Leadership and Training
Tom Shrader walks through the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and parallel passages in Titus 1 and 1 Peter 5, arguing that these character traits—self-control, integrity, humility, and teachability—are not merely for church officers but are the standard every believer should aspire to. Drawing on J. Oswald Sanders' Spiritual Leadership and Philippians 2:19-20, he contrasts ego-driven leadership with Timothy's selfless concern for others, presenting servant leadership as the biblical model that functions equally well in the home, the boardroom, and the neighborhood. He closes by tying leadership to the church's training value, insisting that biblical knowledge must result in changed behavior and active engagement in the world rather than mere accumulation of information.
“When you get ego out of the way, you can be an amazing leader—it's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: EVBC - Our Values
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 51 min
Themes: leadership, humility, integrity, self-control, servant leadership, training, character, teachability, aspiring leader, elder, pastor, husband, new to leadership, struggling with pride, young adult, mentor
Scripture: 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9, 1 Peter 5:1-4, Philippians 2:19-20, Philippians 4:9, Ephesians 4:12, 1 Corinthians 2:3
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, elder qualifications, sanctification, pastoral epistles, servant leadership, biblical authority, spiritual maturity, discipleship
Full Transcript
Introduction and Context
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to 1 Timothy chapter 3. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will be down the aisles — they'll give you a copy of the Old and New Testament. You can go back to the New Testament, and the editor starts to renumber back there. It's page 163.
Let me take five minutes or so for an introduction and remind you what we're doing. We've taken the last three or four weeks since the announcement of Redemption Church, and we've gone back to talk about values. Some of you have said the values sound very much like the ones we had at East Valley Bible Church — and they're very similar. That's what's allowing this to take place. Justin was here last week and he'll be back teaching on December 12th. On the 12th, Justin will teach here, Tim will be teaching in Tempe, and I'll be teaching at the Arcadia Mission.
We'll start next week looking at Advent — three weeks leading up to Christmas. Then on the 2nd of January I'll take that Sunday and we'll talk about what kind of year 2010 was and how to make 2011 the greatest year of your life. On January 9th, thinking probably around 10 in the morning, all of Redemption Church will be gathered out in the back. Then beginning on the 16th we start our study in the book of James. Justin and I met this week and outlined the book — I believe it runs something like 14 weeks. That's the teaching schedule.
We finish up today looking at the last two values. If you've never gotten a brochure, they're out in the lobby — grab one. They're helpful to have. I've probably read this almost as much as anybody other than the guys who crafted it themselves, and even this morning as I was preparing I kept seeing different emphases and aspects.
The Value of Leadership
The two values today are leadership and training. Let me read the leadership value: "Strong churches have leaders at all levels. We place a priority on developing leaders — in the home, in the marketplace, in the church. Leadership takes on many forms, but it's developed in relationship and on the job, and models Christ-like service and sacrifice. We judge our successes and failures based on how we raised up leaders at all levels in all places."
Let me comment on that. One of my real desires for the church is for you to understand that you and I are in the same business — we're all in the full-time service of Christ. Some do it in the local church; most do it in the marketplace. So when we talk about leadership within the church, we're talking about elders. In a moment we're going to look at the qualities of elders — not necessarily just qualifications, but the qualities you see in an elder's life.
Here is our theme: everyone should aspire to be elder-qualified. These characteristics are identified with leaders, and you should see them in everybody's life.
The Value of Training
The second value is training. We wrote this: "The local church exists as an equipping station" — that would be Ephesians 4:12. Therefore, we value training. Training is about living — notice the practicality of all of this.
We make an important distinction here. Everything we do in the church is for the purpose of training our people to live the gospel. Gospel living is learned through indoctrination and teaching and dialogue like this, but also through initiation. We see that the evangelical church, especially in the West, has too often been satisfied with indoctrination at the expense of initiation. Because of this, Redemption Church always trains in connection with community and action.
