Godly Leaders Seek Platforms, Not Stages

We live in an online world of instant but fleeting fame. With the right 4-minute video going viral or a creative post, we can become an overnight sensation. We can develop a rising online addiction to the number of “views” or “likes” that gives us positive feelings of significance or importance.

We even see this as it relates to trips or vacations. People used to define the success or satisfaction of a trip based on the fond reflections and memories they carried as they came home. Now the definition of success or satisfaction can subtly be tied by the number of “likes” or “views” we get on the continual pictures we post during the trip. Was it a good vacation? Yeah, we had hundreds of likes on all our pictures!

Of course, no one wants to live his or her life anonymously. No one’s ultimate goal is to be unappreciated, unacknowledged, or unnoticed. There are God-designed elements in us for significance and a shared life, but they must ultimately be rooted in Christ. We must be careful that our sense of significance doesn’t get tied to our culture’s definitions.

People that genuinely begin to follow Jesus based on His amazing love and sacrifice often start out with Christ-centered intentions to make Him known. But these Christ-centered intentions in us can get hijacked along the way with just an ounce of success or admiration taken the wrong direction.

I have been thinking about the difference between the idea of a platform or a stage. A platform in its most Godly sense is a place of influence to communicate the goodness of God to others. It may be our talents, a job, our network of family and relationships, organizations we belong to, responsibilities we carry, or anything that gives us influence with people. Platforms are good and important if they are used to make admirers and followers of Jesus not admirers and followers of ourselves.

A stage, on the other hand, can be more about acquiring the admiration of others and making followers of ourselves. A stage is about self-promotion rather than Christ- exaltation. Self-promotion was the root of Satan’s original sin (Is 14:12-15). He has been tempting mankind with it ever since.

C.S. Lewis expressed it well in The Great Divorce; “Every poet and musician and artist, but for grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the love of telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about him.”

Anytime we become overly self-focused, it leads to dangerous ground. A couple of years ago my wife and I were taking a boat tour on the riverwalk in San Antonio, TX, when our guide told us something that was very culturally revealing; “Twelve people had to be rescued from the river this summer because they walked into the river while staring at their phones.” Another revealing statistic I recently came across was from research released by Carnegie Mellon University, a report at the end of 2016 indicating that 127 people had died in the past few years taking selfies.

Using God-given platforms correctly and avoiding their becoming a self-promotional stage can be evaluated by the acid test for loving God which is demonstrated by genuinely caring about and loving others. We all know His great love for us as seen in John 3:16, but our love in return must be linked to the evidence of walking in God’s love (1 John 3:16). “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” If we try to live in John 3:16 and don’t follow it to 1 John 3:16, we will tend to turn God’s precious love for us into self-focused narcissism.

Let’s make sure that at the center of any platform God gives us we are living for the glory of God which is revealed by promoting Jesus and laying down our lives for others.

Originally published onwww.c2cfamily.org