The Making Of A Leader

by Dr. J. Robert Clinton

Leadership” is a topic high on many agendas today, whether in politics, business, or the church. In part, this is because of a perceived leadership vacuum. In his leadership essays, John Gardner pointed out that at the time the United States was formed, the population stood at around 3 million. That 3 million produced at least six leaders of world class: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton. Today’s American population of 240 million might be expected to produce eighty times as many world-class leaders. But, asks Gardner, “Where are they?” At a convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, college president George Brushaber spoke of “a missing generation” of younger leaders ready to take the places of the senior post–World War II group of evangelical pioneers. My own travels and observations have led me to believe this is a worldwide phenomenon. Yet I am encouraged to believe there is a new group of younger men and women, roughly forty and under, emerging into leadership around the world.