Jesus Our Mentor by Jim Herrington, R. Robert Creech and Trisha Taylor Leaders are not expected to make the journey of personal transformation alone. We have apprenticed our lives to Jesus to follow him. He is our Teacher, our Coach, and our Guide on the journey. He is also our Example. Observing how he responded when under pressure from every direction helps us see what it is we are after.

Your initial response to a review of Jesus' life may easily be, "Well, of course, Jesus got it right. Jesus always got it right. How does that help me? I'm not Jesus." None of us are. We are sinners who struggle to do what is right. We are men and women who yield to the pressure of relationships daily. We often know the right thing to do and do not do it. Sometimes we know a response is wrong, but we do it anyway; Paul described this struggle in Romans 7. The questions to ask yourself are: How do I get to the place where I am consistently able to choose a response rather than simply to react? How can I grow emotionally and spiritually to the place where I am capable, more often than not, of choosing what I believe to be God's will in my role as leader rather than yielding to the pressures to do something else? This is the transformational journey.

One caveat: Dallas Willard points out, in The Divine Conspiracy, the futility of attempting to direct our lives by asking the question "What would Jesus do?" when we are not practicing the spiritual disciplines that Jesus practiced regularly in his life. Attempting to "perform" as Jesus did when we are under pressure to compromise only frustrates most of us.

Small steps along the journey can produce an effect out of proportion to their size. Consider the impact of small improvements. What do you suppose is the difference in salary between a professional baseball player whose batting average is .250 and one whose average is .350? In today's market the jump in salary would be astronomical. The first player is average; the second would be considered a superstar. But what is the difference in performance? The .350 hitter gets only one more hit in every ten times at the plate, or about one more hit in every two and a half games. The difference in performance is slight. The impact of that slight difference is enormous.

The leader who develops the capacity to resist the pressure of relationships even a little more consistently is light-years down the road of effectiveness. Such a leader, whose emotional and spiritual maturity grows, leads a more effective congregation, made up of people whose own lives are growing spiritually and emotionally as well. We need not expect to be able to do it just as Jesus did. We need only do the things in our lives that can produce such personal transformation, and over time we will see the difference it makes in our leadership.

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Excerpted from The Leader's Journey by Jim Herrington (January 2003, Cloth, $23.95 ) by permission of Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint.

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Jim Herrington is pastor of Harbor Church in Houston, TX. R. Robert Creech is senior pastor of University Baptist Church in Houston, TX. Trisha Taylor practices through the Union Baptist Asssociation Center for Counseling in Houston, TX.

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