Here is what we're saying, and this is really true. If you're in a good church — whether that's Praxis, East Valley Bible Church, Scottsdale Bible Church, or many of the churches around town — one of the dangers is that you substitute spiritual knowledge for growth. Knowledge of Scripture and all the things that come with it are really important, but that knowledge is meant to access my heart and open my eyes to see who I am so that it changes the way I live. If it doesn't change the way I live, then the information is of no value. All it does is puff me up.
I know men and women — and I'm not trying to be clever here — who know the Bible cold, and it has left them cold. They know all the verses and all the things. They know what I'm going to say before I say it. They're often the ones saying, "Let's go deeper, let's go deeper." What they mean is, "Let's learn more." I'm for always learning more, but I want to make sure we're doing something with what we've already learned. Paul writes to the church at Philippi in Philippians 4:9, "The things you learned and received and heard and you saw in me, practice these things." That word *practice* means repeat them.
So those are the two big buckets today: leadership and training. It's knowing what God wants from us, and then putting it to work in our lives.
Leadership That Transforms
At a Christian business meeting years ago, there was a man present who had worked for the Reagan administration as Ronald Reagan's liaison to the continent of Africa. He was very good, and when question-and-answer time came, someone asked, "Do you think we need more Christians in government?" I'll be honest — my first reaction was, "Oh no, here we go again." But the man said, "No." That got my attention. He said, "I think we need the Christians who are in government to act like they're Christians." He was not saying we shouldn't bring more Christians in; he was saying it does no good if we don't.
We want to turn the city right side up for Christ. We want to infiltrate it. And it seems to me we've done that — we have thousands of men, women, and students every week who leave places like this and go out into the city. But it doesn't matter if we don't have changed lives in the marketplace, in the school, in the neighborhood, in our own homes. We want to take all of those things and put them together.
The Overemphasis on Leadership
When it comes to leadership, it's a topic that seems to me to be way overdone. There are classes on leadership everywhere. I was reading The Economist and noticed ads in the back from Harvard Business School, Cambridge, UCLA — MBA programs, all focused on leadership. We talk about leadership to death. If you Google the word "leadership," in 0.23 seconds you get 145 million links. That is a lot.
Interestingly, when I started to type in "follower," I found there is now a category called "followership." In 0.2 seconds, I got roughly a quarter of a percent of the results I got for leadership. Do we need leaders? Absolutely. Is there always a need for more leaders? Yes. But I think we have a bigger vacuum in a lack of followers than in a lack of leaders. That said, I want to talk about the leadership part.
God Has Always Used Individual Leaders
I want to be clear: God has always used leaders — individuals. Go to the Old Testament and work your way through. Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David — you know the list. Go on into the New Testament, into the book of Acts, and you see Jesus solicit twelve men, and among the twelve there is a group of three who operate closely with Him. Paul goes from city to city and appoints elders. We see in Acts chapter 9 the appointing of elders.
So here is what I want to do as we talk about leadership: I want to talk not so much about the function of leadership as about the character of it. This is going to be really important, so pay close attention — I could easily misspeak, and you could easily misunderstand, and that is a deadly combination. We want to be careful here.
Biblical Leadership and the Marketplace
There are many leadership books, and plenty of Christians read them — Jack Welch and others of that kind. That is fine, and there are things we can learn from them: streamlined systems and the like. But what I want us to do is take what Jesus calls a leader and bring that into the marketplace of ideas.
God saved me in 1980, and the minute I began to grow and study, I was working in commercial real estate. I saw that what God described as a leader was exactly what the marketplace was crying for — it just didn't call it that. When Tom Peters wrote In Search of Excellence, all those principles are biblical principles. When people talk about "servant leadership" — which is the current buzz phrase — I find everybody writing about it and almost nobody doing it. But that is exactly what God calls us to: servant leadership. Servants who lead. Those are not contradictory.
