In Depth:  leadership

We all have our heroes. The Hero of heroes is, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ.

His is the Name above all names, and it is He more than any other that we should love, trust and emulate. Yet Paul exhorted the Christians in Corinth, ‘Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ’ (1 Cor. 11:1), and we are right to be thankful for godly examples. But sometimes they disappoint.

It was my tenth anniversary in my current pastorate, and I was given a three-month sabbatical.

When contemplating potential sabbatical projects my thoughts went to surviving and thriving in pastoral ministry over the long haul, and then I hatched a plan.

The question came to me as I woke this morning and pulled back the curtains in my hotel.

I was looking across the sea to a monument on a small island which is said to be the location where the apostle Paul was swept ashore, together with his two travelling companions, Dr Luke and Aristarchus. In all 276 people were miraculously saved. The graphic account of the perilous sea journey is detailed in Acts 27, where Luke gives a first-person account of the voyage.

The following extracts give a flavour of Marcus Honeysett’s new book Powerful Leaders which Glen Scrivener reviews here.

The author has chosen not to name the many high-profile leaders accused in the past year of damaging leadership styles. This is not motivated by a desire to deflect from the severity of these actions, nor is it intended to minimise the suffering of the victims. It is rather an attempt at exploring why our evangelical culture has been ill-prepared to detect unhealthy leadership patterns and has not done enough to promote healthy ones. The first two extracts show how the author engages with this theme.

Church is not a business, right?

In recent months many of us have come to question the businesslike approaches of many megachurches and church plants, particularly as scandals have revealed the thin ice on which some have been built. But, before we overreact and discredit this businesslike approach, we should not lose the valuable insights that those with a good business head have brought to our churches.

With disappointing regularity Christian leaders from the conservative evangelical world fall from grace. True, the great majority of such leaders do not fall. It is those who fall who hit the headlines.

I have been the son of a pastor from the day I was born and a pastor myself for the last 30 years and more. The conservative evangelical world is my world and I feel these things deeply from the inside.

A couple of Sundays ago, I had a tickle in my throat whilst preaching. Actually, it was more like a coughing fit that threatened to derail my sermon.

Most preachers have experienced something similar but, nowadays, when you cough in public you are far more aware of it. I could see that the congregation were sympathetic rather than threatened by my predicament, but my biggest concern was that they were distracted. I was afraid that my cough was drawing attention to myself and away from the text I was preaching. I wanted the congregation to listen to my words and not to me.

It almost feels like an indulgence writing about rest and joy for Christian leaders at a time of global crisis. Surely if ever there was a time to swap sabbath replenishment for strenuous labour it is now?

Of course, the problem arises when we see these things as opposed to each other: that we can work hard for the Lord and others or be spiritually invigorated, but not both. When we embrace this false dichotomy, we doom ourselves to serving out of a place of spiritual unfreshness sooner or later.