The danger of prizing heroism but not durability

Joshua 1 is one of those passages that people often preach or talk about when focusing on leadership, the call to be strong and very courageous, to do great things for God.  To like Joshua stand up, or stand in the breach, and lead God's people into the land.  But I'm not sure that a lack of desire to be the hero is our problem.  Just think of the role you automatically cast yourself in when you watch a film, you automatically cast yourself as the hero, that is who you want to be like.  We do the same when we read the bible, we want to be like a Moses, or a Joshua, or a Gideon, or a Paul.

But I'm not convinced that we do ourselves any favours by focusing on that slant of the bibles teaching about leadership to the detriment of durability.  It's interesting to go on and read the rest of Joshua as I've been doing in a morning, Chapter 1 is just the beginning, Jericho has to be take, the Achan's sin dealt with, then there is the treachery of the Gibeonites, then there are kings to defeat, cities to conquer and land to divide up and lots of it.  Then there are cities of refuge to apportion, towns to give to the Levites, and the delicate situation with the Eastern tribes to resolve.  I have never heard anyone do a talk on leadership or a call to Christian ministry that used the chapters on dividing the land or apportioning cities, or even resolving the conflict with the Eastern tribes as its text.

Does that leave us thinking only heroic, courageous, throw yourself in front a bus leadership is valuable?  Does it leave us devaluing the more mundane everyday leadership that so much of ministry is about?  Do we want to do something significant, but define significant in terms of numbers or reach, or heroism?

I know for myself I tend to value the new, the exciting, the heroic, maybe that is why I was drawn to planting a new church, but how do I feel about the rest of it?  Do I prize durability as much?  If I don't then when the excitement wears off the and the call for enduring not heroic leadership comes, as it inevitably will, then I will find myself demotivated and devaluing it.  I will find myself longing for my next Joshua 1 rush rather than faithfully finishing what God has called me to do.  I will find myself bailing out of a ministry or an area of service after a year, or two or three.

Joshua endured, that is leadership, heroically doing all that God calls us to both the hair raising taking of new ground and the slow steady plod of settling, teaching and leading God's people in the day by day.