Let me make this point clearly: we will talk about elders and the church, but this applies to every aspect of your life. It is how you lead your family. God may have you at home — my daughter Sarah and my daughter Haley both stay at home. Haley is leading a tribe right now of three: herself, Yale, and Braden. Sarah is leading a tribe of four: herself, Gracie, Reagan, and Brooklyn. They are just lined up. You are a leader. And frankly, it doesn't even matter whether you have the title or not — though if you do have the title, I think you carry a special burden to lead.
The Qualifications of an Overseer
When you get to 1 Timothy 3, verse 1, this passage along with Titus chapter 1 are typically what we look at together. Your Bible probably has headings like "Qualifications for Overseer" or "Qualifications for Elders and Deacons." Here is what it says: "It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires." If a man aspires — the word means to reach or to grasp — it is something he desires, a passionate compulsion, a feeling of being called to the role.
Paul is saying that desire is a good thing. We tend to think ambition is suspect, something negative. But if by ambition you mean having the passion for that role, Paul is saying that if you don't have it, you probably shouldn't be in the role. Then he begins to list the qualifications: "An overseer then must be..." And what follows is a list of character traits. There is one that speaks of ability — at the end of verse 2, "able to teach" — but the rest are character traits entirely. So it is not so much about what leaders do; it is about who they are.
The Elder's Role and Church Structure
The task of the elder or overseer is to rule, to preach and teach, to pray for the sick, to care for the church, to be an example to followers, to set church policy, and to ordain leaders. That is their role. This is a source of either great frustration or encouragement, depending on the type of person you are — I find it encouraging. God does not give us a particularly clear governing structure in terms of how this is to be done within the church.
Consider three churches in the area: Bethany Bible Church, Scottsdale Bible Church, and East Valley Bible Church. All three would rightly say they teach the Bible generally chapter by chapter, verse by verse — that is our bread and butter, probably forty weeks of the year or more. All three have men they call elders and pastors. Yet all three have a different kind of governing organizational structure. If you pressed me and asked which one is right, I would say that as long as they are incorporating those broad general biblical principles, it is not a matter of right or wrong. There is great leeway in this.
How We Function at East Valley
At East Valley, here is how we do it in practice. The elders are self-perpetuating, meaning they appoint other elders, generally through personal observation and discussion with other leaders. Someone might say, "Do you know Bill? Bill is certainly someone you ought to be thinking about." We went through this process about a year and a half to two years ago — we gathered a couple of names, had discussions with those men, and if it was something both they and we were open to, we unfolded them into the elder board. They attend virtually all the meetings and participate in everything except voting.
After a period of time, if we want to continue, we bring their names to the congregation and say, "Here is Bill. We know the good things about him. If you know some reason we should not approve him, tell us." In our constitution and bylaws there is a long list of requirements, and then the last item states that the elders can change any of these at any time in any way for any reason. I would argue that is biblical leadership. You would be a fool to operate that way in a vacuum — these are not men who sit in a room with no outside contact — but that is how we function here.
If you are interested in studying this topic further, two books are worth your time. Gene Getz wrote a book called *Elders and Leaders*, and Larry Osborne wrote a very practical book that has been helpful to us titled *The Unity Factor*. Those are both helpful resources.
Leadership as a Personal Aspiration
I am less interested in talking about organizational function than I am in helping you see leadership as an issue for you personally — not just for those of us in formal leadership roles. All of you should aspire to be elder-qualified, to have these characteristics in your life. So let us look at the list.
The Qualities of an Elder
1 Timothy 3:2 begins: "He must be above reproach." I did not get very far before needing to stop. In teaching these qualities, I see myself as disqualified about every other day, in the sense that I am not always sure where to draw the lines. Above reproach does not mean he has never done anything wrong; it means he has a good reputation. I am sure my reputation is not good with some people — you could probably tell me who, and maybe it is you. The point is this: even when there are things that are wrong, sin, difficulties, or mistakes, you are willing to deal with them.
