The man behind the curtain

Wouldn’t it be great to be an all-powerful wizard? Someone like the Wizard of Oz? I think it is amazing how we want to believe that our leaders (read pastors, bosses, professors, governors or candidates) are somehow superhuman. [Of course, Californians do have the Terminator as governor, unfortunately he hasn’t been able to prevent the estimated $16 billion dollar budget deficit caused by the housing crunch. Apparently even the Governator is only human.]

I have spent some time in my life working and serving in the "institutional church." You know what I mean. I have seen denominational leadership and mega-church leadership up close. I have been on staff in a large church, and I have been part of the overseeing group in a church network. Here is the good news and the bad news. The good news? All of these leaders are "just ordinary people like you and me." The bad news? All of these leaders are "just ordinary people like you and me."

We want so much more from our leaders. We want their approval and we want them to recognize our contributions to the enterprise. We want them to be kind and calm. We want them to make good decisions and to know what is best for the organization. We want them to place our needs above their own. Unfortunately, like Dorothy, we end up noticing that there is a man behind the curtain pulling the levers that create the image of the larger than life Wizard. And that man behind the curtain usually looks all too much like a run of the mill, life-size human being. He has faults. He has flaws. He is self-centered, and flies off the handle. He misuses his influence and power. He walks all over us, and he doesn’t even know it. He hardly ever encourages us to be all that we can be.

To all of those people who have thought of me as a leader and eventually discovered that I was just a man behind the curtain, I apologize. A leader I admired used to say something like, "I’m just a fat man trying to get to heaven." That seems like a self-deprecating and humble statement. Well I am a lot like that leader, I am just a guy trying to fake it until I can make it like the rest of us, a man behind the curtain.