One of our great leadership challenges is to always be presenting God and his work to the people in our sphere of influence. There is a sad, sobering account in Judges 2:7-12 about the loss of knowledge and faith in a single generation:

And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.

This new generation did not:

• Know the Lord

• Know what the Lord had done

• Know what they should do

God’s faithfulness to honor his promises to Israel is what brought future generations back. It was only by his mercy.

The command to remember occurs 148 times in the King James translation of the Bible. Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate, said, “It is as important to be reminded as it is to be informed.”

We hear the commitment in Psalm 78:4:

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.

Build the work of both informing and reminding people into your leadership design.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “But I work in a secular organization, and can’t talk about Jesus there!”

You can still minister to others from a biblical worldview: honesty, transparency, truth-preserving, faithfulness, reliability, integrity, honoring people beyond widgets, encouraging the weak, supporting family and community. This is preaching Christ by example.

You can also share stories from the Bible that are pertinent, where there are lessons that apply to work situations. I share stories from many sources, secular and “religious,” because stories are the best way to communicate complex truths. Jesus modeled this for us – think of all the parables he shared.

Our leadership challenge, and opportunity, is to keep the story in Judges 2 only a sad memory, not a future reality.