Written by: Shonell Dillon on March 21, 2024

Lead or be led

If there is anything that I have learned in life, it is that we will forever be a world of different opinions. As a leader, there is a push your values on others. The question is: Is what you believe best for all? As a religious leader, it is best that we understand what God is saying about our leadership in his word. In this current climate, we are experiencing the hardship of distinguishing between the push for an agenda and doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

Petrusek speaks from the position that a host of groups are leading in the wrong direction. Petrusek is particularly concerned with the “Woke Culture”. He is pressed to show how this and other ideologies are taking us in a negative direction. He argues that these ideologies are false and destructive.(1) Groups such as the NAACP believe that what has been created and said to represent the African American definition of “woke” is also false. In fact, the NAACP recently rallied to reclaim the meaning of woke. The thought was how a word that was used in the 1920s suddenly became something bad or offensive.(2)

According to the Resolutions Library of the NAACP, social activist Marcus Garvey used the words “wake up Ethiopia, wake up Africa” to advocate against discriminatory pay. Marcus proclaimed “We were asleep. But we will stay woke from now on”. The NAACP also points out the word woke was used by an author who used the term in the title “If you’re woke, you dig it”.(3) My own personal knowledge of the word never had a negative connotation. The songs that it was used in reminded you to be vigilant of anything being used against you. My confusion is when it became a problem of the church? How did a word or even different ideologies gain so much traction over the word of God?

Proverbs 4:7 states, Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. The word asks us to get understanding because understanding as Oxford languages describes is having insight and good judgment. The church should be leading from an understanding perspective. We as appointed leaders should not be concerned with politics, politics should be concerned with us. We should be leading so well that we are changing lives with the truth. We should be loving so hard that what is worrying us about false ideology doesn’t mean anything. But instead, we are being Led instead of Leading. In turn, souls are being lost and we are perishing because of the lack of knowledge. Can we refocus?

1. Petrusek, Matthew. Evangelization, and Ideology: How to understand and respond to political culture, Illinois 2023.

2. NAACP, Reclaiming the Word “Woke” as Part of African American Culture. 2023.

About the Author

Shonell Dillon

A daughter of the KING of kings and the LORD of lords. A lover of LIFE!