Over the last number of weeks, I’ve been diving into the Scriptures to better understand a biblical perspective on leadership. Over the next several days, I plan on sharing what I’m learning. I want to challenge you to do the same. Today, I’m going to take the opportunity to explain why.
First of all, I believe that leadership is a gift. It’s among the list of spiritual gifts listed in Scripture. “If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously” (Romans 12:8). Now with that, the Bible says, “God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well” (Romans 12:6). That suggests that some people have leadership abilities, but others don’t. We are all followers, but not all of us are leaders. I think we all can learn some some leadership skills, but not all of us are gifted to be leaders. One of the first questions you may want to ask yourself is this: Am I really a leader?
I also believe that God has designed the Church to have clear leadership roles and structure. For example, “the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.” (Ephesians 4:11). These are specific roles God designed for ministry. Then in passages like I Timothy 3, we see defined leadership roles of elders and deacons. We are also called to respect the leadership structure God puts in place. “Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God” (Hebrews 13:17).
Now, here’s why I think we need to all wrestle with our theology of leadership. God has gifted some to be leaders. God has defined leadership roles in the church. But, God has also expressly defined for us how leaders are supposed to act. Frankly, sometimes I see a gap between God’s design for leadership and how we (including I) live out our leadership roles.
There’s this warning in the Bible to commit ourselves to the instructions of God’s Word rather than the traditions of man. (See Mark 7:8-9.) I’ve heard some press on the fact that we tend in the modern church to look too closely to marketplace leadership for cues to how we should lead in the church. That’s probably a fair argument. Not all successful leadership is biblical leadership. However, I do see business leaders using leadership principles taught in Scripture whether they know it or not.
The bottom line, however, is that we can learn from business leaders, but they should not be the anchor for how we lead. We can also learn from fellow church leaders, but they are also human and don’t necessarily provide a perfect model for biblical leadership. When we look to other leaders, we are essentially holding on to our traditions, rather than embracing the truth about leadership found in God’s Word. That needs to become our filter for truth. Just because we see other leaders doing it, doesn’t mean that’s how God designed it.
So, I ask you: What’s your theology of leadership? If you’re like me, it’ll continually be shifting in some respects as you come to a clearer understanding of God’s Word and how it applies to your life. You are not becoming the leader God designed you to be, however, if you are only learning about leadership from the books you read and the people you watch and your experiences along the way.
We need to wrestle with this issue and try to understand how God defines leadership. I hope you’ll join me on this journey to discover these answers together.
Great post that raises necessary questions. I have benefitted from leadership training that often originates in the marketplace. However, I have also experienced too many leaders that seemed more familiar with Peter Drucker than Simon Peter, and that is a shame. Good work Tony!
Great blog Tony. Leadership is such a big issue in the church today. Good leadership can take churches and individuals to heights they never imagines while bad leadership can take a good staff down the drain. However, leadership has to be spiritual first. A leader who reads and uses good techniques will be ahead of the field in the short term, but unless they have the God given gift of leadership they will fall behind eventually.
The biggest problem I see in churches today is that we expect Pastors to be good leaders, but all they have known is seminary and church, where as the people in the church have only known the marketplace. Many pastor do not know how to effectively be good leaders because they were never taught or experienced it in their training.
Without getting into a real long diatribe, my theology of leadership had two fairly foundational premises: 1.) Who are you matters more than what you do and 2.) A Christian leader is first and foremost a servant to those he leads.
Good first thoughts, interested in seeing the rest.
“Not all successful leadership is biblical leadership.” I think you could also say that not all successful leadership is good leadership! We often mix “success” up with being necessarily positive.
I’m grateful for the godly leadership that’s promoted in books found in the business section at the bookstore. Business has a distinct advantage over the Church in that Business is open to innovation and evaluation or it dies. The Church, on the other hand, has traded on it’s ‘favoured’ status and cosmic bail outs for too long.
Great discussion starter, Tony! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about leadership from a “coaching” standpoint. I think that Jesus truly coached the disciples to develop from “untrained fishermen” to powerful leaders to launch the Church. Coaches have to see things from a perspective of developing people because where they start out is not where they need to end up. I’m not sure church leaders look at things from that perspective enough. Great post!
Of course, great post! Good comments already too. It can become difficult to balance Leadership in the Spirit vs. Pragmatic effectual approaches. Faithfulness to the call, the Bible and one’s relationship with Christ obviously trumps all end-result/bottom-line driven methods. It still is difficult to not succumb to the pressure to produce. Bottom-line is we are called to be Christians first….this gets lost in performance. I’m all about the books, conferences, degrees and models..however, Tony nailed it…It’s about Christ and yielding to His Spirit–the Spirit of Leadership.
Great post Tony and I couldn’t agree more. The same applies to worship leadership. There are some incredibly talented musicians that just don’t have the gift of leading worship or go about it in the entirely wrong way.
First and foremost, leaders are followed. Second, leaders should be humble or people will hit “unfollow”. :)
Jesus is the greatest leader the world has ever known. There has never been a leader who has altered the course of human history like Jesus. Tony you are right that we depend to much on tradition because, honestly, we can feel touch and experience tradition. I can see the results of great leaders of our generation and its easy to copy.
However, we are called to more. We are called to answer the question ‘What is God saying here?’ and find the biblical principles. To me that’s the only way we wont get caught in tradition. I know I’ve gotten caught in tradition, seeing someone’s success and then copying what they did, and it failed every time. But when I discern the biblical principles and apply it to my context I have success.
