Hello, thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15.

Yesterday, I shared some thoughts from the outstanding book, Relational Authority, Authentic Leadership,

written a few years back by my friend Clay Nash.

I had the privilege of writing the foreword for this insightful book. Clay effectively

points out many important principles of leadership and authority. I'm going to share a few more

insights from Clay's book today, nine important traits of excellence regarding leadership. You'd be wise to pick up

this book. And as I mentioned these nine, let me say these are summaries of what he says. He elaborates,

gives powerful stories and examples. But here's just summaries of the nine important traits of

excellence regarding leaders. Number one, forerunner. A leader is a person who moves ahead first.

Therefore, true leaders are forerunners like Jesus, Hebrew 620.

I didn't know the following until I read his book.

A forerunner is actually a Greek nautical term.

When a ship got close to shore, the forerner would get out of the ship with a weighted rope

and swim towards the shore,

sounding the depth, so the captain would know how close he could come to shore without running a ground.

Now, this could be pretty hazardous duty, especially at night,

when the surf was rough, excuse me for being distracted for a second.

If the ship got in at midnight and stormy weather,

it could be deadly.

But the essence of the forerner's job

was to determine suitable depth for the safety of the ship,

not unlike leadership determining how much depth exists to safely move an organization.

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