Leadership under Judgment

And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable. (Isaiah 3: 4, 5)

Allow me to wade into the political for a moment.

And I do this because of the constant outcry I continue hearing.

Young people are disappearing, some more or less forever while some others are later found dead, and not from suicide.

The abductions have taken a very ugly turn.

And any parent will be touched by another parent’s child disappearing or dying needlessly, even when it is in the line of duty from politically instigated wars.

It is not right for a leader to take another parent’s child to a war when their own is securely pursuing their studies, especially when the said war is for the purposes only beneficial to the leader and his small clique.

Think of the was in the DRC or Sudan for instance.

In the past, kings went to war. They and their sons led the war effort from the front.

I have said and will say it again. It is wicked for a leader to seek medical treatment abroad or even in private facilities when his people are unable to afford the measly funded and poorly running public facilities.

It is wicked when the children of the people paying to keep his position have to discontinue their education because they can’t afford the fees when the leader’s children are pursuing their education overseas using the taxes the same people are giving.

It is wicked for a leader to take his children for studies in other nations even as the education institutions and systems under his leadership are dying of neglect.

It is wicked for a leader to force health insurance on his people yet procure private insurance for himself and a few of his friends.

It is wicked for a teacher in a public school to take his children to a private school.

That is simply fleecing the people one is leading, the ones paying his bills. You are behaving as if they are employing (paying) you to steal from them.

And this goes even to us ministers of the Gospel of Christ because many behave just like the leaders they condemn as wicked and insensitive. It is actually worse when it is us who have the higher calling to be so separate from the ones we lead.

And that is irrespective of whether the ‘congregation’ is ‘demanding’ your exaltation.

The essence of leadership and ministry is understanding where the people you are leading are. It is understanding intimately how they live. It is, like Christ, dwelling with them, among them.

The fact is that you divorce yourself from their circumstance yet insist that they continue funding that dichotomous living.

To imagine a gospel minister having a gun and being surrounded by body guards and bouncers!

The people who have seen us grow may not notice the dichotomy in our leadership because it happened gradually. They will wink at that hypocrisy because they think our past sacrifices demand their allowing us a slack.

But our children will not have those blinders on them.

That is why Gen Z are causing upsets everywhere.

Remember they overthrew the Bangladeshi government that everybody had tried unsuccessfully for over two decades!

Those double standards are offensive to their sensibilities. They are unable to close their eyes to them. And that is irrespective of where they are in the dichotomy. That is why even senior government leaders have had their children abducted because privilege does not close someone’s eyes to the trash we are calling leadership.

Worse still, they can access information as has never happened in any other generation. And they can communicate the same in unprecedent ways.

You may close one avenue and discover they have ten other even better ways to do the same.

A simple illustration is useful though probably unrelated to this.

The other day, US blocked TikTok from their land, albeit temporarily. A week later another Chinese app burst through to almost crash their tech share values. And do not be surprised if another one still breaks through soon.

Why does our verse say that we will be led by children and babes? Is it what is happening?

Who is a leader?

A leader is the one who knows what needs to be done and shows the way to do it, preferably by example.

Our hypocrisy is being exposed by our children. Our double standards are being laid bare by them.

It is only wise if we followed their leadership by making our leadership worth emulating.

They are not fighting to be leaders.

Or do we not remember them calling themselves leaderless?

They simply want us to be accountable for our leadership. They want our leadership to be worth their respect.

Our lack of transparency is completely transparent to them since they have tools to get into our closets to see what we do in secret. Those secret bank accounts are not secret to them. Those closed-door meetings are not closed to them. They have technology no other generation possessed.

Or you do not remember this young man overseas who used to track celebrity jets and there was nothing they could do to him because he was withing his legal rights?

We are therefore foolish to think we can subdue them.

We may call them used but in our opaqueness hand them a blank cheque to fight on and multiply.

You see, in the past, young people were not the targets in political intimidation and persecution. A young person being abducted was to reach his father or subdue him.

Remember that even in Exodus pharaoh had no problems with Israel leaving provided the children remained?

And what finally finished them? God hit at their children. Then they actually forced Israel to leave their land.

Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land. (2Kings 3:27)

This king used the sacrifice of his son to get a breakthrough that had refused to come.

