Strong leaders produce strong leaders. This has been proven throughout the business and church world alike.

Many of us believe that strength comes in numbers. But the qualification of a leader is not number of followers but the number of leaders that succeed in his organization - or even succeed him.

As we look at one of the world’s survivor companies, led by a survivor himself, Steve Jobs has shown us that the true test of a leader is what happens when he leaves. Apple has succeeded in being profitable, likable, and trustworthy even while its leader was out for a while due to illness.

If you are a leader in an organization, let your followers not merely follow but lead. Let them lead others in your organization. Take your systems and put them in charge. Let them make crucial decisions, even when you predict a micro-failure. The 30,000-foot view says that a leader making mistakes in systems is nothing compared to a leader making mistakes in his leadership of other people.

Case in point is my recent layoff. While at the local tech firm, I was able to learn a megawatt about leadership. Most of my leadership came from struggling through difficult decisions, leaning on my wife, my pastors, and even a local design pro. Consultant and Human Interface guru Kurt Vanderwiel once told me in tough times to “just lead people.” This seems odd coming from “a designer.” But the truth is that when I was laid off Friday I was not bitter but I was broken. I was able to sit back and watch an opportunity to unfold.

Would my successors be successful?

My test will be complete when I hear reports back from others at that company, to see if they are being developed into leaders and if they themselves are taking leadership of others seriously.

If you are an organizational leader, examine whether or not you are testing yourself by the successful leadership by others whom you serve (read: “below” you in the org. chart).

If you feel as if you are not given enough power to lead others but you are stuck in a rut of bad managers, bad leaders, bad this or that, then consider why you are complaining. Maybe it’s time to start “just leading people.” Watch what happens. I promise it will be good.

I told my friend and fellow Pastor at Kaio Church, Matt Dunkerton, that people are like dominoes, lined up, ready to fall back or fall forward. To lead we need to see that we are truly a few dominoes ahead in the line and others are watching to see what we do, say, think, drink, and eat. A good leader will recognize this and train others to see it as well.

Bad leadership? What is it? It’s a leader who makes people happy to get them to like him or her. That person is probably not a leader at all, but is someone put into a position he does not deserve, she does not enjoy, and ultimately is going to lose leadership or succumb to peer pressure and do something really bad. An elder will abandon his family, a boss will abdicate responsibility and make decisions too late or too early, and a professor will turn into a grumpy old man with no friends.

However the rug shakes out, the person who is deceived into believing he is a leader will eventually be left to pleasing people instead of showing them how they should be pleased.

Leaders, let’s lead with confidence! Let’s take people somewhere. Let’s do it with joy. Let’s show others where we can go together!

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra(translated by Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Viking, 1966)) Friedrich Nietzsche writes that those who speak of equality are spiders with venom of revenge, as “tyrannomania of impotence” whose “secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue.

“Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy… erupt from you as a flame and as a frenzy of revenge.” He also says that people who are less fortunate and down and out, they are just jealous and they scream for equality and justice while “out of every one of their complaints sounds revenge.”

He also says that “the good and the just crave to be hangmen.”

I would have to say, I agree with him. Do the poor cry out for mercy without hatred for the rich? Do the rich offer help without a sense of superiority?

Therefore true equality is en vogue and yet evades us.

The result is we all deeply seek justice without judgment and equality without exclusivism.

I met Cole at an Acts 29 boot camp, who is lead pastor and planter at Red Sea Portland. He was a producer extraordinaire in the music business and has a crazy ear for beats and tracks.

Here are two street gospel preachers of today, Shai Linne and Timothy Brindle. Catch the lyrics.

Not sure I want to get out of here. I’m not sure that I am not beautiful anymore. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Certainly, I am not that woman who was thirsty fifteen minutes ago.

This part she was not sure of, but somehow she understood. She knew.

Dark Haired Woman: To the Village

“The bucket, how could I forget the bucket?” she pondered, as sweat dripped down her forehead, mingling with perfume, dirt, and delight. She had left in a scurry, she had to tell the people she loved about this man, who tore loose the curtains between her and the rest of the world. Curtains so thick only a superhero could ever reach that high and tear so strongly.

As she ran down the sand-grassed hill, the cloud shadows chased her but could not overcome her pace. The clouds pulled back, unveiling a curiously blue sky, clear as the smile on the woman’s face. Now breathing, now running, now catching her breath. Now over the olive tree stump.

The stump of the tree her brother planted years ago to commemorate her first wedding.

Now to the side she notices in the next heartbeat – heartbeat because keeping pace across the plain, her feet are troubled by her mind-heart commands to run, run, run – she notices her home sidewall needing some repair, promised to her in a breath of frustration.

Promised to be repaired by her second husband, the one who got his kicks by beating her under the covers. And she liked it too, because she was the focus, attention, of a strong and wealthy man.

She was always the focus. She was always the last true word with responsibility, the one anyone can count on.

She was the mom and wife and lover. And she always batted cleanup.

Now her eyes were scratching the surface of the rocks covering the door steps from the children who live with her. She approached the door and stepped on them, the rocks slipping off the porch steps. Rocks and pebbles… racing through her head… yes, these are not my children “but from one of my latest lovers” and she loved to take care of them.

Because the attention was on her.

The pressure was on her.

The balance of life on one side and death on the other, was her balance, hers to measure and judge and weigh. Men, children, the world!

“Oh what is this life?” She breathed it like she sucked in the air after Man Three punched her in the abdomen, unknowingly killing their child. The same air sucked into her mouth full of slowly yellowing teeth, chipping now from ages, the air came in through the front door of her house as she entered.

A brief wisp of perfume ran down the hall, catching up with Simeon. He groggily arises knowing she is home.

“Where is the water?” he creaks.

Rushing through her lips, the words tripping over each other, “You must see this man, who told me everything about me, he even knew about you!”

Five of his friends peer round the corner and stare. Glossy-eyed and drunk, they all begin to laugh.

For the first time in as long as she could remember, which was not as long as it had always been, she did not receive the criticism. They did not know this Man. They must meet. And she would do what it took.

From behind her, there was a pounding knock on the doorpost.