripture: Nehemiah 1:3, Nehemiah 1:4, Nehemiah 2, Nehemiah 4, Nehemiah 5:6, Nehemiah 5:13, Nehemiah 5:14-19, Acts 20, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 1 Peter 5
Theological Themes: servant leadership, biblical leadership, stewardship, faithful service, christian character, moral integrity, sacrificial love, kingdom values
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, you can open them to Nehemiah chapter 5. We're going to pick up exactly where we left off last week. Nehemiah chapter 5, verse 14. I want to do a little bit of an extended summary today just to make sure. I try every week to add a little something to this in terms of just reminding you where we've been. It's important to keep that in perspective.
When we talk about Nehemiah, typically he's thought of or taught in seminars. If you go to some sort of a Christian business environment, you'll see over and over again, you'll see Nehemiah used as the example of a leader. Webster defines a leader as one who leads. What I did this week, because I think there's a corresponding side to this, we are leaders and followers simultaneously. When I say leader, I'm afraid, unfortunately, we think of somebody who's running a business, somebody who's maybe in a position of leadership in government, somebody with a title.
Indeed, that is leadership, but there's also this informal leadership. If you're at home and you've got two little kids, so I'll take my daughter. Several of you have asked how Sarah is doing with the baby. Two and a half weeks, and she's sleeping through the night. So that's good. Yeah, that's a big deal right there. So she's leading, and right now she's leading Gracie, who's three, and Reagan, who's one and a half, and Brooklyn, who's three weeks old. So she's leading them.
The corresponding side of that is simultaneously in different roles, we're followers. Webster defines a follower as one who serves another. So we're in those roles simultaneously. I think this series, more than any series I've ever done, is the hardest one for me to apply. It's just difficult because the application is so varied. It's difficult for me to get my arms around it and say, boy, here's an application. I can give you some, but I'm really counting on you applying these into your own life.
That's one. The second thing is this is one of those, and today is really one of those sessions, that causes a whole lot of thought process and kind of tension. So rather than relieve the tension, I prefer to add to it just a bit and let you grapple with what He's saying here.
Understanding the Wall Project
Nehemiah, every time we talk about him, we've got to go back to chapter 1, verse 3. He hears that the remnant is still in Jerusalem. They are in distress, and the wall is torn down. We never talked about the wall. My fear is when I say wall, you think of something maybe you'd put around a garden or something like this. Something that's maybe about 2½, 3 feet high, and then it's all around the city of Jerusalem.
The wall was used for protection. So the topography of the land would be rolling, so the wall, obviously constant at the top, would vary between 50 and 60 feet high, 70 feet high in some places. So that's the wall. This is a major project.
So Nehemiah hears the wall's down, and we saw in chapter 1, verse 4, he sits down, he weeps, he mourns, he fasts, he prays, he goes before God. The presumption is he's going to God and he's saying, what do you want me to do about this?
Seeking God's Direction
We went back, we touched on it, but let me reinforce it again. A lot of times in my life, I'll be in a situation where I'm not sure what I need to do. So it's not a moral issue. Should I sell drugs, should I not sell drugs? That's kind of clear. But now what do you want me to do in terms of these aspects of my life? A lot of times I'm not really sure.
I want to be, the target is to be God's guy, God's timing, God's way, do everything in His time, His way, be His guy. But I'm not sure always what that is, what that means. Nehemiah, I think, was there. When we're in a position like that, we try to keep options open, we try not to encumber ourselves in ways that would limit something that perhaps God wanted to do. And so we're looking.
Nehemiah's Strategic Approach
Nehemiah is convinced he's the man to go and to head up this project. So in Chapter 2, he goes to the king, very pragmatic. He understands he's a slave. If he's going to be a part of this, the king's going to have to sign on. So he gets the king to sign on, gets letters from the king to the guy who keeps the forest and says, give him the provisions.
He arrives in Jerusalem. He takes an inventory. Remember that? He didn't just show up and say, you guys have had years and years and decades to do this and haven't got it done. I'm the pro from Dover. I'm here to get it done. Doesn't say that. He takes an inventory, and then he gets the buy-in from the people, and the conclusion is we will build this wall.