Children are never targets in any war. They can be used to sway the battle one way of the other. But they are never used as targets.

Even in our cultures, it was an abomination to kill children, even immature boys, in a war. And there were many wars then.

The fact that we must abduct our children for calling out our duplicity is absurd and grossly wicked.

The fact that we must go in circles to explain those abductions is abominable. The fact that no one is willing to take responsibility for the same is insane.

Children become our leaders when we refuse to allow God to lead us. They will lead us because we have refused to lead according to God’s standards.

It is therefore judgment on our generation to let our leadership to slide so low as to leave God no option but to release our children (and to some even grandchildren) to show us the way forward.

You may remember that it is the same thing that happened to Israel when God rejected Saul and chose a boy whose father did not think qualified when he was told to bring all his sons.

This means that we are faced with two options

We can like Saul fight the lessons God is bringing to us as the abductions are demonstrating.

Or we can take the lessons and change and make our leadership consistent with the kind of leadership God approves that is worth the respect of our children.

With the first option we are opening ourselves wide to further judgment and eventually self destruction as happened with Saul.

With the second we will repent and agree to live within the constraints of God’s revelation.

This will bring about restoration, even revival, in all spheres of our endeavour.

But we do not have much of an option.

It is important to state clearly that this is not directed at the political leadership though it also speaks to and about them. It is directed at God’s people and the structures they run; churches, ministries, businesses, etc.

It is not an insult when your child challenges your leadership with the view of helping you change it positively.

What is an insult is when you take it as an insult and respond to it with an iron fist.

This will for sure bring God’s judgment, the judgment that the challenge was meant to forestall.

Is our generation up to that challenge?

Will we tame our greed by ensuring that the resources God allows to pass through our hands are used as God directs?

Will we stop being know-it-all leaders and allow others to participate in our decision making?

Will we listen, and properly so, to the people we lead to know what their needs are before seeking to meet the needs we think they have?

Will we burn the midnight oil, not in seeking for better ways to better our lot, but in seeking to better the lot of the people God has allowed us to lead?

Will we become a little bit (probably a lot) more transparent in our leadership?

You see, it does not take a rocket scientist to associate my lifestyle with corruption if I can in less than a year buy a car worth more than my year’s salary.

Yet it might not be direct corruption.

Those positions attract some extra perks through the relationships they attract.

And I will give the example of a pastor to explain this.

He is revered far and wide for his dedication to his calling. Meaning he is quite influential.

He is invited to boardrooms to offer a prayer. And of course they will give him something.

However, that is not what I am aiming at though it also fits here.

He can call the CEO or board at any time and they will be overly attentive to his any request.

Now this applies to many boards and businesses.

Now suppose someone has a child who has cleared university needing placement on the job market. Or a parent of a child who has been called for a course or university or school yet they would prefer another. Or someone has been pursuing a contract or payment for one.

These people will go to the pastor to express their anxiety and/or request for prayer.

This pastor may just need to make a single call to the right office and those issues would be sorted in a jiffy.

Why? Because the pastor’s word is not just another word.

Now imagine the level of gratitude these will possess. What wouldn’t these people give this pastor in gratitude?

What would you call that gift? What would it have been given for? Does it belong to the pastor or the church that has allowed him to minister?

Incidentally that is the public office everywhere.

That car or goat or suit I received by virtue of my position belongs to the office, meaning to the entity or persons who have placed me in that office.

And I am very aware of that as a minister.

That is why I must ask God what He would like me to do with the support I continue receiving as I minister to His people.

There are times He has told me that the moneys and things I have received are not for my use. That He will send me the ones they were for. And He did it.

Incidentally, many of those times I had very pressing needs. But the choice was simple. Obey and release as I wait for His intervention or disobey and meet His wrath.

Let us go back to our calling as leaders and ministers. Let us establish whether we are walking according to the call we received when we received it.

Probably that is why God has made our children our leaders. To get us back to where we began with Him. Because everybody else is scared of confronting us with the truth.

Or do you not remember the old story of the emperor’s new clothes where it was his child who was bold enough to tell him that he was naked when others were applauding his fashion sense?

Let us not sink that low.