"What My Father Taught Me About Leading"

Rev. Dr. Fredrick Lemons 

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There is a kind of leadership that announces itself when it enters the room and then quietly disappears, and then there is the kind that simply endures. My father, Pastor Fredrick Lemons Sr., stood in the same pulpit at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis for 33 years, and in all that time his congregation never had to guess who he was, because the man they saw on Sunday morning was the man his family came home to on Sunday afternoon. That's the kind of integrity that does not get talked about enough in leadership circles, and it shaped everything I know about what it means to lead something that actually lasts.

Father's Day gives us a natural occasion to honor the men who formed us. I want to use this one to say something honest, because the most credible leadership instruction I ever received did not come from a training program or a graduate seminar. It came from watching my father move through his calling with a faithful steadiness that held for more than three decades.

Consistency was the first thing he modeled, and I mean that in the fullest sense. People celebrate vision and charisma in leaders, but consistency is what actually builds trust across years. My father prepared. He showed up. He followed through on what he said. The congregation at St. John built their confidence in him on that pattern, and it held because the pattern held. His steadiness told the people around him that they were safe in his care, and that kind of trust does not come from talent or just preaching in the pulpit. It accumulates through repeated faithfulness to ordinary obligations over a long stretch of time, and it cannot be shortcut. He was there for his church, his family, and for anyone in need. 

Communication was equally present in how he led; he was not a man who talked to fill silence. He was deliberate about saying what needed to be said to the people who needed to hear it. He did not let confusion sit in the congregation when he could address it, and he did not let distance grow in the family when a direct conversation could close it. I brought that lesson into law enforcement leadership, where the cost of poor communication shows up fast and hard. People fill silence with assumption. My father gave people enough clarity to move with confidence, and that clarity was itself an act of care.

He led with character, and 33 years in one place will test that as thoroughly as anything can. People who watch you long enough will find the gaps if the gaps are there. My father gave them very little to find. His private life and his public life ran on the same track, and that alignment gave his ministry a moral weight that could not be manufactured. Character is not the claim that no mistakes were made. It is the observable pattern of choices a person makes across decades, the integrity that holds its shape regardless of who is present or what pressure is being applied.

Courage was woven into how he led as well. He preached the full counsel of the text, including the parts that required his congregation to change something about themselves, and he made hard decisions about the church's direction and stood behind them when they were unpopular. That is where a lot of leaders quietly fold. Courage in leadership does not mean the absence of discomfort. It means acting on what you know to be right even when the easier path is right in front of you. My father consistently chose the harder path when it was the right one, and that posture formed the backbone of everything St. John became under his leadership.

Underneath all of it was conviction. He believed what he preached at a level that pulled him through lean years, through conflict, through loss, through the long stretches of ministry where the work is hard and the fruit is slow. That settled, unshakable sense of purpose kept him in the same pulpit for 33 years when other pressures and other opportunities came calling. Conviction is what the congregation feels when the words land with weight rather than drift past them. You cannot fake that for three decades. Either it is real or the people will eventually know it is not. With my father, it was always real.

This Father's Day, I am grateful for men like him, the ones whose leadership is measured not in titles or platforms but in the faithfulness of a life given to something larger than themselves. If you have a father or a father figure who shaped you with that kind of example, say so while you still can. Some of us are still learning what our fathers gave us long after they are gone, and that gift deserves to be named while there is still time to say it face to face.

Happy Father's Day.

Rev. Dr. Fredrick Lemons II serves as Deputy Chief of Police at the University City Police Department and Lead Servant of St. John Missionary Baptist Church. He is the author of The Badge and the Bible: Faith, Justice, and the Role of Clergy in Community Policing.