In 1949, Wag Dodge lead a team of smoke jumpers to fight the Mann Gulch fire. His leadership or lack thereof has been used in business school classes as an example of how not to lead men.

Wag was a man of few words who was leading a group of men who he had not worked with before. When they were dropped from their plane down into the fire area, he immediately had his dinner. The men were taking pictures of the fire, and Wag’s lack of direction and seemingly carefree attitude seemed to lull the others into complacency.

When the fire took a turn for the worst and came right at them, Wag began to try and lead by directing the men to drop all their tools and to NOT run from the fire–both counter intuitive actions. These actions would only be followed by men who trusted their leader. He then burned a small area around them with a match and told them all to lie down and the fire would pass them by. Needless to say, the others made a run for it and all but 2 of them died. Wag laid down and sure enough the fire went over him. In fact, Wag’s ‘escape fire’ was the first of its kind in modern firefighting history.

So why am I sharing this story? I heard the details of this story by a business professor teaching a course on critical decision making. We, as Christians, are the Wag’s of the world, and as such, we are reminded of 2 important points from Wag’s story:
1. The world and its people are on fire, and they don’t know it until it is too late. Their solution is to panic and run. We have the answer–don’t panic, leave behind all your ‘stuff’, surrender, and lie prostrate before Him and TRUST in Him and NO ONE else.  If you do this, the fire will pass over you.
2. The world sees Christians as Wag’s; they will only follow us when we are in relationship with them….when we love them and share our lives with them.