What Makes Leadership Christian?

Look for these five distinctives.

Many people today are warning us that the world is heading for disaster, but few are offering advice on how to avert it. Technical know-how abounds, but wisdom is in short supply. People feel confused, bewildered, alienated. We are like “sheep without a shepherd”—and our leaders often appear as “blind leaders of the blind.”

There is a great need for clear-sighted, courageous, and dedicated leaders in the home, the church, the community. Management books refer to “B.N.L.’s” (“born natural leaders”), men and women endowed with strong intellect, character, and personality. But as Bennie E. Goodwin, a black American educator, has written: “Although potential leaders are born, effective leaders are made.” And Christian leadership, to use the words of Oswald Sanders, is “a blending of natural and spiritual qualities,” or of natural talents and spiritual gifts.

What, then, are the marks of leadership in general, and of Christian leadership in particular? How can God’s gifts be cultivated and leadership potential developed? And what is needed to blaze a trail that others will follow?

Let me suggest five essential ingredients.

Vision

“Dreams” and “visions,” dreamers and visionaries, sound somewhat impractical and remote from the harsh realities of life on earth. Yet the biblical proverb holds true: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Of course, more prosaic words are used today. Management experts tell us we must set both long- and short-term goals. Politicians publish election manifestos. Military personnel lay down a campaign strategy. But whether they call it a “goal,” a “manifesto,” or a “strategy,” it is a vision nevertheless.

So what is vision? It is an act of seeing—an imaginative perception of things, combining insight and foresight. More particularly (and in the sense in which I am using the word), it is a deep dissatisfaction with what is and a clear grasp of what could be. It begins with indignation over the status quo, and it grows into the earnest quest for an alternative. Both are quite clear in the public ministry of Jesus. He was indignant over disease, hunger, and death, for he perceived these things as alien to the purpose of God. Hence his compassion.

Indignation and compassion form a powerful combination, and they are indispensable to vision—and therefore to leadership. History abounds with examples, both biblical and secular. Moses was appalled by the cruel oppression of his fellow Israelites in Egypt. He remembered God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was sustained throughout his long life by the vision of the Promised Land. Nehemiah heard in his Persian exile that the wall of the Holy City was in ruins and its inhabitants in great distress. The news overwhelmed him, until God put into his heart what he could and should do. “Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem,” he said. And the people replied, “Let us start rebuilding” (Neh. 2:17–18, NIV).

Moving to New Testament times, the early Christians were well aware of the might of Rome and the hostility of the Jews. But Jesus had told them to be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth,” and his vision transformed them. Saul of Tarsus, for example, had been brought up to accept as inevitable and unbridgeable the chasm between Jews and Gentiles. But Jesus commissioned him to take the gospel to the Gentile world, and Paul was “not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” Indeed, the vision of a single, new, reconciled humanity so captured the apostle’s heart and mind that he labored, suffered, and died in its cause.

Today, we see with our mind’s eye the three billion unevangelized peoples of the world, people who have had no real opportunity to hear or respond to the gospel—the poor, the hungry, and the disadvantaged; people crushed by political, economic, or racial oppression. We see these things—but do we care? We see what is—but do we see what could be? The unevangelized could be reached with the good news of Jesus, the hungry could be fed, the oppressed liberated, the alienated brought home. We need a vision of the purpose and power of God.

Industry

The world has always been scornful of dreamers. “Here comes that dreamer!” Joseph’s older brothers said to one another. “Come now, let’s kill him.… Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams” (Gen. 37:19ff.). The dreams of night tend to evaporate in the cold light of morning.

So dreamers have to become thinkers, planners, and workers, and that demands industry or hard labor. Men of vision need to become men of action. It was Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth-century Scottish writer, who said of Frederick the Great that genius means first of all “the transcendent capacity of taking trouble.” And it was Thomas Alva Edison who defined genius as “1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

Adding industry to vision is a hallmark of history’s great leaders. It was not enough for Moses to dream of the land flowing with milk and honey; he had to organize the Israelite rabble and lead them through the dangers and hardships of the desert before they could possess the Promised Land. Similarly, Nehemiah was inspired by his vision of the rebuilt Holy City. But first he had to gather materials to reconstruct the wall and weapons to defend it.

Thus dream and reality, passion and practicality, must go together. Without the dream the campaign loses its direction and its fire; but without hard work and practical projects the dream vanishes into thin air.

Perseverance

It is one thing to dream dreams and see visions. It is another to convert a dream into a plan of action. It is yet another to persevere when opposition comes. And opposition is bound to arise. As soon as the campaign gets under way, the forces of reaction muster: entrenched privilege digs itself in more deeply, commercial interests feel threatened and raise the alarm, cynicism sneers at the folly of “do-gooders,” and apathy becomes transmuted into hostility.

