Great and Lasting Christian Leadership

In a world full of freely available blogs and articles, why should you subscribe to this particular blog?

Because I care about you and your long term success as a Christian leader and have designed the blog to help you.

My prayer is that you will be an exemplary, powerfully effective ministry leader, following Christ’s leadership with the Holy Spirit working in you and around you!

What I Believe about You

I have beliefs about you which determine what I write about. And it strikes me that these beliefs are also a great recipe for becoming a long-lasting successful ministry leader.

I believe:

• You have been called by Jesus Christ to your ministry role. Because you have been called, fruitfulness will come as you pay attention to the One who called you. The paradox of Christian leadership is that even though you are in a position of authority, you are primarily a servant, stewarding the ministry Christ placed in your hands. So you must be able to discern how Christ is leading you, and that’s why I write about the spirituality of Christian leadership. Making the spiritual practices of our faith a regular part of our personal and professional lives is essential to following Christ well and fulfilling our call to ministry service. My life was turned upside-down when I first really understood the simple spiritual practice of listening to God, rather than talking to him. Later on, a seminary course called Foundations of Christian Spirituality introduced me to many historic, but new-to-me, methods of spiritual discernment, which I quickly found to be indispensable.
  • I write the blog to help equip Christian leaders with the spirituality that drives Christian leadership.
• Your primary responsibility is to reflect Jesus Christ in everything you do in your role. This is about you as a person – how you think and your own personal behaviour – and how you as a leader affect other people. This responsibility is why I write about the personal aspects of Christian leadership, including personal integrity and self-discipline. Everyone has aspects of personality and conditioning that could work for or against them, and we must be ever watchful to ensure everything about us reflects well on Jesus Christ. This is why I write about self-examination and the need for quiet reflection. The longer people serve in leadership, the more tempting it is to think one has arrived and no longer needs to reflect so diligently on their leadership and personal performance. But one retired ministry leader told me he wondered, while in his forties, if there would ever come a day when he had such good self-mastery that he wouldn’t need constant, rigorous, self-examination. His mentor at the time was in his seventies, and he said he still needed to be diligent in his own self-assessment to control his potentially negative traits and attitudes. This really surprised the young leader, but thirty years later and in his seventies himself, he told me his experience is exactly the same as his mentor’s. Both these men had successful ministry careers and were honoured and respected in their retirement years, but even so, they both maintained a humble and honest attitude of “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

• God wants you to retire with honour. I especially want to help you finish your ministry career well, retiring with honour, and leaving a legacy of a call that flourished right to the end.

Those are just the basics. When Christian faith permeates an organization, it goes far deeper. For example, faith affects program design and theory of change models because it is a filter you use when identifying root causes and your underlying assumptions. Faith also affects the strategy you develop because it is the criteria you use to rank priorities and assess opportunities. It affects how you ask for funds: are you competing against other ministries for scarce resources, or are you aligning donor’s God-given passions with your mission? How a supplier treats their employees might affect whether or not you want to do business with them. I write about strategy, organizational leadership, and team leadership to help you express your faith in all aspects of your leadership role.

I believe God’s abundant blessing is most likely to come to ministries which are faithful to his ways in every aspect of their operation.

This is why I write this blog. Another post will help you use this blog most effectively.

Key Thought: I write this blog to help you be a great, long-lasting ministry leader.