Now what Zerubbabel and Ezra and others did not get done in decades, Nehemiah is going to get done in 52 days. But here's what we looked at the last two weeks. God's man, God's timing, God's way, God's job. Don't for a second think there isn't opposition.
The Reality of Opposition
So the opposition is going to come. Even then, if we go, okay, I get there's opposition, our tendency is to think like what we saw at the beginning of, I think it was Chapter 4, when we see Sanballat and Tobiah, we think of opposition that comes from the outside in. And, indeed, there's always going to be that.
But there's also internal opposition. When Paul is giving warnings to the churches, I think of Ephesus in particular, Acts Chapter 20, when he's saying goodbye to the leaders at Ephesus, here's what he says, watch out, be on your guard, not for the ones out there, but for the ones in here, the wolves in sheep's clothing. We can apply and apply and apply that to our own situation.
If you read my email, you would think the ACLU, the liberal left, the media, Barack Obama, you would think they were all the enemy. What Paul is saying is, okay, whatever that stuff is. The enemy are the guys and women who are in pulpits and Sunday school classes and doing things on Thursday morning, who are teaching something other than these truths. So you've got to really understand that and really expect the opposition. If you don't expect that
When opposition comes, it's going to crush you. It's going to cause you to question, "Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? If I was really God's guy, wouldn't everything be smooth and easy?" And the answer to that is absolutely not.
Picking Up Where We Left Off
When we get to today, picking up from last week, let me just take you through it again. Last week, the internal opposition came in chapter 5, verse 6. Nehemiah was very angry when he heard the outcry of the people. Here's what was happening: the people, because of the project and the abuse that the leaders were putting on them, were out of money. They were out of any sort of capital—seed money, literally seed money—to buy seeds to plant the next crop. Because of the severity of the governmental structure, taxes in particular, had restrained these people.
So Nehemiah gets engaged. He deals with His opposition. He confronts them. Finally, the guys say, "All right, we're wrong. We will do what you say." We made this distinction last week: there's a very different between having a plan and executing a plan. Very different between joining a gym and going to the gym.
I met on Monday with my new trainer. My guy moved—he's in another area. This is my new guy. I'm not sure I like this guy. He has me doing some stuff that I'm not sure are good for me. A lot of stretching, and it hurts. So I don't think I liked it. I think I liked the guy that didn't make it hurt. My point is this: he met with me and said, "Okay, here are the things you need to do," and then I don't see him again for three weeks. Between then and three weeks from now, though I've got a great plan and really a good routine, it doesn't matter if I don't do it.
This whole thing ends in chapter 5, verse 13. Nehemiah pulls the people together. He tells them what's going on. They say "Amen," and then the people did according to their promise. He said they were going to do it, and they did it.
A Parenthetical Insert We Cannot Ignore
When you get to verses 14 through the end of the chapter, verse 19, it's like a parenthetical insert that you could be tempted to almost ignore. But I don't want to do that, because I think it raises some real issues that you don't want to be dogmatic about, but you do want to address them.
On your outline, we're going to look at the contrast of leadership, the conduct of leadership, the compassion of leadership, and then what you're all interested in—me too—the compensation. What's the payoff on this?
The Conduct of Leadership: Givers vs. Takers
When you look at the conduct of leadership, successful leaders are givers. Unsuccessful leaders are takers. When you use words like "successful" in particular, that's totally a subjective term. The world clearly has a barometer for success. So when Fortune puts out their top 500, our assumption is they are successful in terms of numerical money, accumulation, wealth, assets.
I wrote the sentence—I think it's right: It's very difficult to live a life that's successful by the world's standards and maintain your spiritual, emotional, and moral equilibrium. I think that's right.
Now, the problem is it's so easy that it almost feels like piling on. I would never do that. I just simply say, look at it as an illustration—just take Tiger. Whatever you assume would be successful, that's him. Yet it appears, based on His own words—not me, because I don't know the man. I would know him if he walked in, but I don't know anything about him other than what he's told me. What he basically says is it's very difficult to live a life that's successful by the world's standards and maintain your spiritual, emotional, and moral equilibrium.
