ToDay with E.G: Young Leaders! Part 12

When i was a teenager, i was starting to get annoyed with the continuous emphasis that the young people where the strength of the Church, the youth was the future and similar talk. Every single preacher had to find a way to  drop in that overused statement. I suspect that what really annoyed me more was that i didn't see anything of value that the young people around me, included myself, where doing. Most of the time when they were called in public seemed to be about some particular sin they did, which they needed to repent from.

Then the Lord started opening my mind slowly. It started with what i qualified as exceptions. But as exceptions accumulated i had no choice but to reform my mind on this issue. I was told that Watchman Nee wrote his huge tome 'The Spiritual Man' when he was 25 years old. I was impressed and rationalize that exploit saying, 'Watchman Nee is a genius and he was lucky'. Then it started falling on me. News after news. John Maxwell started his leadership practice in his 20's. Billy Graham started his evangelistic efforts in his 20's too. Leadership expert Jim Collins came up with his magnificent book project 'Built to last' when he was 28. In my campus, our department of Biotechnology was led by young lecturers who had their doctorates and even got tenure as professors due to their valuable contribution to science. One of my old professor of Research Methodology even had a microbial specie named after his name. He discovered that in the 70's. It is really a good feeling to walk and study under living legends. It marks you for life.

My mum' always enjoy telling us the story of her school years when she was taught by living legends in the field of Mathematics from Romany. I suspect that is what gave her the drive to never wanting to settle for something less. It is quite impressive as i read in the near past how Under/Graduate Schools that keep producing Nobel Laureates are usually the same kind of schools. It seems to me that beyond the rigidity and strictness of the scholastic endeavors of those institutions, there is also this psychological drive and recognition on the part of their students that they are the best and the elite among the world because their professors are noble laureates, award winners and so on. These students have legends in their faculties and so on, How on earth can they settle for less? The same should be with us. You and I have the greatest legend who has ever lived as a friend and big brother - the Lord Jesus Christ - how can we settle for anything less? Never!

I can say even more on that by naming people like TD Jakes, Martin Luther King Jr. etc, who started to influence the world from their youth. But those few examples above is sufficient to point out how my mind transformation on this issue started to catch up with what the old preachers where telling us. The youth is the key! At least one of the keys of change and ambitious progress.

It became clear to me through my readings that there is a specific range of age where our human innovation and contribution to this earth is high. And i'd like to remind you all of those facts. People can contribute at all ages, thank God for that, but let us remember that based on facts and evidences most of the valuable contribution that we enjoy today came from the youth. Even if we go outside the bible, that speaks of Joseph, Daniel, David, Mary or even Goliath - we find something interesting about what the youth have done in our modern life. Just because i expose that let me just make this biblical comment. It was even explained to David why Goliath was dangerous and terrorizing Israel's soldiers, "And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth." 1Samuel 17:33.  He was a man of war from his youth.

Vox Day in his book about Atheism made this comment: 

"Scientists come with a sel-by date . The mathematician G. H. Hardy declared that math is a young man's game, while Albert Einstein formulated the mass-energy equivalence at twenty-six and Sir Isaac Newton's famous annus mirabilis occurred when he was only twenty-three. A California researcher has estimated that the mean age of a biologist's first noteworthy contribution to science takes place when he is 29.4 years old." (Vox Day - TIA - Darwins Juda, page 135)

Dr. Stephen Meyer who won awards because of his 2009 book, "The Signature in the Cell: the evidence for Intelligence Design", had started working on this since 1986 and wrote his doctorate thesis on that in 1991. He was young!

Here is a table that can support that point of views found in TIA quoted above:

Discipline	Mean age of first contribution	Mean age of best contribution
Mathematics	27.3	38.8
Astronomy	30.5	40.6
Physics	29.7	38.2
Chemistry	30.5	38.0
Biology	29.4	40.5
Medicine	32.3	42.1
Technology	31.6	39.7
Earth sciences	30.9	42.5
Others	33.4	41.6

SOURCE:Dean K. Simonton, University of California at Davis.

It has also came to my attention that most of the developments that we have in computers mostly came from young people- look at FaceBook, Google, etc. Some of the computer genius started their work when they were young - Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft and probably others that i don't know. :)

All this just to say that, the leadership advise i gave through the 'ToDay with E.G' are not just good advise that will be needed later in life, when we are getting older, when we will be serious to start doing great things in life. Nope! These advises and posts are given to you free of charge so that you may start looking at your life, hard and long, and see that effectiveness can be achieved by all if only all knew how to do it. Those who have been focused in life and learned a thing or two in their earthly pilgrim have contributed much more than for their own lives, they also contributed in the lives of others.  A last quick example. Remember that most of our warriors who stopped the Rwandan Genocide were young people in their 20's and 30's. Some of them are dead and some of them are alive. Both of these groups have something in common - they changed the lives of millions of people beside their own and we are indebted to them all - the living and the dead.

Now it is your time! This is not a cliché statement but a statement based on evidence and organized statistics as seen on the table above. Now is your time and mine to add value to this world with our lives, intellects, finances, times, knowledge and all kind of resources the Lord has availed to us by his grace. Some have gifts others have talents - let's make use of them at the best level of our abilities. Make sure that you do not cut yourself off of this rich world history of young people. Your time - my time!

In Mathew 25:14-30, Jesus teaches us two things about the use of talents. The first one is faithfulness (a habit) and the other one is laziness (a habit). The true fight for significance and productivity hang in the balance of your habits. Choose well your habits because the habits you choose will determine how you'll be remembered at your death and for years, decades and centuries to come if Christ Jesus is not yet back! And if He is back .. then just read Mathew 25 and you'll get the picture.

Leadership is about influence. The first person you need to learn and consistently influence is yourself. Influence yourself to adopt the kind of life that are consistent with the values you have decided to adopt as per the step two of the two creations we talked about: start with the end in mind!

I'll end with the word of an other J.C Moderator - Mr. Ngabe R. In the welcoming page of Jeunnesse Chrétienne Forum he quoted this scripture: "Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, "I have no pleasure in them";" Ecclesiastes 12:1, English Standard Version.

May the Lord in Jesus' name encourages you and inspires you for greatness in all the respective fields in which you are in.