In November, the Riviera International Centre, Torquay, hosted The FIEC Leaders’ Conference. This year’s theme, Leadership at Every Level, was perfectly timed; as attendance reached 1,000 and the FIEC continues to grow numerically, now is the time to carefully consider how to raise up leaders to ensure growth is lasting, sustainable, and deeply rooted in biblical truth.
John Stevens, FIEC President, opened proceedings by reminding the gathered pastors, elders, women’s workers, and other leaders of the biblical vision for leadership from Ephesians 4. Godly leadership, he instructed, proceeds from an identity rooted in the gospel; to lose sight of that is to build ministry on oneself. And the danger? A ministry that finds its worth in oneself will be slow to delegate, loathe showing humility or weakness, and will find pride in concentrating power. Only the gospel sets one free to serve.
A further two sessions, from Colin Smith, pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in Chicago, talked through the profile of the godly leader from the portrait of Israelite kingship in Deuteronomy 17, and then explained the shepherd as the primary image of spiritual leadership in both the Old and New Testament. These clear and powerful sessions laid the groundwork for everything else that followed. A particular highlight was his encouragement to be leaders who meditated on the word, as the Old Testament kings were required to do. ‘[Look how the people of God in the Old Testament ensured that their leader was godly] they put a crown on his head and they immediately sent him into the study.’
