TRUE BIBLICAL LEADERSHIP-

A PAPER WRITTEN A YEAR BEFORE BAPTIZING THE SON OF A HAMAS FOUNDER

By Matt Smith, 15 January, 2009

TRUE BIBLICAL LEADERSHIP- <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
A PAPER WRITTEN A YEAR BEFORE BAPTIZING THE SON OF A HAMAS FOUNDER

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.          Matthew 5:10-12
Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.                                                                                                                     2 Timothy 3:12
Introduction: Counting the Cost
            Armed with the notion that we can ascend to great heights of spirituality through service to God, many of us are attracted to the role of undersheperd. In many ways we fall for the temptations that Christ Himself resisted in the desert wilderness, by desiring a crown without a cross. It is one thing for Jesus to go and die on a cross but when it comes to us, it can be easy to forget that we are to follow Him there.
There is a high cost associated with being a disciple and an even higher one for those desiring to be a teacher of God's people. This is why James exhorts us to "let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment (James 3:1)." The fact that the Bible is saturated with instructions and warnings for leaders and teachers of men, reminds us of the importance of this role. Yet we are told by Jesus Himself to count the cost of following Him. He says: "Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand (Luke 14:31-32)." Though there are great joys in the leadership of God's people, there are also great costs and requirements that would cause many would be leaders to think twice. In light of bookstore shelves, filled to the brim with self-help guides to leadership, it is not a stretch to say that many people nowadays aspire to leadership of some capacity. It is the contention of this paper however, that if people were to actually count the cost of spiritual leadership, there would be far fewer self proclaimed spiritual leaders around.
What is a Spiritual Leader?
Spiritual leadership is not won by promotion,but by prayers and tears. It is attained by much heart searching and humbling before God; by self-surrender, a courageous sacrifice of every idol,a bold, uncompromising, and uncomplaining embracing of thecross, and by an eternal, unfaltering looking unto Jesuscrucified. This is a great price, but it must be unflinchingly paid by himwho would be a real spiritual leader of men, a leader whosepower is recognized and felt in heaven, on earth and in hell.-Samuel Brengle
The Biblical requirements for spiritual leadership are steep. No one would argue the fact that Moses was a great spiritual leader, yet even he failed to measure up to God's standard for leadership. Moses, the world's most humble person (Num. 12:3), failed God and forfeited his place in the Promised Land because of anger (Num. 20:213). In the words of Paul: "If you think you are standing strong, be careful, for you, too, may fall into the same sin (1 Cor. 10:12)."[1] These words of warning are appropriate for all Christians but especially for those in leadership. But what exactly are we talking about, what is a spiritual leader?
Being that we are to follow Jesus, it makes sense that we derive our definition of spiritual leadership from his example. C. Gene Wilkes, in his book Jesus On Leadership, lays out seven principles describing Jesus' leadership roles.[2]
1.      Jesus humbled Himself and allowed God to exalt Him.
2.      Jesus followed His Father's will rather than seeking a position
3.      Jesus defined greatness as being a servant and being first as becoming a slave
4.      Jesus risked serving others because He trusted that He was God's Son
5.      Jesus left His place at the head table to serve the needs of others
6.      Jesus shared responsibility and authority with those he called to lead
7.      Jesus built a team to carry out a worldwide vision

According to him, these seven principles should make up a large part of the mental model of a spiritual leader. These are specific and educational but they are not the only way we are to learn how to lead. After all, God used many different types of leaders for many types of situations throughout history. During the Exodus, God used Moses, a man with a world class education, to lead His people out of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Egypt. Yet, during Jesus' stay on earth He chose uneducated fishermen to lead people from all the nations on earth into the mystery of the Church. God has given us a new teacher and His name is the Holy Spirit and His role is to illuminate God's revealed Word to us, so that we might know the very mind of the Creator of the universe. Paul says it this way: For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16)." According to Warren Weirsbe in his book, Be Available, we have the perfect leadership tutor in the person of the Holy Spirit. He reminds us that:
Under the Old Covenant, the tabernacle and then the temple were the center of the community, and the Aaronic priesthood supervised both. Under the New Covenant, the church of Jesus Christ is the temple of God (Eph. 2:1922); and the Holy Spirit calls and equips ministers to serve Him and His people (1 Cor. 1214; Eph. 4:116). In His Word, God told the Old Testament priests what they were supposed to do; and in His Word today, the Holy Spirit guides His church and explains its order and its ministry.[3]