He must be a one-woman man — which literally means that he loves his wife exclusively. He must also be temperate, prudent or sensible, and respectable or dignified. I want to take those three together. Temperate means calm, not flying all over the place. Prudent carries a root idea of self-control — an inner control and inner discipline. Respectable means orderly. So a leader is one who is calm, one whose life is orderly, and one who exhibits some level of self-control.
Woven into the middle of all of that is the idea of keeping things fundamentally simple. The fastest way to lose self-control and orderliness is to have a life cluttered with too many things. Do you have the ability to triage your life? Do you have the ability to look at what comes in and recognize that not everything deserves equal importance?
The Distinguishing Quality: The Ability to Teach
There is one characteristic that separates the elder from the deacon, and it corresponds to one particular task: the ability to teach. When we get to Titus 1, the same idea is expressed as exhorting or encouraging and refuting those who would challenge sound doctrine. This does not necessarily mean the ability to stand in a pulpit on a given Sunday and hold a church together. Not everyone who serves on an elder board needs that level of public giftedness. It is, however, the ability to take God's Word, understand it, and open it up within a sphere of influence — whether that is in a small group, a discussion, or a one-on-one conversation — and to move through it with agility and understanding.
Not Addicted to Wine
Verse three says "not addicted to wine." God saved me in 1980, and my hero was Larry Wright. Larry had two guys he admired greatly: J. Vernon McGee and Ray Steadman. Some of you who have been around a long time will remember those names. I remember people wanting to go over to Pasadena to meet J. Vernon McGee — he's been on the radio so long people forget he's dead.
Larry called one day and said, "J. Vernon McGee is in town. He's going to be at Bethany Bible Church. I want you and me to go and listen to him." I said, perfect. Now, some of you may not know this: they offered J. Vernon McGee the job at Bethany Bible Church before Dr. Mitchell. He said no. They asked why, and he said, "I have three reasons: June, July, and August." That was his answer.
J. Vernon McGee spent the first 45 minutes of that meeting trying to explain that when Jesus turned water into wine, it wasn't really alcoholic wine. Larry's other hero, Ray Steadman, made the point well: if the qualification is "not addicted to wine," he couldn't imagine a quality for an Elder being "not addicted to grape juice." That shows you how we can get sidetracked on this.
The real point is self-control and patience, and one of the ways those qualities manifest — or fail to — is in a compulsive, addicted personality toward alcohol or drugs. That is not the best quality for an Elder.
Not Pugnacious, Not Greedy
"Not pugnacious" means contentious, violent, wanting to argue, wanting to fight, always wanting to debate. There are two or three people in my life that when I see them coming, I just know it is going to be a painful conversation. When they say, "I want to talk to you," I know it will be something along the lines of, "I really enjoyed everything you said today, but..." — and it will generally be something inconsequential to me anyway.
"Peaceable" means they are not quarrelsome and not stubborn in having their own way. Then Paul adds at the end of verse three: they are free from the love of money. They are not driven by influence and affluence.
Is there anything wrong with money? Absolutely not. The body of Christ could not do what it does without God supplying money. Some of you have very little; some of you have a great deal. Those of you who have a great deal carry a huge burden to not let it control you, because the tendency is that it will.
Justin and I had coffee on Wednesday and were talking about salary structure — as we bring churches together, what is the philosophy behind it, how do we determine it? We were discussing a pastor in Texas whose salary is $800,000. To me, that seems high. Having said that, his board and his leaders made that decision, perhaps because his presence draws an extra five thousand people — I don't know. I don't say that as a criticism. The people who know him and care for that church think he is worth it. Whatever. Let him make it.
It really comes down to a simple lifestyle. We have made things far too complicated for far too long. If you go back to the basic fundamental principles my father taught me — and if he were alive, he would be about 85 now — the principle was steady plodding. My dad used to use something called the Christmas Club, where you put away a couple of dollars a month so that by Christmas you would have enough to pay cash. Department stores also used to offer layaway. Now you just discharge it on a card. Someone says, "I can't afford it." Someone else says, "I know I can — it said approved." That is the mindset we have drifted into.
