As I have said before, one of the most challenging aspects of leadership is the opinions of the people who are leading or are seeking to lead. It often feels like we are at the mercy of the personal perception of someone who has chosen to interpret what you have done through their lens. If their expectation has been met then we win, and if not we seem to lose. Rational thinking tells you how crazy this idea is. When you gather any number of people together, each of them seeing things through their own lens, you know that it is impossible to win everyones approval and we would be foolish to try.

However, the temptation to try and do so is high!

No one enjoys not winning and we would much prefer to have everyone happy so the temptation to tweak a bit here and there in order to keep people happy is always there.

It was comforting to me to read in the New Testament that the early church leaders felt these challenges as well. Paul talks about it early on in his letter to the Galatians.

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. Galatians 1:10 (NIV)

I love that last line; “If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Paul, as always, is being pretty clear here. He’s telling us that in order to be a servant of Christ we must give up the pursuit of pleasing people. It makes sense, because pursuing anything or anyone makes you a servant to the thing you are pursuing – therefore to pursue pleasing people makes you a servant to people. On the flip side pursuing Christ makes you a servant to Him.

Our call as Christian leaders has to be pursing Christ more than it is being right in the eyes of anyone else, even ourselves. I say this often, and I’m increasingly moving closer towards doing it in my everyday but as a leader whilst we must listen to ourselves and the opinions of others, our first call is to listen to Christ. From that place we must choose obedience to where He has guiding us above all else. Will we get it right? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But at the end of my days I want to be sitting wherever I have been placed knowing that throughout my leadership I chose what I believed God was calling me to do, rather than bend or break based on others opinions.

I might have heard God wrong every time but I’l take that above pursuing pleasing others.