God has effectively laid out His teaching on leadership for us to study in His Word. With this fact in mind, Richard Rardin's book on servant leadership is appropriate. In it he lays out what he calls first principles of leadership, based on the revealed Word of God. According to him these first principles are all counterintuitive and are only to be found on the pages of Scripture which "contain the most profound, the most important instruction on leadership ever written."[4] In answer to the previously stated question, it may be concluded that spiritual leadership is laid out and clearly defined in many ways, through many people, in the Bible.
Examining the Call: Aspiring to Leadership
Oswald Sanders astutely comments that the word "leader" is only found six times in the Bible whereas the word servant is found much more frequently in its place.[5] So then, aspiring to leadership is really aspiring to servant hood. Simply keeping this fact in mind makes it much easier to temper the ever present budding of the pride that threatens all would be leaders. As Sanders puts it:
Jesus was a revolutionary, not in the guerilla warfare sense, but in His teaching on leadership. The term Servant speaks everywhere of low prestige, low respect, low honor. Most people are not attracted to such a low-value role.[6]

The vast difference between the image of prominent leadership and obscure servant hood is pictured brilliantly in Mark 10:42-43 where Jesus tells the scheming disciples that leadership is not what it seems to be from the world's perspective. His statement sums up the difference:
Calling them to Himself, Jesus said to them, "You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant. Mark 10:42-43

If this wasn't difficult enough, He goes on to ask them if they were able to suffer the same trials He was about to suffer (Mark 10:38). Their positive response seems awfully naïve in light of the cross but they did not yet fully understand what was being asked. Despite our familiarity with the cross, we still make this naïve mistake today when we seek prominence rather than servant hood. Jesus only gave us one example of leadership in this way and it came when He washed the feet of His disciples (John 13:15).[7] Peter gave the only other example and it involved suffering: "For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps (1 Peter 2:21)."[8]
When we are called into ministry through the various means of the Holy Spirit we are being called to go lower not higher. Yet even though this trend is downward it is important not to have a false humility about the desire to lead. As one author puts it:
There's nothing immoral, illegal or fattening about the desire to lead. Paul states it bluntly. "It is quite true to say that a man who sets his heart on holding office has a laudable ambition" (1 Tim 3:1 Phillips). True servant-leaders will pay a great price in loneliness, rejection, fatigue and disappointment for the satisfaction of helping the group meet its goals. We don't need to add to the cost of leadership by making them into a hypocrite-insisting that they pretend they don't want the position.[9]

Based on this, it is reasonable to contend that leadership aspiration is indeed a Biblical concept rooted even in the very gifting of the Holy Spirit for that very role. The desire to use one's spiritual gift in the service of the people of God (1 Peter 4:11) is in line with this idea and brings with it the added weight of God's sovereign calling. Those people called to be servants of God and His people must not be ashamed of this calling for it is a divinely appointed office.
A False Calling: How to Become a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
            Type in the phrase, "becoming a leader," into Google's search engine and you will get 41,700,000 hits. Type in the phrase, "becoming a follower," and you will get a paltry 1,680,000 hits. This means that there is 41 times more material on leadership than there is on followership. Obviously this does not account for the fact that leaders may just be reading more than followers but it does demonstrate the trend that in terms of public interest, being a leader is much sexier than being a follower. With a system such as this in place it is no wonder that Paul warns us about wolves among us, drawing men after themselves not after God (Acts 20:29-30). Peter describes this in great detail as well with this statement:
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. 2 Peter 2:1-3

