The document discusses interventional leaders, who rise to challenges during crises. It provides examples like business people turning around failing companies or pastors eliminating church debt. Being an interventional leader is difficult due to threats, pressures, and potential blame. The document then focuses on Esther as an interventional leader who risked her life to save her Jewish people from genocide. Through courage and faith, she intervened with the king to reveal the plot and save her people. Her actions are still celebrated through the Jewish holiday of Purim.

1. Case Studies in Biblical Leaders

2. Interventional leaders rise to the
challenge of the darkest hour and bring
hope and enthusiasm to their followers
to pay the price, endure the pain, and
pass through a crisis to the victory side.

3. The authors distinguish between a
“crisis leader” and an “interventional
leader” by the fact that interventional
leaders are more proactive, while crisis
leaders tend to react to the crisis at
hand.

4. Examples of Interventional Leaders:
 Businessmen and women called to
turn around a failing business.
 Coaches who assume control of a
losing team and lead it to a winning
season.
 Pastors of churches in serious debt
who help the church restructure and
develop a strategy to become debt-free.

5. Being an interventional leader is not easy:
 Often called to lead people who feel
threatened in an organization at risk.
 There are time pressures and scarce
resources.
 Often begin without much support.
 If it doesn’t turn around, they are
blamed.

6.  Interventional leaders must often lead
from the strength of their own
personality and calling.
 These leaders tend to be prophetically
gifted and rely on problem solving
skills.
 Often it requires the use of the fine art
of brinkmanship.

7. Challenges for interventional leaders:
 Risk suffering losses when they encounter a
crisis.
 It’s easy to become irritated under the
pressure of their role and push back too
hard on perceived resistance.
 Frustration with meager resources is a
constant problem.
 Discouragement or depression can set in.
 High potential for burnout.

8. If there is one thing that distinguishes
the interventional leader from other
leaders who manage crises, it is

10. Courage is essential for leadership
There is no success without risk of
failure
Problem tend to grow in presence of
fear
If the leader is not courageous the
problem will continue to grow

11. The greatness of a
man [or woman] is
not measured by
what he does, but by
what it takes to stop
him.
~B. R. Larkin

12. Esther’s rise as an interventional leader
began when she first learned from
Mordecai that her race was facing a
major crisis. When she sent a servant to
Mordecai for more information,
“Mordecai told him all that had
happened to him, and the sum of money
that Haman had promised to pay into
the king’s treasury to destroy the Jews”
(Esther 4:7)

13. “He also gave him a copy of the written
decree for their destruction, which was
given at Shushan, that he might show it
to Esther and exlain to her, and that he
might command her to go in to the king
to make supplication to him and plead
before him for her people” (Esther 4:8).

14. The Jewish people were being threatened with
genocide. This was a crisis but Esther is
initially reluctant to intervene. She responds:
“All the king’s servant and the people of the
king’s provinces know that any man or woman
who goes into the inner court to the king, who
has not been called, he has but one law: put al
to death except the one to whom the king
holds out the golden scepter, that he may live.
Yet I mayself have not been called to go in to
the king these thirty days” (Ether 4:11)

15. Eventually Esther called a fast to seek God and
prepare spiritually for the challenge she and
her race faced. She sent word to her people
“Go, gather all the Jews who are present in
Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor dring
for three days, night and day. My maids and I
will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king,
which is against the law; and if I perish, I
perish!” (Esther 4:16).

16. After the fast, Esther drew upon her courage
and her faith, and risked everything to see the
king:
“Now it happened on the third day that Ether
put on her royal robes and stood in the inner
court of the king’s palace, across from the
king’s house, while the king sat on his royal
throne in the royal house, facing the entrance
to the house”

17. “So it was, when the king saw Queen Esther
standing in the court, that she found favor in
his sight, and the king held out to Esther the
golden scepter that was in his hand. Then
Esther went near and touched the top of the
scepter” (Esther 5:1-2).