Not to beat him up, but simply say, he's my—here you go, this'll bug you—he's a lot more like you than you're like Paul. It just reinforces what the Bible tells us: that all that stuff's good. Do I like money? Yep. Do I like nice things? Yes, I like those. But if you think you're going to find meaning, purpose, and eternal satisfaction there, you aren't. They're not designed to make you satisfied. That's the whole principle: the more you have, the more you want. It's what we looked at when we studied Ecclesiastes. The more you make, the more you spend. When you were making 30 grand a year, you said, "If I can get to 40, I've hit the mother lode." Now 40's jump change, right? That's just how we were wired.
Nehemiah's Example of Self-Restraint
When you look in Nehemiah, here's what he's saying. What he's talking about here is really self-restraint in areas of freedom: "Moreover, from the day that I was appointed to be governor in the land of Judah, from the 20th year to the 32nd year of King Artaxerxes for 12 years, neither I nor my kinsmen have eaten the governor's food allowance. But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, took bread and wine from them, besides 40 shekels of silver."
Nehemiah's saying here, "Listen, a real leader is a giver. An unsuccessful leader is a taker."
The Corporate World and Economic Justice
I'm not sure where to go or how hard to go on this. I keep saying it—the fact I have to keep saying it may be alarming—but I'm a free market capital guy. But there's something offensive to me about a guy who makes 40, 50, $60 million a year, runs a company into the ground, and then you give him 40 million or 50 million more to go away. That doesn't seem right to me.
Now, I'm not making a judgment. I don't know what it's worth. Apparently, there's only a few guys that could do it, but I could do it as well as some of them have. I know that. Where I get tense is when I've got a guy that's making that kind of money, and then I've got somebody on the very bottom of the corporate food chain. Let's say a receptionist who's not being paid a fraction of the money that's necessary to live.
I'm simply saying in your world, those of you who can impact your sphere. You can't fix it either. I can't fix AIG. Obviously, no one can. I can't fix these things. I'm saying in your world.
So Haley, that's my daughter. She's a wonderful nurse. Haley is, and again, she's mine, so it sounds bad, but she is perfect, as perfect as a human's going to be. She's at the hospital in a nursing position. She took the job for one reason: she wanted to serve people.
So she's at the hospital, and they're promoting her, moving her along. They call her in one day, and they say, "Haley, not your boss, but your boss's boss wants to meet with you." So Haley's like me. I assume I did something wrong. Don't know what it is, but I've been caught.
A Different Kind of Recognition
So she goes in, and the boss—now we're up in the high stratosphere of her world—sits down and says, "Haley, I just got this letter from a guy who was in the hospital, very, very, very ill, and this is from him and his family. All they're telling us is there was a nurse named Haley who was absolutely amazing, who made their stay at Scottsdale Osborne beyond anything they could have imagined." And that's Haley.
They don't have a box, really, for Haley. She doesn't like to be late, so she'll get there about a half hour early because there's always highway traffic. She'll go to the room where they hang, and she'll grab either a book she's reading or maybe her little Bible, something that's not offensive. She's not bringing something like this to read. Just something in her little corner. She's doing her thing, and they don't know what to do with it.
So she decides she's going to quit and go to work at Crisis Pregnancy Center. She's going to go from this level of income to this level of income. Well, they have no box for this. So they're saying to her, "Why would you do this?"
Haley kind of explains a little bit. So they said, and Haley, this is really good—apple doesn't fall far from the tree here—they said, "Well, do you think this is providential?" And Haley said, "Well, what do you mean by providential?" "Well, do you think this is your divine calling?" And Haley said, "Well, what do you mean by divine calling?" I mean, that's what you do. You force people to define those terms.
Living Beyond Comprehension
It was incomprehensible to these people that somebody would take a job that was paying this and leave it for something literally that's a fraction of it, but then to say it's not about the money. I'm not trying to dump guilt on you. I'm just trying to have you take a look at this way of living. I don't think because you have this expense or this potential, I don't think it means you have to take it.
Anytime we talk about money, it's always awkward. If I talk about child rearing, everybody's fine with it. But when I talk about money and then use myself as an illustration, it always becomes tense. I've learned to live with that, but I don't know how else to explain it. I always look good in this story. So I'm going to look very good here.
When we started the church, I made a determination I wouldn't take a salary. So we've been at it now for 20 years. Church is a big church. And I, to this day, don't take a salary. I'm not saying that if you're in a church and you take a salary, there's something wrong with that. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I made the decision early on for a variety of, frankly, mixed reasons not to do that.
