Skip to main content

Christian Leadership

To be a leader, by definition you have to be taking people somewhere.
Jesus is the first and most important Christian leader. He shows us what leadership means, both in where he takes us to (the goal), and in how he treats those who follow him (the manner).
The goal of Jesus’ leadership is to take us to the Triune God. The manner of Jesus’ leadership is by dying as a sacrifice. Because of this, Jesus’ leadership is unique. Only he can say “come to me… and I will give you rest”. Only he can say “the Son of Man came… to give his life as a ransom for many”. We must say “go to Jesus – he gave his life as a ransom for many; he will give you rest”.
But not everything about Jesus is unique. We can be like him, in his goal and manner. The first thing about Christian leadership is that it must be Christian. It must all be founded, shaped, and driven by Jesus. Jesus must be our goal, and Jesus must shape the manner in which we exercise leadership.
Everything we do – whether explicit “evangelism” or not – must point to Jesus. The way we do socials, prayer time etc must all point to Jesus. This is how we make Jesus our goal.
The way we treat each other, and especially those under our care, must be with a sacrificial love like Jesus. We must demand a cost from ourselves, for the sake of those under our care. This especially shows in being patient when we feel like the people under our care are unreasonable, obstinate, ungrateful etc. This is how we follow Jesus in our manner.
Incidentally – this is how we put the Sermon on the Mount into action, and be salt, light & the city on the hill. This is also deeply counter-cultural. In the world, leadership means taking. For Jesus, leadership means giving.
But shouldn’t all Christians live like this?
Yes. But not all Christians are leaders. If we are given the title of “leader”, then we have an added responsibility. Leadership is a ‘public’ status. People are entitled to follow our lead, and look to us as examples. And God will hold us responsible for how well we impact those under our care.
This responsibility before God is not all negative. Sometimes (often?), even if we lead ‘well’ – faithfully point to Jesus, faithfully serve people like Jesus would – people won’t follow our lead. They’ll be unreasonable, obstinate, ungrateful etc. We won’t get the ‘rewards’ of leadership now. But that doesn’t matter. We can wait for God’s approval. And meanwhile, we continue to point to Jesus, and serve those under our care.
Labels:

Comments

kristan said…
Hey Kamal,

Just saw you in the bookshop actually (but you looked deep in conversation - and I've just been to the dentist and can't talk anyway).

Thanks for this post - helps me thinking about relationships in general, and one in particular that has been hard currently. You've encouraged me to persevere. thanks brother.

Kristan
1 May 2008 at 16:45
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A better understanding of nonbelief

The Nones Project is an ongoing study into the belief systems of people who call themselves non-religious. A few weeks ago one of the project leaders,  Ryan Burge  of Washington University,  posted some really interesting preliminary results  on his Substack.  1. We've probably heard of people who are spiritual but not religious (SBNRs). SBNRs were "the largest group of nones" in the sample. They believe in the supernatural realm but not necessarily in "a God." They are "deeply skeptical of religion but highly interested in spirituality," therefore individualistic and anti-institutional.  2. But this study differentiated SBNRs from people they called Nones In Name Only, NiNos. They different to SBNRs by being religious about their spiritual. They believe not just in the supernatural but in "God." And they tend to engage in traditional communal religious practices while SBNRs practice individualised eclectic bespoke spiritual practices. The s...
Post a Comment
Read more

The different distractions of secularity and spirituality

There has been a lot of discussion about the recent 'vibe shift' away from radical atheism back towards an openness to the supernatural. I don't think this new spirituality is necessarily an openness to the unique claims of Christ. It will more probably replace one set of commonly-accepted misunderstandings about Jesus with another.  Under radical atheism, people dismissed the Biblical claims about Jesus' resurrection because they 'knew' that it was impossible. Jesus hadn't really died. He just passed out (after being beaten and whipped and crucified) and then woke up in the tomb (and rolled away the stone himself and overcame several guards). Or the disciples hallucinated that they saw him (even though Jewish beliefs of the time didn't expect one person to rise possessing eternal life himself; they expected a general resurrection at the end of time - see John 11:24 ). Or something else.  The so-called 'explanations' of Jesus' non-resurrectio...
Post a Comment
Read more
TGC Australia recently published an analysis by Dr Sarah Quicke of whether we are experiencing a 'quiet revival' of interest in and/or conversion to Christianity  here in Australia. It does it a good job of describing the difficulties involved in both gathering and interpreting data about religious beliefs and behaviours, e.g. the difference between the 44% who (still) call themselves Christian and the 8% of people aged 18-35 who actually "believed and lived out the gospel."  Quicke refers to the very insightful McCrindle report An Undercurrent Of Faith , released in March 2025, which uses an analytical method called cohort analysis to try and work out how a particular group of people tend to behave over time. The purpose of this post is to draw attention to one element of that report which agrees with Quicke's analysis but also adds some detail to it.  Here is what the cohort analysis showed about different age groups' identification with Christianity:  As y...
Post a Comment
Read more