Humanity has a purpose, and Christians have clarity from God on that purpose. The goal of man is to bring glory to God, and so when considering the definition of Christian leadership, this must be a defining principle. God provides instructions through Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (ESV). Therefore, Christian leadership glorifies God, and any other form of what might be called leadership is sin. Glorifying God is undoubtedly too broad of a definition for Christian leadership on its own, but it is nonetheless a crucial foundation. If God’s glory is the foundation for all a Christian does, then Scripture must be studied to understand what God says explicitly will bring him glory. Then, that alone must define how Christian leadership is understood and evaluated.
Scripture teaches that humanity, specifically Christians, must be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth (Gen 1:28). Christians are also to labor to fulfill the Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20). The commands from these two passages must become a Christian leader’s core convictions. Visions and plans must flow out of this. Consequently, a Christian leader is someone who glorifies God by carrying out aspects of dominion over the earth and fulfilling the Great Commission. However, no single man or woman could carry out the creation mandate or fulfill the Great Commission on his or her own. Hence, leadership is a tool to bring together a group with various gifts and skills to glorify God collectively (1 Cor 12:8-11). Therefore, a Christian leader seeks the glory of God by bringing together others to complete the work of the creation mandate and Great Commission faithfully and effectively.
The Essential Qualities of Faithful and Effective Christian Leaders All Christians are Christian leaders. There is one sense in which being a Christian is to be a Christian leader. The Great Commission was given to all Christians, and therefore, all Christians are instructed to call others to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, baptize them, and teach them. Each of these three instructions requires leading, and none are excluded from the obligation of carrying out these goals. This does not mean all leaders have equivalent responsibilities. Plenty of mothers diligently and faithfully train their children with decisive leadership without receiving the title of leader from others. Christians must be careful not to strip the leadership title from others who do not meet society’s definition of a leader. Christians must also flee the temptation of resting on the leadership of others who do have formal leadership titles. Declaring oneself not to be a leader while calling others to lead is a selfish attempt to dissolve oneself of God-given leadership responsibilities. All of this does not mean all leaders are on equal footing with one another. The Parable of the Ten Minas in Luke 19:11-27 teaches Christians that there are some whom God has given much ability and some who have received less. A leader’s responsibility is to understand where God has placed him and what gifts he has, and then work as faithfully as possible in that place. Both the mother of children and the pastor of a massive congregation are leaders and will be held accountable by God for carrying out their duties.
Even as all Christians are leaders, some are not faithful and effective as they are called to be. Christian leaders do not want to receive the reprimand of the servant who hid the mina and failed even to invest it for interest. Avoiding this indictment begins with self-evaluation, and proper self-evaluation must be done exclusively through the lens of Scripture. If not daily, Christians must evaluate themselves regularly to ensure they remain faithful to God and the people they lead (2 Cor 13:5, Gal 6:4). All leaders are inclined to stray into sin and are likely to become consumed with selfish desire rather than the things of God, and self-evaluation keeps leaders from such evils.
Therefore, self-evaluation begins with faithful practices at home with a leader’s own personal spiritual disciplines and family leadership. In the closing lines of his book on spiritual disciplines, Donald Whitney writes, “[J]ust as the only way to God is through Christ, so the only way to godliness is through the Christ-centered practice of the Spiritual Disciplines.” If Christian leaders want to be faithful they must commit themselves to diligently studying the Scriptures, prayer, worshiping with their families, and growing a heart that is concerned with pleasing God. There is no shortcut to this, and the busyness of ministry can quickly distract a pastor from these practices, but spiritual disciplines are the bedrock of faithfulness. How can a pastor lead without them? How can he preach on the necessity of diligent prayer when he has not prayed all week? How can he lead those with great spiritual maturity in his church when his spiritual maturity is sliding backward? Such a pastor will not be able to lead a congregation rightly. Perfection is impossible for leaders in this age. Still, God calls pastors to keep a close watch on themselves and what they teach to ensure their faithfulness and continued growth into the image of Christ, who is the perfect effective and faithful leader (1 Tim 4:16).
A leader’s participation in corporate spiritual disciplines follows a leader’s consistent personal spiritual disciplines. Even as leaders preach the word of God to change lives, they need to be preached to so their own lives can be transformed. Even as leaders organize small groups to build accountability and community, the leaders themselves need to find a place to get godly community and accountability. Even as a pastor is called out from among God’s people to lead God’s people, he has the same needs as any regular churchgoer. Faithful and effective leaders know their needs and seek to sustain themselves through the church just as any Christian should. This is difficult to practice as a leader and therefore must be done intentionally and carefully, or it will not be done at all. A Christian leader must recognize his own needs and follow other leaders to answer those needs before he will ever be able to begin to lead others.
