I have previously done some work in my graduate program on the topic of how leaders “finish well.” Finishing well describes how leaders prepare for and engage life after their transition into retirement. Bob Buford, in Finishing Well, calls this stage Life II and observes that finding significance and meaning in Life II is often difficult for leaders, especially those who have had tremendous accomplishments. Below are some excerpts from a short piece I wrote on looking at two biblical leaders on this topic:
The narratives of Moses and David in the Old Testament are rich case studies for how biblical leaders can ‘finish well.’ Their stories are both similar and unique. Each followed a different trajectory marked by significant and meaningful episodes in both their character and leadership. The biblical data is extensive and profoundly deep concerning how these men related to God and how their leadership affected both their context and the history that followed it.
Taken as a pair, Moses and David share many similar features. Both had clear divine callings, both exhibited times of divine intervention and empowerment. Both fit the label of hero leader. Both occupied places of great esteem, status, and privilege. Both had colossal blunders or outright sinful behaviors that cost them each dearly. Depending on one’s yardstick, either man may or may not “measure up.” Standards for what constitutes finishing well, even in biblical exegesis, can be fluidly adjusted to suite the observer’s prior notions. Such may be the case here, but perhaps not. One could argue that Moses and David did not finish well on the basis of certain aspects of their performance: Moses didn’t get to enter the land and his people remained a bunch of ungrateful complainers for another generation (so much for influence!); David’s closest network of relationships – his family – was in tatters seemingly because of his propensity for taking brides and ultimately another mans’ wife. Whatever the cause, David’s familial record plummets after Bathsheba.
Yet the positive lessons for contemporary leadership are many and the plumbing of those depths beyond this work. But a thumbnail sketch: in David we see finishing well as involving a heart of humility, contrition, righteousness, and purity in all of one’s relationships until the very end. Even in old age, God judges the state of a man’s heart rather than the status of his achievements. In David we also see that greatness at the pinnacle of one’s life loses its luster when moral relativity takes precedence over moral righteousness. Great leaders are not exempt from holy living. And holy living at the end of life is what makes good men great, regardless of status, position, title, or material wealth.
From Moses we see finishing well means walking with humility, graciousness, and selfless devotion to the larger purposes of God. Great leaders play the part to which they’ve been called, acknowledge their failures, accept the consequences, and exhibit a grace-full willingness to invest their wisdom, lessons, and cautions into the next generation that follows. We also see that the act of passing on gracious wisdom means focusing on the essentials of life, truth, and eternal reality. Great leaders who finish well have a preoccupation with the eternal essentials of life and focus their successors on those essentials.