Ministry and Motivation
I make my living doing what I'm doing right here, right now. When you all—I don't even know who you are, I don't know how you do it—when you send money in, Sharon gets it. And then what we do is we pay the bills with the money that comes in. Again, I look very good in this story.
I want you to know I have every right to that money and that salary. And that salary at this level and this time, the way I do it, is six figure plus. I don't take it. Why, because I'm a super saint? No. I don't need it. I don't need it, and understand what I'm saying. Not that I'm rich, but it isn't going to change the way I live. And it's going to complicate, perhaps, my motives. I want to be really careful about that.
That's all Nehemiah's saying. Nehemiah's not saying everybody who builds a wall shouldn't get paid. And he's not saying he didn't take anything. He just said he didn't take everything. And you could argue, does that mean I'm not maximizing? I don't know. All I'm saying is just because it's there doesn't mean you have to have it.
The Contrast with Previous Leaders
The other side of the coin are the guys that are in verse 15, I think it is, and they're abusing. They're taking everything from the people. Do you notice that the previous governors laid a burden on them? Remember what these guys didn't do? They didn't get the job done.
If at least we were concerned about building the wall, at least we'd come back and go, "Well, gosh, maybe they took all the money, but they got the wall done." These guys didn't get the wall done. Look what happens under conduct. There's spiritual foundation, and there's a practical application. And these can't be separated.
The Fear of God as Foundation
Nehemiah says, "Even their servants domineered the people, but I didn't do it because of the fear of God. I also applied myself to the work on the wall. Didn't buy the land, and all my servants were gathered there for the work."
So here's what he's saying. There's a motive. It's at the end of verse 15. If you are a liner, underliner, circler in your Bible, you circle "I didn't do it because of the fear of God."
What made Nehemiah tick? He had a reverential awe for God and who He was. He understood what Solomon wrote in the book of Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and fools despise wisdom and instruction. If I really want to understand the world, to understand God and who He is and what He says, I need to be getting my arms around God communicating to me in this world. And Nehemiah said, "Here's what drives me. It's far more important to me..."
There's a book that's written, really a helpful book, especially if you struggle with what people think and how people view you. It's called When People are Big and God is Small. What happens is my life becomes driven by peer pressure. We think we outgrow that when we get to college, but we never outgrow it. The stakes just get bigger.
Some of you are wearing the very shirt today, or the slacks today, or the skirt today because you know what other people will think when you wear it. You want their approval. This is how they dress. This is where they live. This is where they go. This is what they drive. This is where they work. Nehemiah said the fear of the Lord is what's driving me. Because it's driving me, I want to please God. I want to please God in my heart, in my soul, in my mind, and with my actions.
Working Alongside His People
So he said, here's what I did, which obviously the other leaders didn't do. He said, I worked. There's that new show where you have the CEO going to work. I love the first guy at waste management who gets fired in his own company. That's perfect. All of a sudden this guy's going, "I had no idea that this is what our people did. I didn't know this was the strain we were putting on them." Nehemiah is building the wall. Really important. Can't disconnect it.
Living Out What We Believe
If you say you are a Christian and a follower of Christ, if Jesus is Lord and Master, can we define what it means to be a Christian? Christian at its core is what we believe. It's not how we behave. You have Buddhists, Hindus, atheists who all feed the hungry. Feeding the hungry does not mean you're a Christian. What makes you a Christian is what you believe. What you believe then drives and motivates how you behave. It's a practical expression of our faith.
The biggest screwing I ever got in my entire business career was from a guy who had a Bible about like this on the credenza behind him. I know there's two sides to every story. Well, there's two sides to this story: mine and mine. There is no side to his story. If his side is anything other than he screwed me, he's lying, he's compounding his sin. I'm still vivid about it. I've released it, I've let it go, I've forgiven him, but every time I see a big Bible, I think of this guy.
We hate that. So I'm with a group of guys the other day, not Christians, and they let me know what they hate about guys like me. "You're hypocrites." What they're saying is, you say this, but you do this. It gets a little dicey here because we're not perfect, so we sin. There's a distinction: a hypocrite is somebody who pretends to be something they aren't. We aren't that. We're forgiven people, saints, who still sin and screw up. What Nehemiah's saying is, if you say you're this, I ought to be able to see a physical manifestation of it.