Essential Leadership Practices
An effective leader casts a vision he cares deeply about, and a faithful leader casts a vision derived from the charge he has received from God to be a leader. The pairing of these two elements with vision means a Christian leader wholly owns the vision he casts, and the concept is rooted in solid truth. If a leader does not cast a passionate vision for those he leads, then there will be nothing of value accomplished, and those he leads are likely to digress personally and spiritually (Pro 21:5). Instead, a leader must cast and communicate the vision he has formulated to those he leads with conviction, not acting in isolation but bringing others into the vision. Additionally, if a leader does not derive the vision he casts from God, then it is prone to be ungodly, and it is likely to lead to the spiritual collapse of his followers. Instead, a leader should ground his vision in seeking the glory of God because this foundation is the only foundation on which successful leadership can be built (Ps 16:11, Pro 19:21, Col 3:17). All other foundations will eventually result in complete failure. These two aspects – forming a vision out of personal conviction and a desire to glorify God - must be together for the leader to be effective and faithful.
The best tool a leader has for bringing others into his vision is teaching. This is all the truer when the vision is rightly rooted in Scripture because the leader will find himself able to argue for his vision not based on his merit but through Scripture’s authority. This requires, of course, the vision to be rightly grounded in Scripture through proper biblical interpretation and for the teaching to have implications and applications that are also based in Scripture. When a leader can faithfully preach his vision based on Scripture, lives will be changed. No leader can escape this responsibility as all leaders are teachers. As previously discussed, some Christian leaders fail, but this does not mean they were not initially called to be vision teachers. A godly mother leads her children by teaching them her biblical vision of their life, and so, she teaches them the error of their ways when they throw their toys in anger, and she commends them when they resist the temptation. There are no universities where professors are teaching without a worldview, there are no faithful churches where sermons are not instructing from Scripture, and there are no leaders who are not teaching followers a vision. In every case where teaching occurs, vision and an understanding of the world are taught from leaders to followers, right or wrong. Christian leaders are to instill biblical vision into their followers.
Teaching must be supported by the integrity of the teacher’s life. The teacher who is found to be a hypocrite and not living a life consistent with his teaching will lose his influence instantaneously (1 Tim 3:2-7). While this is true, it is essential to note that simply modeling one’s convictions is not sufficient on its own. No child will stop throwing his toys simply because his mother does not throw her toys. Just as someone must come to faith in Christ through being taught, people must also be convinced of a leader’s conviction through teaching. Modeling does not instruct, but it does convince, and building trust is a substantial part of the fight to be an effective leader, so teaching and modeling must be found together. Therefore, leaders need to make it standard practice to be seen in public doing what they instruct. It is not suitable for leaders to only tell stories of when they did what they have taught, but followers need to see it in action. Many would argue that this means a leader needs to be seen emptying the garbage bins around the building, but that is overly reductionistic. Leaders need to be seen acting on the fundamental tenants of their vision and conviction.
Effective and faithful leaders must be people who make decisions. It is unhealthy for a leader to create a vision, convince others of his visions, and then pin the responsibility for the success or failure of his visions onto others. Christian leaders must do all of this, including executing the plans and taking responsibility for the outcome. This is difficult today, where people are particularly unforgiving and quick to make judgments without having all the necessary information. Nonetheless, regardless of the pressure from the world, leaders need to be bold and act for those they lead.
Biblical and Theological Foundations
A guiding principle informs how Christians should use the Bible to develop and use a leadership philosophy. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” This necessarily means Christians should be wary about building their leadership philosophy through secular means. It does not exclude secular resources, as all humanity has received general revelation, and God has created the world with things that naturally work better than others, but, since God says Scripture is sufficient for the man of God, or the leader of God, to be equipped for every work, secular resources become less important. From this basis and understanding of the authority and sufficiency of Scripture comes the ability to identify man’s purpose to be glorifying God. If Scripture is not sufficient for equipping every good work, there would be a severe issue with Scripture’s authority to speak into a Christian’s life and define leadership.