But a true work of God thrives on opposition. Its silver is refined and its steel hardened. Of course, those without the vision, those who are merely being carried along by the momentum of the campaign, will soon capitulate. So it is that the protesting youth of one decade become the conservative establishment of the next. But not so the real leader. He has the resilience to take setbacks in stride, the tenacity to overcome fatigue and discouragement, and the wisdom to “turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.” The real leader adds the grace of perseverance to vision and industry.

In the Old Testament, Moses is again the outstanding example. On about a dozen distinct occasions the people “murmured” against him, and he had the beginnings of a mutiny on his hands. When Pharaoh’s army was threatening them, when the water ran out or was too bitter to drink, when there was no meat to eat, when the scouts brought back a bad report of the strength of Canaanite fortifications, when small minds became jealous of his position—these were some of the occasions on which the people complained of his leadership and challenged his authority. A lesser man would have given up and abandoned them to their own pettiness. But not Moses. He never forgot that these were God’s people by God’s covenant who by God’s promise would inherit the land.

In the New Testament, the man who came to the end of his life with his ideals intact and his standards uncompromised was the apostle Paul. He too faced bitter and violent opposition. He had to endure severe physical afflictions—beatings, stonings, imprisonment. And he suffered mentally, for his footsteps were dogged by false prophets who contradicted his teaching and slandered his name.

He also experienced great loneliness. Toward the end of his life he wrote, “At my first defense … everyone deserted me” (2 Tim. 1:15; 4:16). Yet Paul never lost his vision of God’s new, redeemed society, and he never gave up proclaiming it. In his underground dungeon, from which there was to be no escape but death, he could write: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). The apostle persevered to the end.

In recent centuries perhaps no one has exemplified perseverance more than William Wilberforce. When the Abolition of Slavery Bill was passed in both Houses of England’s Parliament in July 1833, this political leader saw the successful culmination of 45 years of single-minded struggle on behalf of African slaves. Sir Reginald Coupland wrote that, in order to break the apathy of Parliament, a would-be social reformer “must possess, in the first place, the virtues of a fanatic without his vices. He must be palpably single-minded and unself-seeking. He must be strong enough to face opposition and ridicule, staunch enough to endure obstruction and delay.” These qualities Wilberforce possessed in abundance.

Mind you, perseverance is not a synonym for pigheadedness. The true leader is not impervious to criticism. On the contrary, he listens to it and weighs it and may modify his program accordingly. But he does not waver in his basic conviction of what God has called him to do. Whatever the opposition aroused or the sacrifice entailed, he perseveres.

Service

We must not assume that Christian and non-Christian understandings of leadership are identical. Nor should we adopt models of secular management without first subjecting them to critical Christian scrutiny. Jesus introduced into the world an altogether new style of leadership, and expressed the difference between the old and the new in these terms:

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42–45, NIV).

Among the followers of Jesus, leadership is not a synonym for lordship. Our calling is to be servants not bosses, slaves not masters. True, a certain authority attaches to all leaders, and leadership would be impossible without it. The apostles, for example, were given authority by Jesus, and exercised it in both teaching and disciplining the church. Even Christian pastors today, although they are not apostles and do not possess apostolic authority, are to be “respected” because of their position “over” the congregation (1 Thess. 5:12ff.), and even “obeyed” (Heb. 13:17).

Yet the emphasis of Jesus was not on the authority of a ruler-leader but on the humility of a servant-leader. The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.

What is the reason for Jesus stressing the leader’s service? Partly, no doubt, because the chief occupational hazard of leadership is pride. The Pharisaic model would not do in the new community Jesus was building. The Pharisees loved titles like “Father,” “Teacher,” “Rabbi,” but this was both an offense against God (to whom these titles properly belong) and disruptive of the Christian brotherhood (Matt. 23:1–12).

However, Jesus’ main reason for emphasizing the leader’s servant role relates to the intrinsic worth of human beings—the presupposition underlying his own ministry of self-giving love, which is an essential element in the Christian mind. If human beings are godlike beings, then they must be served not exploited, respected not manipulated. As Oswald Sanders said: “True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one’s service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them.”

Herein also lies the peril of seeing leadership in terms of projects and programs. People must take precedence over projects. And people must be neither “manipulated” nor even “managed.” Though the latter is less demeaning than the former, both words are derived from manus, meaning hand, and expressing a “handling” of people as if they were commodities rather than persons.

In all this Christian emphasis on service, the disciple is only seeking to follow and reflect his teacher. For though he was lord of all, Jesus became the servant of all. Putting on the apron of servitude, he got down on his knees to wash the apostles’ feet. To him, service was an end in itself.

