Leadership takes many forms.

This is my friend Jason Sharp, station manager at KTIS. He was one of the leaders on our recent mission trip to Haiti with Helping Haiti.

Impromptu shower on water truck day.

It cannot be easy to take a bunch of listeners to Haiti on your mission trip. Nor can it be easy to leave the station behind during a transition of talent on the morning show and an upgrade of the website. This is not to mention leaving your wife and kids behind while you lug water through some of the poorest slums in the world.

But Jason did just that. I debated writing this post, or any posts, about my fellow missionaries on the trip, but decided that there were some stories that needed to be told. Jason is a public figure so he gets the full Monte with the last name and all. The others will just be a first name and a picture that shows them from behind or at an angle. Unless I can’t find one of those. (My wife brought the disks home last night from our dinner with the mission team and darned if I know where she put them. So, more pictures tomorrow – I promise.)

Jason is a man with a lot of responsibilities. He won’t brag on himself so let me do it for him:

He’s helped to grow the listening audience at KTIS during his time at the station.

He takes a personal interest in the station’s relationships with the listeners.

He is a man who cares deeply about the ministry of his Christian radio station.

And, he’s a very deep man with a silly streak.

I won’t go into any funny stories about Jason and what we did on the trip. They wouldn’t translate all that well unless you were there, and I won’t violate the privacy of those moments. I will say that it was a pleasure to spend a week with a man so dedicated to living a life following Christ.

Jason is very serious about his faith. He might mug and cut up when we all sat around the dinner table, but when the topic turned to the deeper things in our existence it was clear that he not only cared about his own soul, but he cared about those around him.

Haiti is not an easy place to do mission work. It takes a bite out of your soul and slams you to the ground before you even know what’s going on. It takes some time to process the experience and put it into your life when you leave. I watched Jason struggle with that every day. It wasn’t the struggle of a man going under for the third time, but the struggle of a man trying to incorporate the lessons and pain of that nation into his Christian identity.

I think KTIS will be a better place for the listeners as a result of Jason going on this trip. Not many leaders would humble themselves to sleep in a bunk bed above Papa Noel and carry buckets of water with 6 year old child slaves. But Jason did.

And that makes me proud to know him.

Is there an inspirational leader in your life like Jason?  Have you shared your admiration with them? What can you do in your life to be a leader and disciple of Jesus at the same time?

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Today’s random search engine goose is Bob Woodward!

 

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Comments

Leadership takes many forms. — 1 Comment

  1. Wow, Joe, this is a poignant piece indeed … your comment: “It wasn’t the struggle of a man going under for the third time, but the struggle of a man trying to incorporate the lessons and pain of that nation into his Christian identity,” is a story in itself! Beautiful. Thank you.

    And thank you for including Bob Woodward in this one.

    As always, God’s blessing to you 24/7-365 …