Secular Theories and Resources Extrabiblical resources have a place second to Scripture, and these resources fall into one of two categories: works produced in a biblical context and works created in a secular context. Results produced by Christians based on and seeking to apply Scripture are superior because they rely on factual truth as their basis. This does not mean all secular works are unhelpful or unnecessary, but Christians must be extra careful when engaging them. In their book on leadership, Michael Wilder and Timothy Jones argue that empirical research and the intuition of secular leaders are valuable. Still, such considerations of worldly insight must be considered by understanding the metanarrative of Scripture. John Trentham, in his journal article about engaging secular social sciences, argues that Christians can and should read the works of the secular social sciences through a theological lens.8 Indeed, it is necessary and proper to engage secular thinking on issues to carry out the charges we have received as Christians. No heart bypass surgery can be completed without vast reliance on worldly knowledge and secular people, and besides, the Bible gives no instructions on how to perform such a surgery. Nevertheless, Christians should make it their habit to turn first to Scripture, then to resources created by people who share a biblical worldview, and then to secular means.
After determining it is appropriate to use secular insight, the next logical question must be determining its usefulness. Unquestionably, worldly knowledge on heart bypass surgeries is beneficial but is the secular understanding of marriage equally applicable? It certainly is not. Why? The Bible speaks extensively on marriage and how it should rightly be done. Marriage is something we need to be equipped to do right considering 2 Timothy 3:16. Having heart surgery or not having heart surgery is not what makes a man of God complete. Therefore, what the Bible has spoken about regarding being a 2 Timothy 3:16 man requires little to no insight from the nonbeliever. Moreover, God instructs Christians in 1 Timothy 6:3-4a, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.” When Scripture speaks, the Christian leader listens, or he will find himself relying on people who understand nothing at all (Jer 17:9, 1 Cor 3:19).
Where then does the practice of leadership fall on the continuum between heart surgery and marriage counseling? Scripture provides many examples of leaders in the Bible to consider, both those who lead well and those who do not lead well.10 However, the Bible does not provide detailed instructions on leadership in all contexts. The church leader has extensive guidelines and clarity provided on how to lead a church from Scripture. Indeed, it should be argued that he has entirely sufficient instructions for organizing a church, but this is not the case for someone managing a hospital. A pastor knows he ought to have deacons in his church and their role, but a hospital CEO does not have similar detailed instructions. So, what should a Christian hospital CEO do? He should lean as hard as possible into Scripture and glean every principle he can from it before turning to secular resources. The Christian CEO of a hospital will understand the human condition entirely from Scripture; he will be able to even structure some of his organization after the leadership models in Scripture. Then he will turn to the secular sciences to understand heart surgery and best industry practices (Pro 8:12-16, 2 Chron 1:10).
Conlusion
When a leader teaches leadership, his teaching must be supported by what the followers see as authentic leadership. The leader must live a life of integrity and consistency in his personal life and in his leadership. He cannot teach leadership to others if his leadership model changes on an annual or situational basis. “A reputation for inconsistency betrays a lack ofconviction, and a lack of conviction is the nullification of leadership,” writes Albert Mohler in his book on leadership. If a leader does find himself being consistently wrong and needing to adjust his leadership style, then he should not be found teaching leadership to others. If the results of a leader are poor or destructive, he should not be found teaching leadership.
When an effective leader is leading, the communication of his leadership philosophy is critical for followers to understand the expectations. This is far better done directly and with clarity rather than requiring followers to know what is expected through tangential experiences alone. Christian leaders should regularly explain what they are doing through their leadership and why it matters to the organization and the followers. Moreover, with age and maturity, leaders should be convinced of their leadership style because of its biblical basis and its history of success in their lives. Such teaching becomes more than a one-time event, and successful leaders are eager to pass along their knowledge to their followers and the next generation of leaders any chance they get. A pastor does this through discipleship, a business leader does this through mentoring, and a parent does this through the daily correction and instruction of their children.
Irving, Justin A. Leadership in Christian Perspective: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Practices for Servant Leaders. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019.
Mohler, R. Albert, Jr. The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership That Matters. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2012.
Trentham, John David. “Reading the Social Sciences Theologically (Part 2): Engaging and Appropriating Models of Human Development.” Christian Education Journal 16, no. 3 (2019): 476–494.
Whitney, Donald S. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. Colorado Springs: NavPress Publishing Group, 2016.
Wilder, Michael S., and Timothy P. Jones. The God Who Goes Before You: Pastoral Leadership As Christ-Centered Followership. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2018.
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