This is a series on 11 Leadership Lessons from 12 Disciples, based on the recent sermon Jesus Calls the Twelve, on Luke 6:12-16.

Lesson #10: Don't go Diotrephes

Diotrephes is a guy who's only mentioned once in the Bible in one of the epistles written by John, and it says this: "Diotrephes always wanted to be first." If they're going to put your name in the Bible for one thing, that's pretty sad. He was really proud, and he always wanted to have all the attention. Now, the truth is some leaders will get attention. Some of us, more than we like, at least certain kinds of attention. But the sin of Diotrephes is, "I don't want to be on the team, I've got to be the face of the team. I don't want to just humbly serve, I want my name to be famous." And we live in that sort of celebrity-addicted culture where people get famous who don't even do anything. Isn't that weird? You ever watch TMZ or pick up a People magazine? You're like, "All these people are famous and they didn't do anything." Some people are just famous—there's their dog in their handbag, and what did they do? Nothing. Why are they famous? Because we're desperate to talk about somebody. And the sin of Diotrephes is, "I want them to talk about me, not Jesus." Jesus chooses twelve apostles, but they all don't get the same press. If you read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and if you read Acts together, Peter is mentioned 189 times. John, 50. Philip, 17. Andrew, 13. Thomas, 11. Matthew, also called Levi (some of these guys have two names) 9. James the son of Alphaeus, 7. Thaddeus or Judas, he had two names and you know why. There were two disciples with the name Judas; the other guy was really bummed, right? "So what do you do?" "I'm an apostle." "What's your name?" "Judas." "Oh, I heard about you." "No, I'm the other Judas, call me Thaddeus. I'm not rolling with Judas anymore." Simon the Zealot, four times. Bartholomew, also called Nathaniel, same man, is mentioned once. Judas Iscariot, 22. Some of these people, like Peter, get mentioned a lot; others, hardly at all. If you want do a really simple Bible study, do one on Bartholomew. You could tweet his whole life story because that's all we know. His name is Bartholomew, he was an apostle. I don't even need all the characters. That's all I got. We don't know much. Peter we know: he's impetuous. Cut a guy's ear. We know lots about Peter. Thomas, he's the doubter. Thomas has one bad day. That's the one day he made the press. It's like "Come on, man, I finished well." He had a bad day, so we're just going to keep talking about that one. And other people, we don't know anything about.

Accept being behind the scenes

On a team, especially a good diverse weird team, some people are going to be real prominent, others less prominent. Some are going to get a lot of press time, others not so much. Be okay with that. Some of you, God's called you to be up front. Don't be cowards. Some of you, God's called to lead, visibly, publicly. Don't be cowards. Others of you, that's not you. Be number two, be behind the scenes. Be number three, help it happen, get it done. The truth is these guys were all doing important stuff, some of them we just don't know what it was because they weren't up front, they were behind the scenes. That's important too. I say that with all sincerity. To be continued.