The Christian Leadership of Mayor Skip Lee of Sterling, Illinois

On April, 5, 2011 Skip Lee was elected mayor of Sterling, Illinois to a city that has nearly 16,000 people and is more than 200 times the size of Jerusalem under the reign of king David. I have known Skip Lee personally for nearly fifteen years and have had plenty of opportunity to observe the Christian leadership principles that he lives by, and in principle he is mayor because of the truth that, "it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest" - Luke 9:48 (NIV) and because of the truth that "the greatest among you will be your servant." - Matthew 23:11 (NIV) Even though Skip Lee came from a different region, he was able to gain enough power through the principles of leadership that transformed others that Christ himself promoted to became mayor of a city the size of Sterling. Overall, my belief is that if others imitated the methods of Skip Lee or lived by the principles that he lives by, then not only would a person gain political power, but communities would also have much to gain as a result.

Although my mother had high expectations for my future at infancy, my early grade school youth had been different in that my mother's greatest vision for my future was that I would drop out of high school and get a woman pregnant. Not only that but also as I became older and developed, I really got the strong feeling that most of the older adults hated children because of local behavioral issues expressed by children. When I went to high school, I even found that many instructors did not particularly show any interest in investing everything that they could into the future of the youth. In fact I would go so far as to say that most high schools are run by lots of instructors that either do not have the time to commit extra help to develop the futures of students or such schools will have plenty of teachers that frankly put forth the minimum amount of work to get paid.

Skip Lee was very different in that he as a teacher committed himself to serving students that showed a interest in going beyond the minimum requirements of school. I can remember times in high school that Skip had offered to drive me to and from sports events personally as he trained me to work in sports medicine as I was personally mentored by him to work with the medical concerns of athletes. Skip Lee would sometimes even talk to my parents personally (he was even the only person from my high school to attend my high school graduation party: he spoke highly of college), and he would speak to my parents very positively about me and was seen by them as an authority figure.

Since my grandfather could not read or write, my father adopted much of the views against educated people and against education that his father had. My father put a tremendous value on high school education as it opened the possibility for securing full-time employment, but high school was seen as the maximum amount of education that a responsible citizen would gain unless they planned to became a instructor at a grade school or a high school. By the special interest that Skip Lee had in my life, my father was able to identify him as a respectable person and was able to believe the positive things that Skip said about me, and as a result not only did my father consider the possibility that I was smart enough for college (this was a big concern for him) but he also could not feel morally justified in preventing me from going to college based upon the testimony of people like Skip Lee.

Many people in my community feel the same way that my father felt, and I am certain that Skip Lee has helped them in a similar way as well to realize the potential that the future has to offer. Skip Lee has lived in a very small home for decades now that he has raised his children in, and he has thus taken the little bit that life has given him and invested that little bit as wisely as he possibly could in order to generate the maximum possible societal benefit. Ever since Nicolò Machiavelli's writing of The Prince in 1505, the idea has been perpetuated that a person should use as many dishonest practices as possible to obtain and maintain power that centers around division and acts of wickedness, but Skip Lee is a sharp contrast to this ideology in that he is extremely humble, caring, and employs his talents to serve others for their own development.

I had never anticipated any future for myself at all as a result of my learning disability and as a result of low opinions that loomed at home as well as the opinions expressed by some experts that did not believe that I was capable of leaning how to read. Many educators had a low opinion of their students futures in general, but according to my understanding, my future was seen by most in my community as being even more hopeless than the average student. Overall, who would have guessed that I would gain more than twice the number of credit hours completed and twice the number of semesters completed as what a traditional Ph.D. candidate would have upon his graduation, and who would have guessed that I would obtain a total of six college degrees and become one of the most education if not the most educated person in my county?

Many businessmen, educators, and politicians believe that people should be put into a competition and struggle to obtain the best performance, and this evolutionary based thinking means that the strongest would survive and that divisions would exist between people as a result of not being able to obtain what the more capable people have. Skip Lee however has shown himself to be the most capable person for caring for others in an entire city of nearly 16,000 people, but Skip has used his productivity not mainly for his own benefit or for the benefit of his family but instead for the benefit of the community at large. Overall, what is clear by the way that Skip Lee lives his life is that if he was elected for two terms as the president of the United States, and if people would take seriously his approach to leadership, then he would cause such a inspiration of change that this country would became the crowning example of a Christian nation that the entire world would not be able to overlook such an example of Zionism.