Today, more than ever we are surrounded by false teachers and charlatans claiming to be something they are not. What can be done, how can one know if he or she is a false teacher or a wolf in disguise? This is a difficult question because we are talking about motives. Secret longings of the heart can cause one to desire a greater PAR score. As Rardin puts it your PAR score is understood as follows[10]:
P-position, privilege, perquisites, power, prominence, promotion
A-acceptance, approval, affirmation, acknowledgement, awards
R-rewards, recognition, remuneration, return, recompense

Accordingly, it is a sure sign that you are off course, and in the power of the flesh, if you find yourself only desiring to go higher rather than lower. What a contrast to Jesus, "who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:6-7)." Today this idea is overlooked in the shadow of successful mega churches, where young seminary students can view service through the tinted eyes of prominence and success. There is a high cost in recognizing the reality that true leadership begins downward with the heart through character development.
Leadership Development is Character Development
On May 16, 1569, after Dirk Willems preached the Gospel in Asperen, Holland, he was chased through the woods and across a frozen river by a sheriff who was trying to kill him. When crossing the frozen river, the sheriff broke through the ice and was drowning unable to help himself out. Dirk Willems was now free to get away but instead he could not bear to leave a man who did not know the gospel to die and go to hell. As he went back to help he knew he would be put to death. As he lifted the drowning officer from the icy water he felt the officer slip a chain on his own arm. A few days later he was burned at the stake for his testimony for Jesus.[11]

            It has been mentioned that leadership development is in reality character development. Moses would agree to that. It has been said of Moses that it took forty years for him to believe that he was somebody and another forty years for God to teach him in the desert that he was a nobody so that in the last forty years God could show the world what He could do with a somebody that knew he was a nobody. The Biblical case can be made that hardship and struggles are the way God trained His leaders. We have for example, Joseph sold into slavery as a boy by his jealous brothers, thrown into prison, wrongly accused and forgotten by all; that is until God put him as second only to Pharaoh. We have David, betrayed by his king, chased through the woods living like a vagabond, betrayed by his own children and hated by his wife; one of history's greatest leaders, described as a man after God's own heart. We have Jesus, God becoming flesh, serving His creation, betrayed, beaten, abandoned and crucified by those He came to save; the greatest act of leadership and love of all time. Indeed there is no doubt that hardship is the school for spiritual leaders. In regards to the secular realm, Blackaby states: "so many of history's great leaders suffered major failures, crises, and disappointments in their development as leaders that these traumas almost seem a prerequisite to leadership success."[12] He goes on to say that it is not necessarily the hardships themselves that these leaders faced that made them great but rather it was their reaction to the hardships that mattered most.[13] In light of this, it would be good advice for the multitude desiring leadership positions to focus on developing character rather than skills, or, as Rardin would say, motives rather than methods.
Conclusion: Would the Real Spiritual Leaders Please Stand Up
            In examining the high cost of spiritual leadership it has been demonstrated that God's view of leadership is quite different than our own sinful version. He requires a steep price on leaders that upon minimal reflection reminds us that were it not for His divine enabling, we would have no hope of fulfilling. This brings us to perhaps the most obvious point of all which is, if God has called you into leadership He will sustain you in leadership, if you let Him. This is a reminder to us all that ministry and leadership is impossible to be done in the flesh and should cause us to reexamine some of our views on big-time ministry. Without the Holy Spirit we are false teachers leading people, even unknowingly, to our own selfish ends. Are we willing to answer to the downward call of Christ? Are we willing to sacrifice our own agendas and submit to God's? Are we willing to stop trusting in prestige, money, and power to win people to our cause and start trusting in God and His provision to win people? After counting the cost, I am.

(A year after writing this, the son of a founder of Hamas walked into the church. We are publicly speaking out against Islam and are speaking boldly about Jesus. We are in real danger of losing our lives.)
Matt Smith
Pastor, Barabbas Road Church
pastormatt@whoisbarabbas.com
www.whoisbarabbas.com
619.459.3873