But its hard to not be a copycat.
http://twitter.com/atibadesouza
Thought provoking Tony. I’ll have to chew on this awhile
Matt
Good insights on leadership here. For me, I tend to look at leaders in the church that are making a difference and impact where they are. I listen and see what principles they are using to be successful or better yet, looking at their results. I then tend to compare what they’re doing to what the business world is doing and you’re right, I find there are many businesses that whether they know it or not are using similar principles.
What’s hurtful to leaders and in this case churches, is that we some how are still afraid to try out these principles. Is it because they weren’t our original idea? Our we too proud to say we have a models? If we were a company, we wouldn’t. We’d do everything we could to move a product or service ahead of everyone else. Shouldn’t our churches be that way? Don’t we all agree we have the best thing for everyone?
Good thoughts.
Too many people are infatuated with developing gifts that they may not have. We are also obsessed with helping people develop gifts they may not have. The world (including the church) is flooded with blogs, books, conferences, seminars that help people “become a leader”. God didn’t make it that complicated!!! His spiritual gifts are free. We need to stop trying to help people develop things that aren’t even there to begin with.
Pride will get in the way of this most of the time. Everyone wants to be a leader. Everyone wants to be at the top. No one is content being a follower. It’s part of our culture where “everyone is a winner” and “you can be anything you want to be”. The church needs to break away from this dangerous pride building philosophy and just follow God’s word. We should humble ourselves and accept that the best thing we can do is be a follower of God’s leadership.
Jesus came to serve.
Jesus led the masses, but took opportunities to lead individuals…be was never “too big” for the small things.
Jesus raised up, imparted to, and released unconventional leaders.
Jesus was totally dependant on the Father in his leadership
…just some quick thoughts from the iPhone…
Great post Tony! I look forward to thinking about and learning more about a biblical theology of leadership. In searching for the word “lead” in Scripture, the first time it’s used is Gen 32:17. Although it would be ignoring the context to draw too much out of this, I love the three questions asked:
* “To whom do you belong?”
* “Where are you going?”
* “What resources has God provided for you?”
I think it’s easy for us to ask a someone who is successful in business to be on the board of a ministry or church. But we need more hybrids who are bi-vocational or more like elders.
According to 1 Timothy, a leader is not a person who fulfills a certain kind of role…a leader is a certain kind of person. The emphasis is on manifest character with one qualifying gift — ‘must be able to teach.’
Great thoughts, Tony. Leaders must take responsibility. As spiritual leaders , we know that ultimately we must give an account to God for our lives and leadership. I appreciate your writings….keep it up. I’m praying for you today!
Good thoughts here, but I’ve got one point I’d like to make. Just because leadership is a gift that does not mean that all leaders have the gift of leadership. Let’s use an example, the passage you quoted also talked about the gift of teaching. Does this mean that all Biblical teachers have the gift of teaching? I don’t think so….I agree with your conclusion about our leadership being dependent on our understanding of God (see Moses for a good example of what you were saying) but I don’t see how saying that leadership is a gift is in anyway contributing towards your conclusion…
definitely encouraging as i am on a journey of learning what it means to “Keep my Eyes on the Lord.” This is my first time to visit your site and to even realize that Tony Morgan exists. God knew though and it was nice to bump into this post. Of course, the scriptures are the TRUTH and my source of preference but i agree with what you state here. Thanks for the encouraging post. “Keep your eyes on HIM,” and keep sharing what you learn.
[...] 13, 2009 · No Comments In Tony Morgan’s blog he talked about leadership today. He’s challenging us to reflect on who or what we look to [...]
Tony…i think my theology of leadership is a continually evolving thing. I will say that I’ve been blessed to be around some great leaders and great thinkers on the topic of leadership. I’m going to do the unusual and refer to someone else’s blog.
http://innerresourcesforleaders.blogspot.com/
This is a blog by Corne’ Bekker who works as a professor of leadership at Regent University. I’ve seen his comprehension of leadership first hand and appreciate is Bible focused approach to understanding and applying leadership.
Btw…if you and the family swing through Raleigh on your RV tour, coffee and hugs are on me. :-)
*his* approach…oops
Like many things in life we make them harder then God intended, “theology of leadership” sounds like if you study God and find out more about Him, He will guide you to be the man that you are designed to be; husband, dad, leader. It may sound to simple but sometimes simple is better.
My favorite passage on leadership comes from Philippians 2:3-4: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vaid conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
When people sense when a leader is genuine, humble, and recognizes his/her own struggles with sin, they will follow. The old saying is still just as true today, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
This is great Tony. Thanks for “leading” us in this study. Looking forward to more!
I like your start on leadership and have myriad thoughts. But I’m new here and need some clarification to understand our “purpose” to better focus my thoughts about “theology of leadership.”
To give you a starting point from which to clarify your own discussion, may I suggest that perhaps your purpose might be:
To understand your own perspective of what God expects of human leadership,
To understand your religious tradition’s perspective of what God expects of human leadership,
To address a present situation and need, and possibly
To facilitate reform of one or both of those perspectives.
I think this focus will help me understand your commentary better. Thanks!
Given the parameters of leadership in the post, one has to wonder how the uneducated, non leader, stutterer, and slow of speech, Moses, was chosen for leadership to set people free of bondage….by the millions.
Could it be that leadership is most likely, when it is least possible, in order to prove that GOD is in the process, not men?
Perhaps this should all start from scratch, based on Moses as a leader. Then again, most leaders today simply delete that which is at variance from their preconceived position.
A burning bush that could not be consumed created curiosity and a leader. Look for burning bushes in your quest.
Thanks for taking this on Tony, great need. lookiing forward to reading your findings.
Interesting post. I was writing a paper on contemporary leadership styles and it seems that the “transformational” is very popular right now. The most interesting part was that “Moses’” name kept showing up.
ur concept of leadership is clear and an eye opening