Biblical Leadership: What Is Your Leadership Purpose?నమూనా

4. Add Value to my Company / Organization

Here’s the purpose of your leadership that we have uncovered so far:

• Provide for family
• Support church & the needy
• Apply & develop myself

While these are all good purposes, there’s more – much more.

Remember Jesus’ parable of the ten talents from the last reading? In that story, Jesus teaches that each of the managers is responsible to invest with what was given them for an increased return back to the master.

Similarly, you too are called to provide a return on investment from your leadership gifts – back to God but also to your place of employment. 

Check the words of the prophet Jeremiah to the Israelites in exile:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “…seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”  – Jeremiah 29:4,7

Even though the Israelites were trapped in a pagan land, God tells them to work for its prosperity – because when it prospers, so will they.

In the same way, God wants you to do your very best for the financial and market success of the company or organization where you find yourself. Because, when your work blesses them, you too will be blessed.

It’s part of your calling – your purpose – to do your very best wherever you find yourself. Just like the Apostle Paul says:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.  – Colossians 3:23-34

But it doesn’t end there… as you add value to your organization, your reputation, and influence within that organization increases.

This goes hand in hand with an increase in your leadership abilities and sets you up to even more powerfully execute the real purpose God has in placing you where you are.

Of course, developing talents and rising reputation also increases your ability to execute your base purposes of supporting your family, church, and the poor & needy – just as the hard work put in by Paul allowed him to provide for others, so it is with you too:

I [Paul] have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’  – Acts 20:33-35

All of this is good but we have not yet uncovered your primary purpose – and we’ll start on that next time.

Reflection / Application

1. Can you see your purpose for being placed in the organization where you now work as a financial and market success of that organization? How so – what impact have you had?
2. Are the answers to the above question the primary reason you joined the organization where you now work? Or do you see other reasons why God may have placed you there?
3. If you had to identify those “other reasons”, what might they be? Can you list 2 or 3 of them?