Managing Your Own Household
Paul then turns to a very simple principle in verse four: "He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity." Then he adds parenthetically in verse five, "If a man does not know how to manage his household, how will he take care of the church?"
This is intuitive when you think about it — and notice it is not about how he runs his business. If we were assembling a board purely on human terms, setting the church aside for a moment, we would look for the best and brightest minds, men and women who have been successful in business, and assume that success would translate into the realm of God. That is not necessarily so. It may be helpful — many people who are very successful in business are major men and women God uses powerfully in the body of Christ — but Paul does not even mention business success here.
He says: if you want to know whether someone is a good manager, look at their family. Look at their children.
When God called me into ministry in 1980, my girls were about four and five years old when I started teaching. Every once in a while they would say, "Everyone is judging us more harshly than everyone else." I told them, "No, not really. There are just more people judging you. The standard is the same." Sarah taped a cartoon on my desk once — she must have been sending me a message.
The Qualities That Take Time to Develop
There was a cartoon of a lady standing on the back porch, holding open a door. The dog was going out, and the caption read, "Remember, you're the pastor's dog." She was communicating that people are watching. That doesn't mean we have it all perfect, but it is a good indicator, and that is really important.
Paul adds to the list in verse six: "not a new convert, so he would become conceited and fall into condemnation incurred by the devil." This speaks to the importance of time and testing. There is something about walking in the same direction for a long period of time. How many people do you know who were on fire when God saved them, whose lives were really changed, but then after a while that flame died out and that early passion was gone?
Here is what experience shows, especially in spending time with younger men who are gifted: if you are young and gifted, you are almost always cocky. Those two things just go together. You may not believe it at first, but pretty soon you begin to think you are really something special.
Let me tell you what will take the edges off that — time. Larry called me one day while I was working with him and said, "We've got a problem." I asked what it was, and he said, "It's you." I told him I was open to that, and asked if I had done something to him personally. He said it was not about him — the board thought I was too proud and cocky, and they wanted him to fix it. I asked what he wanted me to do, and he said, "I told them time will fix it. Life will do it."
The World Is Watching
Verse seven adds that a leader "should have a good reputation with those outside the church, so they will not fall into reproach." The world is watching. You can apply this to a position of leadership in the church, but it applies equally in your office. If you are the manager, the owner, the CEO, the COO, or a regional or divisional manager — if you are someone people are looking to — they will judge you more harshly than any Christian ever will.
When you do or say something, they will say, "Aha, I thought you were a Christian." We need to understand that this does not mean we are expected to be perfect. What it means is that even when we sin, even when we make mistakes, we hold them loosely and say, "I screwed up. I made a mistake. I'm not perfect." Those are the qualities Paul is describing.
Qualifications Confirmed in Titus
Paul goes on to discuss deacons, and you will find essentially the same list there, minus the emphasis on teaching. Turn to Titus chapter one, and under the heading "Qualifications of Elders," you will see a similar list beginning in verse five. Verse six describes an elder as "above reproach, husband of one wife," and the list continues. An overseer "must be above reproach as God's steward."
Verse ten adds that he must "hold fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict." For a leader within the church, what Paul is saying is that the person needs to have a solid grasp and application of Scripture. Not that the elder necessarily has to be the Bible answer man, but he can take the Word, find it, understand it, unfold it, and begin to bring biblical principles to bear on what the church is doing and beyond.
When we bring someone forward and say they are being considered for elder within the church, we are saying those are the qualities we see in their life.
Spiritual Leadership: Sixteen Qualities Worth Examining
There is a book written roughly forty years ago called *Spiritual Leadership* by J. Oswald Sanders. On the back is an endorsement from John MacArthur, and on the front is one from Chuck Colson, who called it the best book on Christian leadership he had ever read. What follows is a walk through sixteen or seventeen qualities Sanders identifies, and the reason for doing this is to invite you to look at your own life. These are the things you should be seeing there.