Authentic Faith in Every Context
There was a big event out at the Bird's Nest on Monday night. It was so cool to hear some of the guys talk about it. They talk about several of the golfers and the guys who are sharing their testimony. Everybody gets all jacked up: "Here's this guy, he's on the tour, and he's a Christian and he's bold about it." Great, fine, I'm happy about it. Put me down for yes.
Here's my question: are you that way at your office? "Oh, no." How is that different?
The Power of Intellectual Honesty
There's a kid, a high school freshman, really smart, intimidatingly smart. Smarter than any of our staff. Way smarter than me. Brilliant kid. And a devout, hardcore atheist. He could argue it. I didn't want to mess with him. But he's just a brilliant kid. Because the high school's right across the street from the church, he starts hanging around with some of our kids. Our kids are bringing him over.
In this process, now he's a sophomore in high school, he comes to the sincere belief that there must have been a Creator. That's all he's moved. Then he concludes that if there was a Creator and He made this, that it was probably an expression of His love. So if He was a Creator who loved, He should have demonstrated that love. He would have demonstrated in some way through His creation, through something. If He was a Creator who loved, He would have wanted to communicate to the creature that He loved. So He probably would have done it through a writing.
This sophomore in high school starts taking the books. He takes the Quran, goes through it: error, error, error, gone. Book of Mormon: error, error, error, gone. He starts working through these books and he comes to the Bible and he's blown away because he cannot find any error. Still not done. All he is now is a really smart guy who's kind of softening.
Then he comes to this: as he's working his way through it, he comes to the resurrection and he says, "If the resurrection is real, this is the argument. If the resurrection is real, if Jesus truly rose from the dead, then this stuff is the real deal." That ought to take your breath away. If you're here today and you're neutral to negative, and you come to the realization that Jesus rose from the dead, that changes everything. Nobody's done that. Now you better listen.
This kid gets saved and applies all of that knowledge he's accumulated. He's reading Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards has two volumes that are this thick. The font is about eight and they're single-spaced. They look great on my bookshelf, but nobody in the world...
Jonathan Edwards didn't even read them. I don't think, I mean, it's huge. This kid one summer read both volumes and critiqued them. He graduates from high school. Well, he's valedictorian obviously. So they asked him to speak at the commencement address.
And he gets up and they said to him, he's looking for what are the parameters? And he said, just talk about your experience. Talk about the things that are significant to you. And he said, all right. So he got up and he talked about the staff and the teachers and how great everything was, how much he learned, how grateful he is. He talked about man and the great accomplishments of man. And they brought me a videotape. So he's talking about how man is in this and man has gone to the moon. And they're clapping and they're going, but they don't let him finish the sentence. Because the rest of the sentence is, in spite of this, man's heart is desperately depraved. And you can hear an audible gasp from the people that are there.
And it created all sorts of furor. So now I've got the guys going, well, if that was a Muslim, would you? I don't care if he's valedictorian. Let him talk about whatever he wants to talk about. You ask him to talk about what's significant to you. I don't care if a Mormon's valedictorian. His faith changed the way he lives. Same thing's true for you and me.
Conviction Shapes How We Live
Nehemiah gets this. He understands this. He understands that in the midst of this, there's a determination. There's a belief and there's an extension. And it manifests itself in the way you live.
So if you take an issue like abortion, you study it from a Christian perspective, I think it's very difficult to argue that that is not life in the womb. It's wrong to take that life. I think you obey the law in terms of the laws in the land. I think if they tell you or mandate you to perform an abortion or do an abortion, I think you rebel against that. And I think you work like mad to change these laws. Why? Well, because we live in this culture. And though we understand the government is not Christian that we have, it is the instrument God used to restrain immorality in the land.
You have to have a conviction of what you believe. I'm looking at Barack Obama and thinking about Ronald Reagan. When Reagan's two and a half years into that first term, they hate him. Those approval ratings are dropping like mad. I don't even remember that. You got lines, they get a block of cheese. You got people saying, I voted for this guy, I wouldn't vote for him again in a million years, but he was convinced, whether he's right or wrong, I'll let you all argue. He was convinced that what he was doing was right, but there was a time to get this done.
