Leaders and Followers

A few entries ago I wrote about the impact that teachers had on my life. Most specifically I mentioned the area of reading. Now having been a member of this profession for one short week, I realize I should have been more comprehensive in my praise of those who have been in that place of leadership in my life. It is an awesome responsiblity to hold that position and I continue to be amazed at the level of work and prayer that are required to even make a stab at keeping up. Having said that, I am going to move on to the actual point of this blog entry.

One of the classes that I am currently teaching is World History. I was worried about this class because there is so much to cover in such a short amount of time and I want to be as detailed as possible in my lectures. Last week we covered the Roman empire, the week before the class learned about the Greeks and this week we move on to the Arabs. As I was writing my lectures for this coming week, I was struck by something. In each civilization, empire and peoples we have and will study, there are leaders and there are followers. Even before organized governments, people themselves organized themselves. We are just wired to organize into some sort of ordered society. Those people, good or bad, who had the gift that allowed them to inspire people to follow them used those gifts to lead their society, and those who were to be led fell into step behind them. I see this in my classroom as well, those students who have dynamic personalities that draw other students to follow them. Each role is important, without followers there would be no one to lead. And withouth leaders all of the rest of us would wander around aimlessly. Each civilization in history has followed this same pattern. There is truly nothing new under the sun!

Today our pastor spoke on the Body of Christ and the importance of each part of the Body. This lesson brought me back to my thinkings on leaders and followers. Sometimes a person is a leader in one thing and a follower in another. No matter what role, we are a vital part of the work Christ is doing in the world. There are times when we are called on to take a role of leadership and there are times when God places a person in a place of authority to lead us, either way, He is our ultimate leader and the perfect example of how one should act when placed in position of authority.

These are the things I have been dwellng on this weekend as I am called on to try to lead my classes into a better understanding of the history of God's creation; thought I would share them with you.

Thank you for your prayers as I have taken on this new task. You will never know how much I appreciate you all.