18. Sometimes
leaders just have
to put it all on
the line and step
up to make a
difference on
behalf of others.

19. When she touched the scepter “the king
said to her, ‘What do you wish, Queen
Esther? What is your request? It shall be
given to you—up to half the kingdom!’”
(Esther 5:3)
Esther had a plan!

20. Esther’s plan unfolding:
4 So Esther answered, “If it pleases the king,
let the king and Haman come today to the
banquet that I have prepared for him.”
5 Then the king said, “Bring Haman quickly,
that he may do as Esther has said.” So the king
and Haman went to the banquet that Esther
had prepared.
6 At the banquet of wine the king said to
Esther, “What is your petition? It shall be
granted you. What is your request, up to half
the kingdom? It shall be done!” (Esther 5:4-6)

21. Haman thought he was going to be honored, but
Esther had something else in mind. At just the
right time during the banquet she addressed the
king directly.
Then Queen Esther answered and said, “If I have
found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases
the king, let my life be given me at my petition,
and my people at my request. For we have been
sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, to be
killed, and to be annihilated. Had we been sold
as male and female slaves, I would have held my
tongue, although the enemy could never
compensate for the king’s loss.” (Esther 7:3-4)

22. 5 So King Ahasuerus answered and said to
Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he,
who would dare presume in his heart to do
such a thing?”
6 And Esther said, “The adversary and enemy
is this wicked Haman!”
So Haman was terrified before the king and
queen. (Esther 7:5-6)

23. 7 Then the king arose in his wrath from the
banquet of wine and went into the palace garden;
but Haman stood before Queen Esther, pleading
for his life, for he saw that evil was determined
against him by the king. 8 When the king
returned from the palace garden to the place of
the banquet of wine, Haman had fallen across
the couch where Esther was. Then the king said,
“Will he also assault the queen while I am in the
house?”
As the word left the king’s mouth, they covered
Haman’s face (Esther 7:7-8)

24. 9 Now Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, said to
the king, “Look! The gallows, fifty cubits high,
which Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke
good on the king’s behalf, is standing at the
house of Haman.”
Then the king said, “Hang him on it!”
10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that
he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the
king’s wrath subsided. (Esther 7:9-10)

25. Esther then asked the king to revoke his earlier
decree to kill the Jews a together, Esther and
Mordecai drew up letters to communicate the
solution to the crisis.
The solution was that the Jews were permitted
to defend themselves and to plunder those who
would do them harm.
What was going to be a day of mourning and
death, became a day of celebration for the Jews.

26. And in every province and city, wherever the
king’s command and decree came, the Jews
had joy and gladness, a feast and a holiday.
Then many of the people of the land became
Jews, because fear of the Jews fell upon them.
(Esther 8:17)
Thus the Jews defeated all their enemies with
the stroke of the sword, with slaughter and
destruction, and did what they pleased with
those who hated them (Esther 9:5)

27. The victory won through Esther’s
courageous intervention is celebrated to
this day in Jewish communities. It is
known as Purim, which is the
celebration of the victory won through
Esther and her cousin Mordecai.

28. Purim is therefore celebrated among Jews by:
 Exchanging reciprocal gifts of food and drink
known as mish loach manot
 Donating charity to the poor known as
mattanot la-evyonim[
 Eating a celebratory meal known as se’udat
Purim
 Public recitation ("reading of the megillah")
of the Scroll of Esther, known as kriat ha-
megillah, usually in synagogue
 Reciting additions, known as Al HaNassim, to
the daily prayer and the grace after meals.

29. Problems are inevitable for leaders, and some
problems are crises. Steps to intervene:
 First, assess the real danger you face – don’t’
guess, engage in fact finding.
 Second, calculate risks – both of inaction
and proposed actions.
 Third, fast and pray, seek God’s wisdom and
direction.
 Fourth, identify the source of the crisis and
don’t just treat the symptoms.
 Fifth, celebrate successes.