The president you have now is convinced that what he's doing is the right thing to do and the best thing in his mind to do for the country. You got two poles there and one seems right to me and the other doesn't, but what I'm grabbing at is at least there's conviction. At least you got somebody who is standing up for that. Do you? In the marketplace of ideas. And those chances are all around you. Opportunities are all around you.
Leadership Requires Compassion for Tangible Needs
When you get to this part of leadership, there's a compassion that comes from this. And the leader addresses tangible needs and the leader realizes emotional strength. So let me make sure we understand this. We believe that if we want to know God, we can know Him because He made Himself known through this book. That it doesn't matter to me what Oprah says or Rush says about God, I want to know what God says about God. That's how I'm going to know.
Most of the conversations that I have with people about God have a lot of, well, this is what I think and this is what I feel. All due respect, don't care what you think, don't care what you feel. God is, He's an objective truth, not subjective. Your view doesn't change Him. So you go the other way, and by the way, it's the only way you're going to find any meaning or purpose in life. If you go the other way and you say there's no God, then there's no value. If there's no value, then there's no meaning. If you don't have any meaning, then you're just like a plant that grows for a while and dies and goes away.
But as a leader, as a follower of Christ, now you realize that people are human beings that have tangible needs and they have emotional strain on them. Here's what Nehemiah looks at, verse 17: "Moreover, there were at my table 150 Jews and officials, besides those who came in from the nations around us. Now that which was prepared each day was one ox, six choice sheep, also birds prepared for me, and once in 10 days all sorts of wines were furnished in abundance. Yet for all of this, I did not demand the governor's food allowance because of the servitude was heavy on the people."
Nehemiah understood you got to eat. People have tangible needs, and he's there to meet them. He's saying I've got these people, they're working, no money, no seed, no anything, I'm going to meet those needs. Look what he's doing, I'm going to meet those needs, I'm not going to take it from the government, I'm going to meet those needs out of my own resources.
Meeting Needs in Difficult Times
People around you have real tangible needs. We got it now, right? 68% of the houses, Maricopa County, upside down, got it. Unemployment rate, I don't even know what it is in town. We drive, like most of you, we drive to San Diego, we probably drive over there maybe three times, we drove over there four times last year, which was kind of cool, God was good. On the way over, you drive through El Centro. The unemployment rate in El Centro is 28%. You got this hurt all around you. You have people that have tangible needs.
My fear, fear, is that we take an already bad situation and because things are tight, we use it as an excuse to squeeze the people who are the neediest even more. So I'll use an illustration, and I know you hate it, and the objective here is not to say you have to do this, but to think this through.
You're in a company, let's say, you're making 100 grand a year. That's not a lot of dough, right now it is to some, but 100 grand is not an enormous amount of dough. You got a receptionist that's making 15. I don't want rules and policies and regulations, I just want you to wrestle with it. Why is she making 15?
Well, that's what the market will bear. Okay, well, if I've got a receptionist who just graduated from college and she's living at home, I can get 15, I guess, maybe. But this one that you have is a single mom of three. Why not pay her 20? I got the market. Well, you know, money's tight, where are we gonna find it? Okay, I'll find it. Let's take five of your 100 and give it to her.
Because the five is not going to affect you. The five is going to revolutionize this girl's life. I'll tell you another thing, and you'll have the best receptionist you've ever had. You have somebody that, when it says five o'clock, there's nothing I hate more than at five o'clock to watch them like rats deserting a sinking ship pouring out of these high-rises. It makes me puke when I see that. Five o'clock, I'm done, I hate it. But I understand it. She isn't going to leave at five, you know.
The worst thing, I remember, to me in business, the worst thing you could ever do was go to an administrative staff person at a quarter to five and say, I really need this. It doesn't work. Well, then you should have had it in this morning at nine. And then you find out real quick who's running the office.
Leading with Principle Over Profit
All I'm saying, do you see that? Not solving it, not looking for a mandate, not looking for a law. I think those are fair questions to ask for a Christian. If you're a follower of Christ, the bottom line is not the bottom line. Is it important? Yeah, yeah. Do we need people that have money? I don't know that I ever got a job from a poor guy. Yeah, I mean, you need money.
