Contrasting Leaders

I had an interesting experience the other day at work, which I shared with a couple of friends, one of whom suggested I blog about it. So I am :)

As it is approaching the end of the year, my office, like many offices I'm sure, had a Secret Santa day. So we all chose the name of a colleague, and set about buying them a present, as is fairly normal. Now, it came to the day before the scheduled Christmas morning tea where the Secret Santa gifts would be handed out. And the team leader sends out an email saying that it would be really cool if we all as a team put some money in and got our manager a gift from the team.

Allow me to digress by saying that I strongly believe in honouring our leaders higher than what is considered normal. Especially if said leader does a great job, and still maintains a good relationship with those under them, as my manager has done.

So, when this suggestion was put forward, I immediately responded with an offer of financial support, as well as a couple of ideas as to what to get. While I like to think of myself as a generous kind of guy, I was surprised by the response I received. The team leader approached me quietly and said that I was being more than generous with my offer, and therefore could I please give less. After recovering from my initial shock, after all this is the first time I've ever been told "sorry I can't take your money, there's too much of it". I acquiesced and gave half the amount originally offered.

This brought to mind a very real contrast between the church and society in general. I didn't offer that much money, it was under $30.00, and to me it was no big deal. But apparently to most people, it is a very big deal: one of the ladies in the office asked how much we were supposed to give, (this was before I was approached by the team leader), I said that I didn't know but that I was planning on giving 'x'. She nearly fainted and then said "wow you're generous, I was thinking more like $5".

It is interesting the way we treat leaders, both in the church, and in society in general. And perhaps this is mirrored by the differing behaviour of leaders in the church and society (although it is very likely a chicken/egg scenario). In the church, we honour, esteem, value and therefore bless our leaders at any opportunity (or at least I do, as does my church). While in society at large, to our leaders, honour is given grudgingly, esteem sparingly and value is diminished, which means, as demonstrated by my recent experience, that when the opportunity to bless one of our leaders, we do so with some reservation.

I could use this to springboard into a massive sermon about how the Kingdom is completely backward to the way the world works, and how Jesus came and turned everything upside down. But I'm not going to, another time perhaps :)