The first quality is **discipline**. Sanders writes, "Without this essential quality, all the other gifts remain dwarfs — they cannot grow." Discipline appears first on the list because before we can conquer the world, we must first conquer ourselves. You cannot go out and do great things or impose your will on others in God's name if you have not first dealt with your own self.
The second quality is **vision** — the ability to see. Sanders cites great missionaries such as William Carey, who looked at the church in England and saw it squabbling over petty theological differences while an entire nation of India remained unreached, and said, "Let's go." Sanders writes, "Vision includes optimism and hope. The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The opportunist sees opportunity in every difficulty. The pessimist tends to hold back the people of vision from pushing ahead."
This point deserves careful attention, because caution is also important. The cautious person helps the optimistic leader remain realistic. We live in a world of limitations and inertia, and cautious Christians draw valuable lessons from history and tradition. But they are in danger of being chained to the past. The person who sees the difficulty so clearly that he cannot discern the possibilities cannot aspire to vision — and we discussed exactly this when we talked about Redemption Church.
Building on the Past Without Being Anchored to It
Whether it is a Redemption Church or not, it is irrelevant to this point. As we look to the future of East Valley Bible Church, you have heard from me for ten years. I want our past to be a foundation we build on, but never an anchor. God has done great things and will do great things, but we are not clinging to the way it was always done with the same people who always did it.
I think everybody likes to say this, but I tend to be a realistic optimist, though I have a pessimistic side. A guy years ago, I was having coffee with him, and he said, "You do something that really bugs me." I said, "Really? What is that?" And he pointed out that I started every sentence with, "The problem is, the problem is, the problem is." I said, "Really? Okay, I'm going to fix that." And I said, "The insurmountable challenge seems to be..." I mean, I just see it.
Iowa football is a big part of our life. First of all, it started with Boise State Friday night — I stayed up until midnight watching that game. They should have never lost; it makes me sick. Then I had to watch the Hawks yesterday, and they are just brutal to watch.
We tape the Kirk Ferentz show every Wednesday. Kirk Ferentz is the Iowa football coach, and we watch it together. We were watching his show this week on the Ohio State loss, and Susan said — and I knew exactly where the conversation was going, because we have the same conversation every week — "You know what I really like about him?" I said, "No, what do you really like about him?" She said, "He's always so positive. He's always so optimistic. He's not like you."
It is amazing to watch Coach Ferentz. After yesterday's game, we lose to Minnesota — they were two and nine, they had not won a game at home — and he said after the game, "That's the turnout we should have got. They played better than we did. They beat us." How can you say that? But it is that idea of vision. It is realistic, but it never loses sight of what happened. That is what happened to my generation. As goofy as we were in the sixties, we were at least driven by some sort of idealism, but we sold out.
The Call to Faithful Wisdom
The challenge now is to be realistic as we look to the future. I am not good at it. I see huge problems, but I also know that God is a good God, and He does not ask me to solve them. He just says, "You be faithful, and I will figure it out from there."
Here is wisdom: it is the use of knowledge. I love Bible knowledge, but not for the sake of knowledge alone. If I cannot apply it to my life, what value is it? That is why when we talk about leadership, I am talking about you — whether you have a card that says "leader" or not, you are one.
Qualities of a Leader
I watched a C-SPAN show the other day. There were four authors who had written biographies on Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Ulysses S. Grant. They were fascinating biographies. One of them said that when you are in battle, you are getting competing, conflicting, contradictory information, and you have to make a decision — and you are going to get it wrong. The ability to make a decision, to not be paralyzed by that, is courage.
Courage does not mean you have no fear. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, "I came to you with weakness and fear." But the fear is not what drives him. Alongside courage, there is humility — and I will talk more about that in a moment — and integrity, which I think includes being able to face even your own insecurities and your own mistakes.
Here is one I like: humor. Our sense of humor is a gift from God, and as Sanders writes, it should be controlled as well as cultivated. I spend a lot of time with pastors, and let me tell you one of the things I find about them as a group: they are not very much fun. They are very, very serious people, and I think they take themselves too seriously. In a way, they take their jobs too seriously, as if it is all about them.
