Matt's Muzings
Leadership From the Heart
Asia:
I have just returned from a trip to Asia and God has touched my heart.
When Celia, Joshua and I left Singapore in 1988, it was going to be for sabbatical. Since then, I traveled back a couple of times to teach but in this last season of time it has been 7 years since I was in Asia.
During this time I was a little busy with research and trying to finish a painful thesis and exam that loomed ever before me. I didn't realize it but my heart forgot Asia. Don't get me wrong, my head didn't forget. I know intellectually the reasons and held past memories of what beauty there was out there, but my heart forgot. There was not this inward push to go back out there. This longing or pining to be there. It had just become a place.
Then this trip came along. At the Regional Conference in Thailand, Celia and I walked into our first, large meeting and Elisha was leading. I had not seen him in years. In the 80s, we worked together and struggled together when he was young man in his early years of walking with God. Then he went to India and spent 12 years working, serving Jesus and now he serves Him as the Director of YWAM Malaysia. To see him in his leadership was a thrill.
I saw another friend, a young Indonesian, whom we sent out from Singapore to do work in Kalimantan years ago. He pioneered 23 churches there and he is still pioneering, now in Myanmar (Burma) in training and church planting. Another thrill to see the leadership and faithfulness to God in him.
There were almost 400 people from the Pacific and Asia at this conference and I got to be with them. Old friends and new friends, some of them, hero's of the faith.
Singapore was next. More time with some of my favorite people. Food and more food! Catching up and hearing what God is up to. What a treat!
I guess you could say it was like food for my heart. It fed deeply on Asia and my heart is stirred up. I have a place out there. Leadership training is desired and I want to be involved. I am planning another trip in November.
I remember why God led me into more training and why I went through all that work. I remember why I am in Hawaii with the University of the Nations in Kona.
Okay, what does this have to do with leadership? Leadership is about passion. It is about working from the heart. It is about not forgetting, why you do what you do, and not just remembering what you are supposed to do.
Daniel Goleman writes in his book, Emotional Intelligence:
"... led Dr. Damasio to the counter-intuitive position that feelings
are typically indispensable for rational decisions; they point us in the proper
direction, where dry logic can then be of best use. While the world often
confronts us with an unwieldy array of choices, the emotional learning that
life has given to us sends signals that streamline the decision by eliminating
some options and highlighting others at the outset. The
emotions then matter for rationality. In the dance of feeling and thought
the emotional faculty guides our moment-to-moment decisions, working hand-in-hand
with the rational mind, enabling - or disabling - thought
itself. The key to sounder personal decision-making, in short: being attuned
to our feelings."
Leaders are not driven by feelings, but they are passionate about what they are doing or they could not survive the harshness and pain of leadership.
I feel renewed, as my heart is alive and full. There are new feelings I have not had in years. It gives me a new strength to step out and believe God to serve my brothers and sisters in Asia and the Pacific.
I trust your heart is stirred with passion. I trust you are aware of the
feelings that remind you of why you are doing what you are doing. I trust
you are not like me in that you let your heart forget the important things
in life.