What if I work with a self-promoting leader?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/what-makes-leaders-great-1-corinthians-4-and-9/

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week, as we’re going through the letter to the Corinthians, we talked about the mark of poor leadership and the marks of great leadership. We said the mark of poor leadership is promotion of self, where great leadership sees whatever influence we have as a humble stewardship.

It was more so given to us and something we achieved. We labor for others.

We’re gracious under criticism. So the question comes in this week, what if I serve with someone who is a poor leader, who has lots of self glorification, promotion of self, whether that’s my boss or a parent or I’m on a volunteer team? What if I’m, what if I serve with somebody or live with somebody who is very self oriented?

What do I do? And so first I would say pray for that person, continue to pray for that person.

And then second, I, you could say confront that person. But I, it’s not like I wouldn’t recommend saying, hey, cut it out, instead of approaching the person that way, you can approach the person and say, hey, you know, what you’re doing isn’t actually ever going to fill your emptiness or your void, whatever promotion of self behavior they’re doing.

So it could be in a meeting, they’re trying to take credit for everybody else’s work, or the blame really is on them, but they’re doing everything they can to avoid any kind of responsibility for what went wrong. And you see them either taking too much credit or not accepting any blame and you can just say, hey, you know, even if you get all the credit ever for everything, that’s still not, that’s still not going to fill what you’re trying to fill within you.

It’s not going to lead to the contentment that you think it will.

Just a little nudge like that. And then if the person is a Christian, you can take another step with, you know, they’re really trying to avoid blame. And you can just say, hey, look, you have the identity of Christ. Your righteousness is never in question. You have already been judged by the judge of the universe and he has, you know, found you spotless.

So whether you are blamed for this one instance right here or not, it doesn’t change your innocence on the grand kind of cosmic scale just to be reminding people where their identity is. Because anybody who is trying to glorify themselves, they’re not doing that just because they like being mean, or they’re doing that because they think they need that for some kind of wholeness or satisfaction.

Or security. They feel, you know, insecure if they’re blamed, or they feel insecure if they don’t have enough credit. And so you got to point them to where security is.

And the only place that true security is, which is Christ. And so when we encounter someone else that’s glorifying themselves, you got to point them to the freedom that’s available in Christ. Well, I hope that helps, and we’ll see you next time.