Opportunistic Leaders

More often than I wish to think, I encounter leaders best understood as opportunists. Opportunists profit from their immediate circumstances with little or no consideration for people, protocol, or principle affected by their inappropriate advantage.
An opportunistic leader attempts to look like a visionary when they are not actually receiving vision as much as they are appropriating vision that becomes available in their associations and environment. Often, opportunists function with a “first person to get or do this wins.”
Several dysfunctions derive from this substitute for revelation and assignment, but we can immediate see that this would give people the appearance of visionary assignments who do not have authority or leadership equal to the vision they opportunistically appropriate. The kingdom ends up with weak leaders attempt to voice or vision what their gift cannot carry.
Projecting ourselves into a vision because of close association to or passionate agreement with that vision weakens both our legitimate purpose and the advancement and fulfill meant of the vision. Opportunistic leaders drop balloons from the ceiling to announce their discoveries, staking claims upon these legitimate kingdom trends, but they lack the long term commitment to sustain leadership that will fulfill them. They soon move along to the next opportunity their network provides them, but they have weakened their own personal destiny and diminished the greater kingdom purpose they hijacked for the show period.
Many ministries simply anticipate the next big thing that’s coming down the pike and build a thematic emphasis around it for season, empty that vital aspect of kingdom strategy of its momentum, win a few moral victories, and move on to the next trend. They are concerned with coming up with catchy phrasing, great graphics, logos, and cool color schemes, but they lose heart when the blood shed part comes along.
Leaders with authentic assignment are usually too kind to point out the opportunistic nature of these kingdom misappropriations. They do not wish to look petty or childish about claiming leadership roles for what Jesus has called them to do, and they say, “Well, let’s work on this together!” However, the opportunists bring confusion, false expectations, division, and feed the impression that many vital, long term improvements that require a decade to implement and install are really short term programs.
You recognize the slogan-based activists if you think about the pattern of their operation. They band wagon onto important initiatives to be one of the gang, but they have no blueprint to produce the goals of the vision; they soon lose heart and signal this by being “called to a new season.”
I have many friends who lean this direction simply because they have enough personal passion for God to pursue new things. The unfortunate thing about their approach is that they diminish their true calling and function every time they grab onto another trendy “this is gonna be it” thing instead of maturing in the destiny God has for their own leadership.
Sloganators don’t produce purpose even though they trill trendy trumpets. They are actually precious people who need to identify with their destinies instead of seeking an identity from “doing something historic.”
Opportunists drain message from vision, walk away from what they’ve drained, looking for a new trend to project expertise about the next week’s or next month’s cool emphasis.
Do not be an opportunist! Invest the best of your kingdom attributes in your kingdom assignments. Tens of thousands of people are being influenced by opportunistic leadership, running after the band wagons to identify with perceptions, when a healthy kingdom leadership development process would prepare and position them to be the person they were created to be so they can do what they are called to do.