First and last principles of leadership

In any year in America, you will find various Christian conferences and events aiming to teach us how to do better at ‘leadership’.

Interestingly enough, the venerable management consulting firm McKinsey is now itself emphasising leadership (indeed ‘servant leadership’) as opposed to, or in replacement of, ‘management’. It is hard to think poorly of a tendency that encourages people to lead in a servant way.

Christ rules the church and He rules by His word: Sometimes it is said that everything rises or falls on leadership. I remember Tim Keller opining – in some event or other when I was listening to him – that while (of course) preaching is a significant gift, in some ways being able to lead is as important for ministry impact, if not more so. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant at the time, and I may have misunderstood him, but it struck me as an arresting thought, like so much of what Tim Keller said. More recently, I have remembered a lesson I was taught by the first senior pastor to be brave enough to hire me onto his team (Peter Baker), who passed on to me a pearl of wisdom from David Jackman: ‘Christ rules the church and He rules by His word. If we are to be leaders, it is only so that we might facilitate Christ’s leadership, and that leadership is thereby exercised through His word.’

What does this mean in practice? I took an online Global Leadership course at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) a couple of years back, from which I gleaned much practical insight. One of the wonderful discoveries was that MIT believed that right at the heart of leadership must be credibility, by which they meant saying what you mean and doing what you say. Again, not a bad principle to think of being propagated through the corridors of global leadership.

What does it mean in practice in church and ministry? I’m very much afraid that much of real leadership is caught more than taught, or at least caught as much as taught. There’s probably nothing I can write in a single article that would solve whatever leadership problems you may or may not be facing. But knowing the scale of some of the challenges that are before us today – from flagrant immorality infesting institutional churches, to petty squabbles between rival factions of orthodox Biblical Christendom – I suppose it is worth trying to pass on a tip or two from things that I have learnt, and am still learning.

It goes back first of all to the gospel. People will tell you it begins with the heart, with your attitude. But I think it begins a step further back than that with something (or Someone) even more foundational: with God Himself and His gospel. This is surely what Jesus taught in Mark chapter 10 with his great principle of leadership (what J. Oswald Sanders called ‘the Master’s master principle’ in his unparalleled book on the topic, Spiritual Leadership) that even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve. Our servant leadership, to be real and effective and evangelistically impactful, must be rooted in who Jesus is and what He came to do at the cross. Gospel leadership, in other words, must come from our own personal grasp of the gospel in our own lives. So often our failures at leadership are really failures of faith – faith in Christ and His secure and saving love even for us (too often inadequate) leaders.

Above all, clarity. Beyond that, I hesitate to go in this short space. Perhaps I will write some more on this theme next time. But simply to add this: if you want to take someone or some people with you, it’s helpful to know where you’re going first. Clarity.