Leading with Love

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leading with love

The Bible is a book of love. The Apostle John summarized the story of the gospel in John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son.” The story of the gospel is the most incredible love story ever told. Because God loves us, we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). Loving God and others is a requirement upon all true believers, particularly Christian leaders, pastors and missionaries. Christian leaders are to lead in love.

When addressing leadership competencies, leaders do not typically focus on love. Many excellent materials have been written describing leadership qualities like courage, charisma, conviction, visionary thinking, self-discipline, decisiveness, and many others. Yet little literature is written about leading in love. The New Testament makes it clear that love is indispensable to the gift of leadership. The New Testament mandates that spiritual gifts are to be exercised in love. The Apostle Paul states that any attempt at leading apart from love is like “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). A church leader with excellent leadership skills and qualities but not love is bound to fail (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

When leaders are lovers of God and people, their followers will likely be lovers of God and people.

If leaders are self-centered, critical, proud, angry and impersonal, the people will adopt these ugly inclinations.

The Scripture insists that leaders be examples of love. 1 Timothy 4:12 says, “Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.” Love is vital to the local church and essential to its evangelistic witness to the world and spiritual growth for the true believers in Christ. Ephesians 4:15-16 therefore, command us to “15…speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is, Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”

Leading with love pleases our Lord. Let us grow our love for the Lord and others as we lead in our circle of influence. Love is indispensable to you as a leader and to your ministry.

Ike Agawin
ServeBeyond Director

Leading from One Year into the Next…

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Leading from one year into the next

As we find ourselves at the end of 2022, we look forward to the next year with an optimism we have not had for several years. And while we hope some of the challenges of 2022 to be behind us, it would be naïve to think that 2023 will not be without some of the same continuing challenges, as well as some new ones.

With that in mind I have been processing what I have seen or experienced about effective leadership in 2022 that needs to be taken with us as we lead from one year into the next. I want to share just a few of these observations with you. While I know that these observations are neither new nor profound, for me they are important starting blocks for us in 2023 as leaders.

So, in no strategic order, here are six leadership priorities I have seen evidenced in 2022.

First, I think leaders, in this time more than ever, need to hold and express humility. You can have all the wisdom in the world, but if you do not operate with humility what you build risks being little more than a house of cards that could collapse easily with the first missteps or failure.  Humility puts you in a place where you can survive mistakes, and are empowered to try again. And truthfully, we will all make mistakes. We have seen over and over in 2022 how people struggle to respond well to leaders who do not embrace a humble spirit. Additionally, humility is a core element to other leadership priorities.

Case in point – 2022 has continued the recent tradition of instability and change. And while some of that change has been predicable, some of it has not. Thus an essential leadership priority going forward will continue to be flexibility (which requires tremendous humility). I have said this before, and I will say it again: do things as experiments, be willing to change, adapt, pause, flex, start, and stop. That approach, appropriately applied, will continue to pay dividends in a time of rapid and unpredictable change.

Thirdly, leadership moving forward continues to need a commitment to reliability and dependability. Leaders who went silent, or absent, during COVID did not lead well and eroded the future of their ministry through that avoidance. Our churches need leaders who will continue to show up, whose dependability is manifest.

Fourthly, I would suggest that we need leaders who are anchored in the essential truths of the gospel. Good leadership recognizes, and works with, the distinction between “the essential” and “the non-essential.” We must be theologically sound. Leaders need to be able to identify and hold to the essentials and resist the temptation of allowing non-essentials to win the day and direct our decisions.

Build on the essentials, not the extras.

Fifthly, leaders will always need courage, but especially in strange times like these. We need courage to fight the temptations of the leader to cater to the loudest voices, who often are not the most important voices (those with needs, or wisdom, or grace, or impact). We need courage to anchor only in essentials, and to allow room within our congregations for differences on non-essentials. We need courage to be reliable, and even to be flexible.

Finally, I would say leaders need to be listeners – wholistic, intentional, wise, and disciplined listeners – who listen to voices even outside their own comfortable chambers. That is hard work, especially since we must be wise in the voices we listen to. But we need to listen to wise voices (find a mentor!), to those most impacted by your decisions, to our community, even to those with whom we disagree.

I recognize that there is much more that could/should be said about each of these, as well as other leadership priorities that could be mentioned. But I suggest these to prime your own thinking on this. What leadership principles and priorities do you want to work on and leverage in 2023? I would love to hear what you are seeing, learning, experiencing, and wanting to develop. Drop me note. I want to listen!!

Terry Kaufman
EFCC Leadership Catalyst

Building into the Next Generation of Leaders

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building into the next gen of leaders

Much has been said about the loss of church attendance in North America over the last several years. It’s concerning, but I’m not sure it is the “sky is falling” event some make it out to be. Hasn’t the church always been one generation away from extinction? Isn’t raising the next generation of leaders always a key task for the church to continue to thrive?

As someone who started my ministry years working with youth, I have always had a heart for the next generations. I suspect most of you readers are leaders and pastors in your churches. As you contemplate your role as a leader, I want to encourage you to identify the up-and-coming leaders. They might only be 10, or 14, right now. Yet, building into their lives now is vital in developing their leadership potential. As a tween and teen, I had leaders build into my life. They modeled life with Jesus and how to lead well. That was crucial in my development.

Here are a few basic, yet important, principles for building into the next generation of leaders. You may already be doing these well, but it’s always good to be reminded.

Value young people – Make sure the children and teens in your church know they are valued, and that you care about them. Are you getting to know what makes your young people tick? In your preaching, do you strategically place elements into sermons that connect with children and youth? As you connect with people, do you listen to, and interact with, children and youth on their level? About their interests? Do the young people in your church understand that they are just as loved and important as adults?

Give young people ministry responsibility – A group of us teens (way back when I was that age – somewhere in the dark ages) went to our pastor and asked if we could lead a pre-service worship time.  I still can’t believe they let us do it, but they did. I’m sure it caused discomfort for some of our adults. But our pastor and leaders stood with us, had our backs, gave us freedom to be ourselves, and helped us navigate the tensions. I wouldn’t be in the place I am today without that experience. I’m grateful those leaders took some arrows for me. I’m convinced that experience should be normative for our young people. I believe we must engage our young people in significant ministry opportunities across the entire life of the church now, not tomorrow. How many of your young people have you entrusted ministry to, in your church?

Stand with your young people when they fail – They will fail. We fail! They will too. Failure can be the doorway to new growth. Helping developing leaders cope with failure and grow from it will help them become more dynamic leaders. Walking away from them when they fail, will likely see them walking away from us. Do you believe in your young people enough to take the arrows for them?

Make space in your church service for all ages – Make sure every child knows this is their church, not just the church of their parents. The only sure way I know to do this, is by plugging elements into Sunday (our most visible time) that make space for all ages. Why would they want to lead something that only belongs to their parents?

Coach/Mentor Young People – I deeply valued it when another adult took time to mentor my kids. Having some godly people, other than parents, in their lives was an incredible gift. You can be that gift. I’m not talking about formal mentoring, just simply doing life together.

To come alongside a young person to listen, learn, grow, and share is an incredible gift you can give.

There are lots of other things we can do to build into the next generation of leaders, but the things above are important, in my experience. If we could live those out, I believe we are on the way to raising up another generation who are deeply passionate for Jesus and will lead his church well.

Neil Bassingthwaighte
ServeCanada Director & Interim Prayer Catalyst