GLANCE THROUGH TODAY’S NEWSPAPER and chances are good you will find another story of leadership breakdown. We no sooner had put Watergate to bed and finished wading through the Washington sex scandals than we were standing face to face with yet another delicate matter, called by some “Korea-gate”—foreign influence-peddling in the congressional arena.

The whole Ugandan crisis was basically a crisis of leadership. And the unveiling of a General Motors plant’s substituting Chevrolet engines in certain models of Buicks and Oldsmobiles was, at the bottom line, a breakdown in leadership.

A similar scene exists today in many churches, Christian organizations, and educational institutions. Although things may appear smooth and stable on the surface, beneath the thin veneer it is not unusual to find internal strife or organizational confusion. Traditionalists versus innovators. Some yearn for new, fresh, less-structured approaches to meet the challenge of a more spontaneous generation of participants. Others prefer a fixed philosophy, staying with the status quo, steering clear of fads and ever-changing styles. The crying need for leadership comes through loud and clear.

So much of our personal frustration in daily living comes as a direct result of faulty leadership-tensions at work, communication breakdowns in the community, power struggles at the Tuesday night precinct meeting, and mismanagement of our children and homes.

Charles R. Swindoll, Hand Me Another Brick (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998).

I have just completed a series of lessons based on the book of Nehemiah. They are available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions, as well as part of my Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription service. For a medium-sized church, lesson subscriptions are only $10 per teacher per year. Lessons correspond with three of Lifeway’s outlines as well as the International Standard Series.

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