New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

A friend of mine is having a ceremony tomorrow for his 13 year-old son, encouraging him -- now that he is thirteen -- to begin to think and act as a man.  He sent out an email inviting some of his friend to send in an encouraging word for his son that he can then cut and paste into a bound booklet to present to his son.  What a tremendous blessing and encouragement to a young man.

My written submission went like this:

As a man leads, so goes his family…

As a man, God has given us the mantle of leadership and like it or not, we must lead.  As young men like you come of age, they need to aspire to all of the Godly traits of a leader and prepare themselves to lead well.  These leadership traits apply to family leadership, church leadership, business leadership and civil leadership.

We see many examples in the Bible of a man leading his family poorly:

• In the rebellion of Korah, we see his family, his employees and all of his goods destroyed because of his sin: (Numbers 16:31-32 And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses [“houses” in this case means “households” including wives and children], and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.)
• In the sin of Achan, we again see the man destroyed along with his family and all of his possessions: (Joshua 7:24-25 And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of Achor.  And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the LORD shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.)
• In the account of Daniel in the lion’s den, we see a similar fate for the men that conspired against Daniel: (Daniel 6:24 And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.)

Among many other examples, we see that Eli lost his sons and Samuel’s sons were unfit to lead the nation of Israel, all because of the father’s lack of leadership.

A positive example of “as a man leads, so goes his family” is the jailer in Acts who came to faith in Christ along with his family: Acts 16:29-34 Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.  And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.

There are many responsibilities of a leader and I believe that the book of Nehemiah provides an excellent example of leadership.  I would encourage all men, young and old to read the entire book regularly as a reminder of Godly leadership as a reminder of the responsibilities of a leader as follows:

1. Devotion – a leader is responsible for his Devotion to God
2. Vision – a leader is responsible for casting the Vision
3. Preparation – a leader is responsible for the Preparation necessary for establishing the Vision
4. Provision – a leader is responsible for the Provision necessary for building out the Vision
5. Communication – a leader is responsible for the Communication of the Vision
6. Protection – a leader is responsible for the Protection of those in his charge
7. Instruction – a leader is responsible for the Instruction of those in his charge
8. Compassion – a leader must lead with Compassion with his heart turned towards those he is leading
9. Action – a leader is responsible for taking Action and compelling those he leads to Action
10. Application – a leader is responsible for the Application of his leadership responsibilities -- the manner in which he leads

Young man, I charge you to learn to lead well, because as a man leads, so goes his family, his church, his country and his world.