Some Christians assume that practices of leadership are deeply secular and inconsistent with Scripture.

WE RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE.

We invite you to engage our thoughts in detail:

Leadership, at its core, is positive, fruitful influence. It is not titles, authority, or coercive power. Jesus has produced more positive, fruitful influence than any person in human history. By that measure, Jesus Christ was the greatest leader of all time.
Leaders are not magically born with a charismatic or strong personality. Leaders are people who develop an ability to inspire others. They challenge followers to raise the trajectory of their lives—to take ownership of their lives, to commit to a higher purpose, and to pursue a greater vision of what God can do.
Jesus did all these things. He was the supreme example of personal, authentic, spiritual influence. Jesus commanded his followers’ attention through his personal presence, moral example, and spiritual authority. As Jesus walked, his disciples went with him. As he taught, they learned a new way of life. As he modeled true leadership, he washed their feet. And then he gave his life so they could live.
Like those first followers, disciples today walk with their leader, Jesus. They are close to him. They learn what he taught. They do what he did. They live as he lived. And they give of their lives for others. This is godly influence. This is true leadership.
True spiritual leadership produces powerful results, but not because of coercion or manipulation. The results are due to a love that is sustained by intimacy with God. Some may think evil tyrants or angry drill sergeants typify true leadership. This is false.
Jesus did not lead like a powerful narcissist who forces his followers to serve his own interests. True leaders do not depend on domination or bullying. They do not coerce their followers to act (except perhaps in moments of extreme danger). True leadership radiates out of self-sacrificing care for others.
This self-sacrifice flows out of intimacy with God. Great Christian leaders can concentrate on enabling their followers to fulfill their callings precisely because they already possess a deep sense of security in the love of God.
Godly leaders, therefore, don’t lead out of an empty chasm in their own hearts. They don’t have to use their power or position to address their emotional needs or fill their heart gaps. Instead, they lead out of a well of deep emotional, relational, and spiritual abundance.
Followers can sense that a leader like this is for them. They feel safe. They know that in following a godly leader, they don’t have to hold back resources for self-protection. They can act in confidence to fulfill their God-given callings. They understand that their leader is making a way for them to join with God in his plan to restore all things.
Godly leaders guide churches toward missional goals. As they do this, they also serve their followers. They add value to their lives by giving them meaningful roles in God’s work. They contribute to their discipleship by preparing them for these roles. Such leaders change the world for the better by leading like Jesus.
Since leadership of this kind begins with the inner spiritual life of the leader, the Bible offers much positive teaching that speaks to godly leadership. It builds a reliable foundation for true, godly leadership by describing and inspiring the kind of spiritual intimacy with God, of deep emotional security, and broad relational strength out of which leaders must act.
The Bible tells of successful leaders who followed this prescription and honored God in their work. It also provides many examples of evil, incompetent, insecure, or narcissistic so-called “leaders” who used their status or position to compensate for their own inner voids. Think of King Saul. The lives of failed leaders in the Bible end in ruin. These are cautionary tales.
The Bible also provides leadership principles to follow. It describes the viewpoints and behaviors of leaders who did the work—organizing followers for success, inspiring their efforts, structuring their plans, and counting their results. (Think of Moses, Nehemiah, and the apostles in Acts 6.) Jesus repeated honored those (like the ten-talent manager) who didn’t just do religious activities, but successfully accomplished missional results.

For these reasons, we ground our understanding of leadership in the Bible. We also learn from other areas of human experience. We believe that what flows out of special revelation (the Bible) and what we learn from general revelation (experience and research) is all revelation. That is, it all comes from God, since “All truth is God’s truth.”
When a Christian gets a cancer diagnosis, they usually seek both medical treatment and fervent prayer. We think this is appropriate. We oppose, therefore, any attempt to draw artificial divisions between biblical understanding and healthy human experience. As in medicine, so in leadership: we’re both guided by the Bible and also informed by/helped by the experience of human leaders and the research results of careful scholars. We’re careful to ensure that, as we do this, we maintain the supremacy of Scripture.
Because an accurate model of leadership calls for a “both/and” approach, research into leadership at secular business schools, as an example, is relevant to Christian leaders. Of course, we never adopt ideas uncritically. We learn from leaders in non-Christian arenas, even as we test these things daily to see whether they are so (Act 17:11). This means we don’t uncritically embrace principles of leadership that find their only natural home in business, the military, or the government. We aren’t just applying alien or “secular” ideas willy nilly to the church. What we learn from research and experience is filtered through the lens of Scripture.
Interestingly, much of what has become common practice in business (for example, the emphasis on having a clear mission) comes from Christians who studied the Bible. ‘Mission,’ after all, is a biblical word! If anything, the corporate world learned much about leadership from the Bible. So if business leaders can learn to lead from Jesus and the Bible, certainly church leaders can, too.
We believe the mindsets and habits of healthy leadership, as revealed in the Bible and confirmed in human experience, are appropriate for the church.
We believe in transformational leadership. In this model, leaders do two things: (1) they tenaciously pursue an organization’s mission, and (2) they humbly invest in their people.
Those who view leadership through the stereotype of a drill sergeant fail to see the second point. They imagine that leaders, like tyrants, are most effective when they exercise force and use power to achieve their goals.
This stereotype of leadership is false. Tyrants are actually terrible leaders; they produce sub-optimal results. By contrast, great leaders add incredible value to the lives of their followers as they accomplish great results. They use the organization’s missional work as a laboratory for building people up.
In the church, as people are trained for and deployed in the mission of God, they experience transformational spiritual growth. Their faith, for example, grows. True spiritual growth cannot be limited to knowledge, but must include actions and character. After all, “knowledge puffs up while love builds up” (I Cor 8:1).
So true church leaders go beyond motivation and encouragement. Motivational sermons, without behavior guidance, create a short term buzz. Real transformation arises when leaders use equipping strategies that permanently rewire the ways in which people think, feel, and act.
Great pastors are not in it for themselves. They sacrifice themselves and their own interests, not only for the mission of God, but also for the well-being of the people. Like Jesus, as they lead, they wash their followers’ feet.
Whether any organization is flourishing or floundering, it usually comes back to the presence or absence of one thing: effective leadership. Leaders bear the bulk of responsibility for any organization’s success or failure. They cannot escape this accountability.
This principle is true of nations, armies, businesses, and even football teams. (A team of all-pro players, led by an incompetent coach, will never win the Super Bowl.) It’s also true of local churches. Leadership is the single most important differentiator between fruitful and unproductive organizations.
Of course, an organization’s success or failure always involves people other than the leader. Every member of an organization is important and contributes to its success or failure. But the leader sets a direction, organizes the people, inspires action, and cares for everyone along the way. A leader either maximizes or squanders the value of every other individual’s contribution.
Godly leadership, therefore, is absolutely essential for fruitful churches. But this does not mean that leadership is the only relevant factor. Fervent prayer, biblical wisdom, spiritual maturity, and effective ministry are essential, too.
Still, “good,” spiritually-minded churches, with great Bible teaching and lots of prayer, can flounder. This shows that while spiritual vitality is essential, it is not sufficient. Effective leadership is required, too.
So a dynamic, flourishing church will be led by biblical, prayerful, and spiritual pastors and elders. And also, these leaders must be effective, mature, self-sacrificing believers who know and practice all the disciplines of effective leadership.
When pastors decide to truly lead, they alter the trajectory of a church and alter the history of the world. When God uses a leader to change a church, the surrounding community is transformed. When God uses a church to transform a community, the world is changed forever.