Weirdo??? Me??? Ok..

Yesterday we watched a video on GLOBAL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT 2009 that featured the Leadership gurus Bill Hybels, Wess Stafford, Wayne Cordeiro, Dave Gibbons and others. These leaders have one thing in common, all of them have their stories on how their leaderships started and I was encouraged to know that their leaderships started when pains and sufferings intervened. They’ve all gone through murky situations which can be depicted through their personal struggles and injustice experiences. The stories of Wes Stafford almost brought tears from my eyes. His tone was so sad but I’ve felt the heart of this person. He endured suffering (just as Paul did) in order to minister to the Africans.

While we were watching the videos where each speaker was given an ample amount of time to share their leadership stories, I was not thinking anything. I mean, my mind was an empty space and all I could do was to absorb and listen to every story these people were telling. I admit I was not emotionally fit that time. I have something in my heart that really brought me down that stopped my mind from thinking and focused myself on the piece of box fronting me. These people really wanted to make great changes in our society even though we’re on this economic mess. These radical leaders were different and because they wanted to make a great change, they should change everything from themselves including their outlooks and leadership styles.

Dave Gibbons caught my attention on his statistics that showed the masses and the “fringes” or outsiders of the society. He gave illustrations about different leadership personalities and proved that most of them came from the outsiders and not from the masses. These leaders were trademarked weirdo, out of this world, insane and unrealistic but reality spoke that the fringes of the society were always on the leadership position, leading the masses.

I remember my days way back on the times when I felt like I was a different kind of person. With different ways of life. Unusual thoughts. Born once in every century. I remember those heroes fueled by their nationalistic hearts and ended the tyrannies in their countries. They cannot do these things with a mass thinking. My uncle once said to me, “do not do foolish things just to let people know that you’re different.” That was years ago and it’s still in my mind. I adopted a principle printed on one t-shirt that I’ve seen saying “You laugh at me because I’m different, I laugh at you because you are all the same.”

Well… what’s wrong being a weirdo??? What’s wrong being different?? Why shouldn’t we think differently in order to change our monotonous society?? There are so many things to do and the only way we can do these things is by having weird ideas. Thinking higher than the usual. Going against the flow.

Lastly, I want to end up with these short, familiar stories: Noah was saved from the flood because he went against the flow. He was a weirdo. Likewise, Jesus was an outsider. He was from Nazareth.

This entry was posted on November 12, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under Rethinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.