I did a mini-breakout at a pastor's conference not long ago, and I said, "Here is something that has been a great encouragement to me: Christ died for the church. I don't need to. I will work hard and give it my best shot." What we are about is very serious, but we ourselves — come on. Really? This group tends to take themselves way too seriously.
Patience, Friendship, and the Rest
Here is another quality: patience. I will hear this all the time, especially from people in the church world. Someone says, "My job would be great..." — and you can finish it — "...if it wasn't for the people." But your job is the people. You would not have a job if it were not for the people. I try to tell the guys this: as a shepherd, if you do not unpack this stuff every night, by the end of the week you are craving lamb chops. These people will drive you nuts. It takes patience — slow, steady, easy.
Then there is friendship — having people around you. There is diplomacy. Think about a congregation drawn from the East, the West, the Midwest, with Catholic backgrounds, Methodist backgrounds, and so many others. You have to blend them together, and that takes a level of creative compromise. We call it diplomacy. There is also inspirational power — the ability to lead, like Nehemiah. And finally, there is executive ability.
A Plurality of Leadership
No single person possesses all the attributes of a great leader. About three or four years ago, at East Valley Bible Church, we took the senior pastor model and carved it into, essentially, four jobs. You, as a church, are better off with four people in that position than just one. It is harder to lead, harder to initiate, and slower than one person, but it is how we do it.
What Scripture Says About Leadership
Turn to 1 Peter chapter 5, page 182. I want to drive toward what you take to the marketplace. I am convinced that the leadership model Jesus gives us is a model that works everywhere — in the home and at work.
Here is 1 Peter 5:1-3: "Therefore, I exalt the elders — I exhort my fellow elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker of also the glory to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercise oversight not under compulsion but voluntarily according to the will of God, not for sordid gain, nor as yet lording it over those allotted to your charge."
Notice that Peter addresses elders in the plural. He is not advocating a single elder but a plurality of elders — a group who lead together. He also emphasizes doing this voluntarily, not just for the money. In another place, Jesus says this is how the world leads: in a domineering, dominant way.
Then Peter adds in verse 4: "When the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory." The point is that this work is hard, and the question is whether it is worth it. The answer is yes — because we work not for the things that are seen, but for the things that are unseen.
The Mark of a Real Leader
Turn now to Philippians chapter 2, page 155. I remember the first time Larry was teaching through Philippians and we came to chapter 2, verse 19. I thought it was really powerful. Paul says to the church at Philippi: "I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition." Paul is sending Timothy on a reconnaissance mission — Timothy will go, observe, and report back.
Then Paul makes this statement in verse 20: "For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare. For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus." The word "kindred" means equal-souled, one-souled. There is the mark of a real leader.
If you gather a group of ten people and ask for one-word characteristics of leaders, you will hear vision, skill, experience, gifted, hard-charging, persevering. You will never hear humble. In fact, we tend to think of a leader as exactly the opposite of humble. But Jesus says that is not true at all. A leader is, first and foremost, a servant.
Paul says he has one person who thinks about others rather than himself, and that person is Timothy — and Paul is sending him to his best and brightest. That is what set Timothy apart.
Ego and the Marketplace
Ego drives us profoundly. We want to be recognized and immortalized so badly that we do things even when they are not for the greater good — even when they limit the organization rather than expand it. Ronald Reagan used to keep a little plaque on his desk that read: "You can accomplish many things and great things if you don't care who gets the credit."
Consider the airline industry. There is one airline that consistently makes money, and that is Southwest. The people who built it wrote a book explaining exactly how they did it. If you are running United or US Air, why would you not buy the book and do what it says? My suspicious side says a leader would rather do it their own way, even if it is not profitable, simply because it is their way.
