Leadership or ministry in the church is a very blessed and privileged mission given by the Lord to many different people with different types of callings. Leadership needs principles and those principles are not found in this worlds system or culture. Col 2:8 speaks about the ‘basic principles of the world’ and that those principles are not ‘according to Christ’. So church ministry are in its essence different from leadership in the world. We have to learn it from Jesus and His teaching not only from this world. Even though there might be things that are according to the biblical view of leadership in this world far from everything is that.
One deception we sometimes in our fleshly pride buy into is that we are born to be leaders, yes we all have a God-given instinct to lead, a mother her children, a father his family and so on. But instinct to lead and knowledge about leadership are not the same. We are born with certain instincts; we call it more correctly ‘calling’ from God. Just because I have talent for playing the piano doesn’t mean I don’t need a teacher or need to practice, to learn, to study, to develop the talent given me. The same with leadership, the biblical leadership we call it ‘ministry’ due to how different it is in its essence from leadership in the world.
So to be successful in ministry we all need training and trainers, in sports they are often called coaches. They stand on the sideline and help the players to maximize the collective capacity in for example a football team.
Jesus called us to play in teams, He Himself had a team of twelve, Paul had his seven and we can find many other teams throughout the history of the church. Of course it can be more convenient to play alone but its more effective to play in teams instead. The actual dynamic in team work also includes the sanctification process taking place in our lives when we are ‘forced’ to interact with other people, to compromise, humble our self when wrong and so on. In a team a collective knowledge base is also formed, a sound interdependence on each other’s skills and capacities.
As a leader you need to at least for things to be successful
- Revelation – Uncover what is new for your followers. This causes amazement!
- Inspiration – People need to be inspired to be motivated to act, a leader inspires people.
- Explanation – One big obstacle that hinders people to follow is lack of understanding of the process. As a leader you need to explain the process and mechanisms they are involved in, this gives security
- Action – Faith without action is dead proclaims James. As a leader you need to get people into motion, into movement, out of status quo. An action plan, a road to travel on, to realize their dreams, has to be provided
God bless
Matsjan
