“And the things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” 2 Timothy 2:2

    At my age, there is a tension for the present and the future. You want to be a viable force and ministry, but you also want to have things in place for the next generation. My son, Bill and I were talking about this and he commented that what came to him one day was, “Do you want to be a Legend or leave a Legacy?”

For me that summed up what I have been observing for years. This holds true in the corporate world, the church, and even family. John Maxwell, well known writer on leadership, states that all things rise or fall with leadership. While there are numerous approaches to leadership, it still takes leadership for success. 

While visiting Bill in Georgia, we toured some Civil War sites and a study of that war shows the importance of leadership. Some generals were great leaders and others were not. The war would have lasted only a few weeks or months if the North had the quality of leadership that the South had.

Leadership is an innate quality of some, but has to be trained and cultivated. A leader can develop through trial and error at the expense of his followers, or he can be trained by those who have experience and allow the innate qualities to surface at an accelerated pace.

However, observation shows there are two kinds of leaders, those who want to be legends and those who want to leave a legacy.

The Legend leads with the iron fist of his or her qualities. Often the legend is brutal in execution of goals. The legend wants no challenges from subordinates since he has no peers. A legend can be extremely successful. Henry Ford was known for his invention and his temper. He single handedly destroyed a car on the line with a sledge hammer because it was not what he wanted; although the public was crying for it.

The legend does not prepare for the future since no one would be good enough, and somehow the legend thinks he will go on forever. His goal is to make everyone miss him when he is gone and the company, church, or family will just have to suffer his absence. It is the cowboy riding off into the sunset with Happy Trails playing in the background.

Leaving a legacy is a different story. The one who chooses to leave a legacy is intimately concerned with the future of the company, the church, the family. Leaving a legacy takes diligence, forethought, and planning. We all have a limited time on this earth. What can we do to make sure that the work we have done adds to the long term goal of the Kingdom? 

Leaving a legacy requires identifying next generation potential. The potential is in people, not things. Who are the potential leaders? Who has been called of God? Who has those latent qualities to lead people? Whose character lends itself to integrity?

Legacy requires training those with the potential and giving them opportunity to lead in some subordinate role. However, the goal is to provide seamless leadership transitions for the sake of the company, church, or family.

The legacy maker is interested in people as well as the product or bottom line on a spreadsheet. While we want success as leaders, there is no success in doing well, dying, and having no one prepared to lead on.

Many of the churches I have observed are legend builders. There is no succession plan in place. Some of these churches will be one generation wonders. Some have already diminished or folded or are repositories of older folks with no young people around.

The Bible expressly tells leaders to train, entrust, and leave a legacy. Jesus’ ministry was not only teaching, preaching, and ministry of wonders, but it was full of next generation preparation. It was frustrating at times, evoking disappointment in them that they were not catching on, but continuing forward he moved.

You see, if there is no preparation for the next generation, they lose hope. Their gifts press them as did ours. My gifts still press me. Retirement is not the option for me since the gifts would continue to press me. I cannot imagine walking away and saying I am done with the kind of fire still burning within. But I also know how it is as a young person with a fire burning within. Legends drive all that talent away from themselves because of insecurity, or refusing to make room for the younger talent, or just the fear of competition that someone might have a better idea and ruin their legend status. Many churches have lost the cream of the crop to other works because of the legend mentality.

God wants us to leave legacies of good leaders. To be remembered as a good leader is great, but to be remembered as a leader who invested and trained is better.