Passing The Baton

Send Your Influence Forward

SYNOPSIS: Whether you are a parent, a president or a pastor, you will be required to pass the baton of your leadership to a new generation. Take care in what you pass on and with how well you pass it. Don’t drop the baton. That day will get here sooner than you think, so make sure you are ready to send forward that which is worthy to live on!

The Journey// Focus: Deuteronomy 3:27-28

God said to Moses, “Go up to Pisgah Peak, and look over the Promised Land in every direction. Take a good look, but you may not cross the Jordan River. Instead, commission Joshua and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead the people across the Jordan. He will give them all the land you now see before you as their possession.”

It happens sooner or later—usually sooner than we expect: we come to the end of our leg of the race and have to pass the baton. It might be giving the keys to the family business to an adult child, turning over a ministry to a new leader, or passing on the patriarchal role due to advancing aged or declining health or the nearing of death.

Without fail, that day comes, maybe later, but more likely sooner. Just ask any person who has had to pass the baton! Talk to any elderly person and they will say, “I don’t know where the time went.” Perhaps the epitaph on one particular headstone says it best:

THIS IS WHAT I EXPECTED
BUT NOT SO SOON

Life is a baton pass, and so is the Kingdom of God. No one, no matter how great, how powerful, how successful, or how admired is indispensable. Just consider Moses. He was the greatest leader of all time—a man of impeccable character, unmatched power, incredible wisdom, organic humility, and closeness to God. He has a string of wins with no defeats to speak of. He had pulled off one of the greatest leadership feats of all time: he got two million plus slaves out of the clutches of the most powerful nation on earth, led them through a desert for forty years, keeping them fed, watered, organized and focused—and at the end of it all, his popularity would make any U.S. president drool with envy.

Yet the time came when God called him to give it up. He was at the end, and even though Moses personally wanted to continue on (“I pleaded with the Lord, ‘Please let me cross the Jordan to see the wonderful land on the other side, the beautiful hill country and the Lebanon mountains.’” Deuteronomy 3:23-25), God told him no. Moreover, God commissioned him to prepare his successor, and he was to prepare him in such a way that the new leader would achieve even greater success than Moses. Moses had done all the heavy lifting, yet Joshua would reap the reward.

By the way, that is not the only time in scripture we see this: David wanted to build a temple to the Lord, but God assigned him to prepare Solomon to achieve that marvelous feat. Jesus finished his ministry with just a handful of followers, yet he commissioned them to turn his kingdom into a force that would dominate the world. The Apostle Paul had grand designs to preach the gospel around the known world, but he came to his end in a Roman jail.

All of these examples of great leadership had something in common: they finished well by preparing others to take the baton and move the kingdom forward. Which brings me to a point: the greatness of your life is not so much in what you leave behind, but in what you send forward. Whether you are a parent, a president or a pastor, you will be required to pass the baton of your leadership to a new generation. Take care in what you pass on and with how well you pass it. Don’t drop the baton.

Yes, that day will get here sooner than you think. So make sure you are ready to send forward that which is worthy to live on!

Going Deeper: A very good but sobering exercise is to write your own epitaph or obituary in advance. The whole point of that activity is to make sure you live now as you wish to be remembered then.

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