It's kind of like Coach Wooden. Coach Wooden never talked, and I've read his stuff, but I've also talked to guys who played for him. He never talked about winning. Never talked about winning the game. He talked about, here's what we need to do, here are the things, and if we do them, we'll win maybe. Well, here was his record at Pauley Pavilion: 149 and two. So it worked out all right for him, okay? He understood the whole premise of this.
In this whole process, I'm with a guy the other day who's starting a church, and so there's no money. And I said, are you going to work? And he said, yes, I'm working for FedEx. I'm working 15 hours a week. Jeez, that's a little rough. He said, yeah, but you get full benefits. You think FedEx has a hard time getting those guys working?
Examples of Servant Leadership in Business
We had the same discussion when we did the Starbucks, right? Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz, I don't believe, is a follower of Christ. This is an amazing story. I don't know if you ever read "Pour Your Heart Into It," the Howard Schultz book. That book is an amazing book.
There's a lady down in the East Valley who runs, I don't know how many stores she manages. So she's not just a store manager, but she's not huge on the food chain. Her son committed suicide. Tragic. Howard Schultz, who, by the way, is busier than you, shows up from Seattle at the funeral. That's big. You don't think every barista in the world is talking about our CEO who's in charge of Starbucks International shows up here? That's big.
See that? He understands that there's tangible needs that people have, and he also understands that there's a strain. He said, I'm not going to do this because the people are under such pressure.
The Ultimate Deferred Compensation Program
Let me give you the last one. The payoff for the leaders later and the performances now. Nehemiah says, "Remember me, O God, for the good I've done according to all that I've done for your people." He's saying, here's the job, here's the task. It's the performances now. This is what I'm doing now. But ultimately, God, what I want you to do is to remember me. Show grace to me.
I wrote the sentence, or the phrase, I don't think it's new to me, but as followers of Christ, we're in the ultimate deferred compensation program. Now, my fear in talking about heaven, I heard "I Can Only Imagine" yesterday, the song, wonderful song. My fear in talking about heaven is we minimize the joy here on earth. My fear in talking about heaven is all we talk about is sweet by and by, blah, blah, blah, fine, yes. But even if there was no heaven, the Christian life is a better life here on this planet.
I was talking to a guy the other day, Christian guy, kid, really involved in everything, goes to school, gets to school, starts sinning his brains out. You can fill in the blanks. Comes back, filled with remorse, comes back, now drifts back out. And just to sit and listen to this person talk, and talking about the heartache, the pain, I didn't even have any joy. I had a momentary excitement. I didn't even have any lasting joy. That's the Christian life.
Seeing Beyond Yourself
Nehemiah comes along and he says, you know what? This is not about how much you can get. This is about something bigger than that. It means I understand I have opportunity here but I'm not going to take it all. I'm going to be a giver. I'm going to look at the people.
Remember how this started? Even the king in chapter 2. At least the king, who wasn't even a follower of Christ, didn't even believe in Nehemiah's God. At least the king was sensitive enough to look at him and go, gosh, something's wrong with you and you're not sick. What is it?
You've got people like that around you all day, don't you? Say yes right there. You've got people around you all day. You can walk in a church. I'm not an expert at church but I hang around it a lot and I watch and I'll see somebody come in. Let's say it was in here. You'll see somebody sitting over here with a Bible reading. Nobody's that...
godly. They either don't know anybody. I'll watch people who know each other and they've spent 50 years of their life together sit and talk to everybody and not one go over and talk to that person. Then when people say, "It's a cold and impersonal church," you're going, "Not me. I've got all my friends." How about that guy? This is not that hard. But it's kind of difficult to execute, isn't it?
Well, another week and not another brick has been laid on this project. We've got to get this wall built. We only have two more weeks to do it. We'll pick up right there next week.
Thank You that You love us and care for us. Thank You for Nehemiah. God, I pray we would be people who would take these things at the level we're at in our life and the place we are, that You would make us givers, not takers. That You would allow us to take what we believe and link it to how we behave. That we would understand that people have real, huge, tangible needs and emotional needs. And God, that we're not just grabbing for everything we can get. Our real payoff is knowing that You love us and we love You. God, we look forward to heaven, but we're just as excited about today. What You're going to do in our life here today, right now.