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John Ortberg , formerly a teaching pastor at Willow Creek, and now senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo, Ca. delivered a moving, and passionate talk during this session. Check out some highlights of the session here.

John Ortberg Books

What I enjoyed about this session was that for some reason I kept thinking about comic book and superheroes. I’m not totally obsessed with comics, in fact I might only have 3 that I actually own, but I do love superheroes. I don’t think he even meant to allude at all to the ideas that were popping into my head, but hey, what can I say, Spiderman 3, the movie, kept flashing through my brain.

Anyways, Ortberg’s session was titled, “A Leader’s Greatest Fear.” And it was an extremely challenging talk. Using the story of Esther as a backdrop, John communicated that some fears of leaders that might be considered at the top are:

• Fear of failure
• Fear of mutiny
• Fear of criticism

But, he said that although those are valid fears, the fear that we should really be aware of is the fear of “Giving in to our Shadow Missions.”

What, might you ask, is a shadow mission? Well, this is the impression that the talk left on me. A shadow mission is something that we drift to naturally (self-centered) that keeps us from fulfilling our TRUE MISSION (God-centered). It might be something that just moves us only a few degrees off from our true heading, but it keeps us from being affective in the Kingdom. Sometimes it might even be good, ministry-oriented things but it’s not where Jesus wants us so we waste time and energy on a mission that is but a shadow of our true mission.

Like I said I kept thinking about superheroes and the whole altar ego thing. Especially when a superhero becomes corrupted by greed, revenge, jealousy, etc. You’ve got this hero who has a mission to protect innocents and to bring justice in their community, yet they pursue something that seems to line up with their original true mission, but pulls them deeper and deeper into a dark place.

I also kept thinking about the dark side of the force from Star Wars. Now these are obviously a lot more “dark” and dramatic then my shadow mission, but the truth is there’s nothing darker or uglier than someone who’s been called to a mission by God, that THINKS they are ok just sitting around wasting time doing things that are “almost” what God wants.

I got to thinking, what is MY shadow mission. And this is what I honestly came up with:
“Watching hours and hours of t.v., playing on the internet, and designing cool graphics while the world around me goes to hell.” Not necessarily the worst things a person could do in life, but you get the picture. It’s the things that aren’t necessarily bad, yet get us off course.

Back to Esther. Esther was called for a strategic and timely mission: to save the Jewish people from total annihilation at the hands of Haman (the bad guy in the story). Her shadow mission was to get caught up in the trappings of being a queen, the beauty treatments, the “stuff,” the royal goodies, you know just living the good life. But she didn’t, she pursued what God had made her for…to be the HERO!!

She also had a Mordecai (her mentor/uncle) who kept her focused and on track. It was neat how Ortberg used the story to challenge us to have Mordecais in our lives to help keep us accountable. Are you my Mordecai?

Mordecais are people who:

• will challenge me
• will be honest with me
• will have regular accountability moments to combat our shadow missions

I think one point that jumped out at me was the most dangerous, yet simple, shadow mission is MORE. Wanting more. Being self-centered. Consumed with stuff. Accumulating material goodies for no reason. This one struck me. It may have even smitten me. But I know as leaders, our archenemy will throw everything he can at us to keep us distracted from our true missions, and that’s one thing I want to fight hard for! How about you?