Full Online Summary of the book available to view here:
https://spckpublishing.co.uk/pub/media/PDFs/Powerful_Leaders_Digital_Resource_Final.pdf
My Notes and Quotes
Biblical Patterns of Healthy Leadership
Servant Leadership for the good of others
I read much of the work published in the UK over a thirty year period. By far the most common definition of leadership was 'leadership is influence', a definition you will struggle to find in the Bible. It is a pragmatic, secular definition, baptised and used in the church, and labelled therefore as 'Christian leadership', not dissimilar to the role and skill set of a CEO or company director, only exercised in a Christian context.
By contrast:
Christian leadership is of a completely different kind. We have a different goal: God being glorified through people coming to Jesus and becoming worshipping disciples. We have different motivation, power, methods and character.
1. What is Christian leadership?
Christian leadership is a spiritual gift.
"A manifestation is a showing or demonstration of the Holy Spirit. He gives gifts to Christians so that God will be seen."
1 Peter 4:10 "each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others...
Spiritual gifts then are given to each believer not for ourselves but for serving others, in the common good.
2. What is Christian leadership given for?
The point of Christian leadership is to shepherd the body, and all the disciple within it, to play their part in God's great purposes. Leaders are given to equip and nurture all the disciples in their ministries, not to do all the ministry of the church for them.
3. How do Christian leaders do this?
Christian leaders are not Jesus' top generals. they are under-shepherds helping the flock enjoy and feed on God, out of which flows firm and secure faith.
4. What does this look like in practise?
Paul and his team were gentle and caring, encouraging like mothers, sharing their lives as well as the gospel. (from 1 Thessalonians 2:5-7)
5. In what do authentic leaders boast?
Authentic Christian leaders boast in weakness, not strength. [quotes 2 Cor. 12 and Paul's thorn in the flesh]
It is when we are weak that God's power is manifest, not when we are strong.
Faced with a choice between apparently strong, resilient, visionary, resourceful leaders or weak but prayerful ones, we secretly think the church wants the first type. We can imagine that they won't want us if we delight in weakness... But this is authentic Christian leadership - encouraging, modelling, parenting, comforting, strengthening hearts in the Lord and, in our weakness, helping people to live lives worthy of God.
Leaders are udner-shepherds for the glory of God and for the good of his people, feeding his flock and spreading his fame. We serve churches so that God is glorified.
Christian leadership is not foundationally about running a church or some activity within a church. Skills in organising and running a church are important but that's just a function. Being a servant of a church for the sake of the Lord means that everything leaders do is so that Jesus is exalted in their own lives and the lives of others.
Putting it into practice.
Four features stand out in helping to ensure that leaders remain godly and avoid misuse of position and power:
1. Accountability
2. Plurality
3. Transparency
4. Embodiment in the church community
Healthy Authority
Our culture is highly individualistic and places a high value on expressive individualism, affirming every individual in their self-defined identity. In this context, even historical Christian teachings and theology are open to being interpreted as coercive power dynamics. Submission to God ad his lordship, repenting of sin and turning to Christ, obeying God's word and belonging to him, biblical ethics, church discipline, any asymmetry in the roles of men and women, and obeying Christian leaders are easily interpreted as unhealthy and damaging power imbalances.
Leaders have power and authority - and rightly so.
All leaders have some power and resources at their disposal. Whether a little or a lot, all have some and it is right that they do. Without it a parent cannot discipline a child, an employer cannot insist on standards of work, a teacher can't teach and a trainer cannot correct an apprentice.
Power = the ability to act
Authority = the right to act
Christian leaders have these by a combination of two main means:
- the formal authority that attaches to their role and position.
- the relational capital that they acquire as they serve people and gain their trust. Some personality types more naturally garner trust and social credibility.
The slippery slope
There are particular pressures that result from Christian leaders having very few (actually zero) reliable metrics for success.
Jesus in Matthew 6:
Jesus looked at the heart and identified it as nothing less than fake godliness manifesting itself through religious virtue signalling.
QUOTES from other sections in the book.
People who advance their self-proclaimed calling or anointing often do so to avoid or delegitimize accountability.
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The desire for power reveals an unbelief in Christ's power and goodness; the need for control reveals some deeper lack of trust in God.
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Close, committed communities do not inevitably head in an abusive direction. However, strong communities amplify the possibility of both good and harm. the better something is in the first place, the worse it becomes in the hands of leaders exercising unaccountable and absolute authority.
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DARVO: Aggressors tend to behave in a the following way:
Denies that anything is wrong
Attacks the challenger
Reverses Victim and Offender
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For those abused: once we are able to acknowledge to ourselves that we have been abused, it is easy for it to dominate every waking and sleeping thought, obsessively filling our entire horizon.
What next for whistle-blowers?
A feature of all abusive relationships is that people are slow to realise what is happening and when the realisation does dawn it may not be at all clear what can or should be done.
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Living unobserved lives in ministry is very dangerous. We are fallen people.
To identify problematic leadership note:
Just as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians is contrasted with symptoms of ungodliness, so James contrasts wise leadership with boastfulness, cursing, envy, selfish ambition and denial of the truth, which cause disorder and every evil practice.
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No leader is perfect. The barometer is not whether we're sin free, but rather whether we receive these biblical criteria as good, and desire to submit to God, walking in repentance and faith.
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The people we choose as advisors, counsellors, professional supervisors or spiritual directors are some of the most important decisions we can ever make... it is no surprise that good rulers and bad in the Bible can often be distinguished according to whether they surround themselves with wise or foolish counsel.
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Helpful questions for accountability list - p118
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Whether we are accountable to people or not can often reveal whether we are accountable to God.
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Hard though it may be to hear, we have neither a God-given right to remain in leadership nor to be our own referee.
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If a church embraces a leadership paradigm that is more reflective of commerce or the military than it is of Jesus washing his disciples' feet, it will believe leadership is mostly about efficient organisation with a chain of command and certain skills for delivering measurable outcomes.
Three ways in which an unhealthy church can contribute to godly leaders beginning to go astray:
1. A visible results culture.
Pressure to produce visible results can diminish the spiritual depth that should mark a Christian leader. Ask many paid Christian leaders what their job description is and they will reply, 'Prayer and ministry of the word.' Ask the church what it thinks leaders' job entail, however, and you will rarely hear prayer mentioned, because it is unseen.
2. A Hyper-committed culture.
If there is one factor that fuels domination in a church context, I would probably identify a culture of hyper-commitment. A critical factor to be aware of it that the work and life patterns of many Christian leaders are not spiritually healthy.
There is no more powerful and horrific a way to manipulate any disciple of Jesus than the suggestion that lack of total life commitment to the church, mission and leaders is responsible for damnation.
3. An affection-needy culture.
Needy leaders become manipulating leaders.
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What a pastor or leadership team does first when an allegation is brought against a leader reveals whether the culture of the church is toxic.
Healthy Church Culture:
A condemning culture that makes repentance hard leads to everyone covering up and pretending to be sinless, leaders most of all.
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A crucial indicator of whether there is a soft-hearted and penitent attitude is someone's first instinct. Is it to listen to victims, search the heart and seek objective external evaluation; to repent and make restitution? Or is it to self-defensively circle the wagons and come out all guns blazing?
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When we cannot measure what it important, we are tempted to turn what we can measure into what is important.
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the antidote to a culture of self-promoting leaders is one where leaders - and everyone else - repent often and forgive often, delighting themselves in the Lord, praying and praising him for the glory of his wonderful grace.
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For Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 cor. 12:10