No one is going to remember or care about you in the end. Chuck Colson called it the best book on Christian leadership ever written — J. Oswald Sanders's book on spiritual leadership. How many of you had heard of J. Oswald Sanders before today? He wrote what may be the best book on Christian leadership, and most people have never heard of him. If they name a building the Bob Smith Memorial Hall, after a while people will ask who Bob Smith was and whether they can put someone else's name on it. It does not matter. No one cares. When you get your ego out of the way, you can be an amazing leader.
Leadership in the Home
This applies in the home as well. Guys, what is the atmosphere in your home? Does your wife see herself as your employee, and the kids as little errand-runners? I was thinking about my dad — his generation and my generation were different. Someone once said that generation did not even have the conveniences of life, like a garage door opener. I said my dad had a garage door opener. He would say, "Tom, get up and open the garage door." That is how we opened it.
Accomplishing Great Things Without Seeking Credit
This is a very freeing way to live. You can accomplish great things, and they may not be big. It may be in Sarah's tribe or Haley's tribe. It may not be that you're running the corporation — it may be that you're running one division of it.
I watched the other night an episode of *Undercover Boss*. One featured one of the owners of the Cubs, and the one before that featured a guy from Subway. They were stunned at the people they found who really took pride in their work — people the owners didn't even know were in the organization, didn't even know existed.
We go to tea on Father's Day every year, and my brother was in town with his wife. So Sarah and Haley took Susan — she happens to be a Susan Schrader also — down to have tea. Afterwards, I said to Susan, not my Susan but the other Susan, "How was it?" She said, "The man who does the tea is so passionate. He cares so much about tea and he personifies service."
He is passionate about tea. Are you passionate about — and you fill in the blank — changing oil, being a mom, working on an assembly line, being a CEO? I am challenging you, not just within leadership in the church, but leadership in the world. The world is crying for what you have.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit. I had a staff member come to me years ago, thinking something through, and I said, "I have an idea — why don't you do this?" He said, "That's pretty good." About two weeks later, we were sitting in a staff meeting wrestling with a problem, and this same staff member said, "Why don't we do this?" — repeating exactly what I had said to him. The room stopped. They said, "That's brilliant. You are a genius."
I wanted to say, "That's my idea. The one you said was genius? That was me. It wasn't him." I remember sitting there, and then driving home thinking, God just gave me a peek into how dark my soul is.
The Practice of Leadership: Skin on Skin
Let me give you one last thought on training. It's the verse I started with, at the end of the book of Philippians — Philippians chapter four, verse nine: *"The things that you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice those things."* The word *practice* means continuous repetition.
What I love about that verse is that Paul said you heard these things — they were spoken — you received them, and you have seen them. That last part gives the idea of skin on skin. That is real leadership. That is training. It is book knowledge, but it is doing life together, doing church together, doing work together.
We are miserable failures if we have structured a church that has biblical leadership in it but we are not producing men and women and students who are leading outside of this campus — whether they have the title or not. We are all for knowledge and training, but the whole purpose of knowledge and training is to do. If all you do is practice, practice, practice and never get in the game, it isn't any good. If all you do is flight simulation and you are never the pilot, it isn't any good.
Leadership Rooted in the Cross
All of this can get lost if we start to see ourselves as something more important than we really are. This all goes back to the cross and grace. God saved you, and He saved you for a reason and a purpose, and it is bigger than just getting to heaven. It is to be His feet and hands here.
God strategically placed you. We believe in the sovereignty of God. Maybe you are sitting in a boardroom — maybe you are a big executive. God put you there for a reason. Maybe you are the one changing oil, at the bottom of whatever the human food chain looks like. God put you there for a reason: to be a leader, to demonstrate what it means to know Christ in that marketplace. Those are the values that drive us.
Father, thank You for the amazing truth. We pray that we would live in a way that would bring honor and glory to You. Now as Rick comes and leads us in communion, God remind us of the redemption that we find in Your Son Jesus. You give us grace that is so amazing — beyond anything we can ever even imagine, certainly beyond anything we have endured or earned in any way. God, take this time now and focus us on the cross. Lead us to Your cross. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.