Now Christ tells us to do as he did, to clothe ourselves with humility, and in love to serve one another. No leadership is authentically Christlike that is not marked by the spirit of humble and joyful service.

Discipline

Every vision has a tendency to fade. Every visionary is prone to discouragement. The Christian ideal of humble service sounds fine in theory, but seems impractical in reality. So the leader may catch himself soliloquizing: “It is quicker to ride roughshod over other people; you get things done that way. And if the end is good, does it really matter what means we employ to attain it? Even a little prudent compromise can sometimes be justified, can’t it?”

Leaders are made of flesh and blood, not plaster or marble or stained glass. Even the great leaders in the Bible had fatal flaws. They too were fallen, fallible, and frail. Righteous Noah got drunk. Faithful Abraham was despicable enough to risk his wife’s chastity for the sake of his own safety. Moses lost his temper. David broke five commandments (committing adultery, murder, theft, false witness, and coveteousness) in that single episode of moral rebellion over Bathsheba. Jeremiah’s lonely courage was marred by self-pity. John the Baptist, whom Jesus described as the greatest man who had ever lived, was overcome by doubt. And Peter’s boastful impetuousness was doubtless a cloak for his deep personal insecurity. If those heroes of Scripture failed, what hope is there for us?

Enter discipline—the final mark of a Christian leader. Not only self-discipline in general (in the mastery of passions, time, and energies), but in particular the discipline with which one waits on God. The leader knows his weakness. He knows the greatness of his task and the strength of the opposition. But he also knows the inexhaustible riches of God’s grace.

Many biblical examples could be given. Moses sought God, and “the Lord would speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend.” David looked to God as his shepherd, his light and salvation, his rock, the stronghold of his life, and in times of deep distress “found strength in the Lord his God.” The apostle Paul, burdened with his “thorn in the flesh,” heard Jesus say to him, “My grace is sufficient for you,” and learned that only in his weakness was he strong.

But our supreme exemplar is the Lord Jesus himself. It is often said that he was always available to people. He was not. There were times when he sent the crowds away. He refused to allow the urgent to displace the important. Regularly he withdrew from the pressures and the glare of his public ministry in order to seek his Father in solitude and replenish his reserves of strength.

Only God “gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” Those who “hope in the Lord” and wait patiently for him “will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isa. 40:29–31). Only those who discipline themselves to seek God’s face will keep their vision bright. Only those who live before Christ’s cross have their inner fires constantly rekindled. Those leaders who think they are strong in their own strength are the most pathetically weak of all people; only those who know and acknowledge their weakness can become strong with the strength of Christ.

A Final Caution

In grabbing hold of the quality of leadership, we need to repent of two particularly horrid sins. The first is pessimism, which is dishonoring to God and incompatible with Christian faith. To be sure, we do not forget the fallenness, indeed, the depravity, of man. We are well aware of the pervasiveness of evil. We are not so foolish as to imagine that society will ever become perfect before Christ comes and establishes the fullness of his rule. Nevertheless, we also believe in the power of God—in the power of God’s gospel to change individuals, and in the power of God’s people (working like salt and light) to change society. We need, then, to renounce both naïve optimism and cynical pessimism, and replace them with the sober but confident realism of the Bible.

The second sin we need to repent of is mediocrity, and the acceptance of it. I find myself wanting to say, especially to young people: “Don’t be content with the mediocre! Don’t settle for anything less than your full God-given potential! Be ambitious and adventurous for God! God has made you a unique person. He has himself created you, and he does not want his work to be wasted. He means you to be fulfilled, not frustrated. His purpose is that everything you have and are should be stretched in his service and in the service of others.”

This means that God has a leadership role of some degree and kind for each of us. We need, then, to seek his will with all our hearts, to cry to him to give us a vision of what he is calling us to do with our lives, and to pray for grace to be faithful—not necessarily successful—in obedience to that heavenly vision.

Only then will we be able to say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” and hear Christ say those most coveted of all words, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

The Team Player

Christian leaders serve not their own interests but rather the interests of others (Phil. 2:4). This simple principle should deliver the leader from excessive individualism, extreme isolation, and self-centered empire building. Leadership teams are, therefore, more healthy than solo leadership, for several reasons.

First, team members supplement one another, building on one another’s strengths and compensating for one another’s weaknesses. No leader has all the gifts, so no leader should keep all the reins of leadership in his own hands. Second, team members encourage one another, identifying each other’s gifts and motivating each other to develop and use them.

Third, and finally, team members are accountable to one another. Shared work means shared responsibility. We listen to one another and learn from one another. Both the human family and the divine family (the body of Christ) are contexts of solidarity in which any incipient illusions of grandeur are rapidly dispelled. “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice” (Prov. 12:15).

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