LeRoy Eims - Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be: Lessons On Leadership from the Bible

BE THE LEADER YOU WERE MEANT TO BE

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com; Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved; NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved; KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain.); NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org.)

The author has added italics to Scripture quotations for emphasis.

LCCN 2012936138

ISBN 978-1-4347-0266-1

eISBN 978-1-4347-0507-5

1975, 2012 LeRoy Eims

Previously published by Victor Books 1975, 1996 by LeRoy Eims

The Team: Don Pape, Susan Tjaden, Amy Konyndyk, Renada Arens, Karen Athen

Study Guide: Susan Moroney

Cover Design: Nick Lee

Third Edition 2012

To Mrs. Dawson Trotman,

woman of God,

spiritual mother to thousands,

in every corner of the earth.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

As a committed follower of Christ and student of leadership, I am honored to write the foreword to this book.

The word classic is sometimes used loosely but I believe this to be a classic text on biblical leadership. Its author, LeRoy Eims, was the director of public ministries for The Navigators and the author of fourteen books. Although he went home in 2004, his wisdom lives on in the pages of Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be .

I believe those who lead or who have led write the best leadership books. Eims was no armchair author. The ideas he shares in this book were gleaned from the Scriptures, tried and tested in his life of service, and wonderfully illustrated by his stories.

Oswald Chambers advised, Dont read to remember; read to realize. I encourage you to heed his advice and to read this book slowly with pen in hand. It deserves to be considered carefully as it is dense with leadership principles and practices.

We live in a faster world than Eims did. Too often we accept the superficial over the substantive and settle for quick, easy solutions rather than doing the hard work to find a superior answer. Slowing down to read carefully is challenging; making the time to internalize what youve read is even more difficult. Once youve highlighted the principles and practices most relevant to you and the leadership challenges you face, your true work has just begun, and that is the deliberate practice of what youve read. Thats when youll most benefit from Eimss wisdom.

Servant leadership is a redundant phrase. I believe all true leadership serves the greater good, and that anything that serves only the leader is an act of ambition. Youll find a consistent theme of service in this book and recognize that the author, while eminently qualified to address this subject, writes with humility. We should aspire, as he did, to learn as much from our failures and setbacks as our successes.

The book of Ecclesiastes says that of the making of many books there is no end and that there is nothing new under the sun. Experience shows both these statements to be true, but that doesnt mean we shouldnt keep reading and rereading to think clearly and learn consistently from the timeless truths that well-written books like this offer.

Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be is a book for the ages based on The Book of the Ages.

Lead on.

Mark Sanborn

President of Sanborn & Associates Inc.,

award-winning speaker, and best-selling author of The Fred Factor and You Dont Need a Title to Be a Leader

PREFACE

There are leaders who demand respect and then there are leaders who command respect. My father was a man who commanded respect because of his life and leadership. This journey to becoming an effective leader began in 1956 when he was asked by Dawson Trotman, the founder of The Navigators, to go to Omaha, Nebraska, to start the Navigator ministry in the Midwest. His responsibility was to win men and women to Christ, disciple those who responded to the gospel, and train those disciples to repeat the process in the lives of others. Second Timothy 2:2 became his guide: And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

In addition to his basic ministry, he was given the responsibility to recruit and send trained leaders to take the gospel to the nations. My father responded to the challenge by engaging in an extensive study on leadership. He checked out some twenty-five books from the library on leadership, and he and his team began a month-long examination and analysis of the subject. What they found was amazing. Most of the major truths on leadership were also found in the Bible. That discovery inspired him to begin a nineteen-year study and application of the Scriptures and what they had to say about leadership. This book is a practical tool to be used in applying the God-given leadership principles that my dad lived and inspired others to live. It is our familys desire that this resource will help you Be the Leader

Your family needs you to be.

Your coworkers desire you to be.

That God meant you to be.

In His service,

Randy Eims

INTRODUCTION

In 1956 Dawson Trotman, the founder and director of The Navigators, asked my wife and me to go to Omaha, Nebraska, and open up the Navigator ministry in the Midwest.

My prime responsibility was to win men and women to Christ, disciple those who responded to the gospel, and train those disciples to repeat the process in the lives of others. Second Timothy 2:2 became a guide: And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

In addition to this basic ministry, I was to recruit and send leaders to fill the ranks of men and women who would take the message of the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth.

I determined to do a study on leadership to help me train twelve potential leaders who were part of our ministry.

To begin this study on leadership, I checked out twenty-five books from the Omaha Public Library and spent the day going over them. From these twenty-five books I chose twelve and gave them to the twelve men I was training in leadership. After one month we all gathered for a day of sharing what we had learned from the books we had read.