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The Outer Circle of Spiritual Leadership

Everyone in the church has one or more spiritual gifts. Everyone should be involved in ministry. Everyone should be seeking to lead others to the point where they bring glory to God by the way they think and feel and act. But there are some people to whom the Lord has given qualities of personality that tend to make them more able leaders than others. Not all of these qualities are distinctively Christian, but when the Holy Spirit fills a person’s life each of these qualities is harnessed and transformed for God’s purposes.

1. Restless

Spiritual leaders have a holy discontentment with the status quo. Non-leaders have inertia that causes them to settle in and makes them very hard to move off of dead center. Leaders have a hankering to change, to move, to reach out, to grow, and to take a group or an institution to new dimensions of ministry. They have the spirit of Paul, who said in Phil. 3:13, “Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Leaders are always very goal-oriented people.
God’s history of redemption is not finished. The church is shot through with imperfections, lost sheep are still not in the fold, needs of every sort in the world are unmet, sin infects the saints. It is unthinkable that we should be content with things the way they are in a fallen world and an imperfect church. Therefore, God has been pleased to put a holy restlessness into some of his people, and those people will very likely be the leaders.

2. Optimistic

Spiritual leaders are optimistic not because man is good but because God is in control. The leader must not let his discontentment become disconsolation. When he sees the imperfection of the church he must say with the writer of Hebrews (6:9), “Though we speak thus, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things that belong to salvation.” The foundation of his life is Romans 8:28, “God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” He reasons with Paul that, “He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, will then surely give us all things with him” (Rom. 8:32). Without this confidence based upon the goodness of God manifested in Jesus Christ the leader’s perseverance would falter and the people would not be inspired. Without optimism restlessness becomes despair.

3. Intense

The great quality I want in my associates is one of intensity. Romans 12:8 says that if your gift is leadership, “do it with zeal.” Romans 12:11 says, “Never flag in zeal, boil in the spirit!” When the disciples remembered the way Jesus had behaved in relation to the temple of God they characterized it with words from the Old Testament like this, “Zeal for thy house has eaten me up” (John 2:17). The leader follows the advice of Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” When Jonathan Edwards was a young man he wrote a list of about seventy resolutions. The one that has inspired me the most goes like this: “To live with all my might while I live.” Count Zinzendorf of the Moravians said, “I have one passion. It is He and He alone.” Jesus warns us in Revelation 3:16 that he does not have any taste for people who are lukewarm: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.” Spiritual leaders must go out alone somewhere and ponder what unutterable and stupendous things they know about God. If their life is one extended yawn they are simply blind. Leaders must give evidence that the things of the Spirit are intensely real. They cannot do that unless they are intense themselves.

4. Self-controlled

By self-controlled I do not mean prim and proper and unemotional, but rather master of our drives. If we are to lead others toward God we cannot be led ourselves toward the world. According to Gal. 5:23 self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. It is not mere willpower. It is appropriating the power of God to get mastery over our emotions and our appetites that could lead us astray or cause us to occupy our time with fruitless endeavors. In 1 Corinthians 6:12 Paul says, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything.” The Christian leader must ruthlessly examine his life to see whether he is the least enslaved by television, alcohol, coffee, golf, computer games, fishing, Playboy, masturbation, good food. Paul said in 1 Corinthians. 9:25, “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” And he says in Galatians. 5:24, “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passion and desires.” Spiritual leaders ruthlessly track down bad habits and break them by the power of the Spirit. They hear and follow Romans 8:13, “If you life according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.” Spiritual leaders long to be free from everything that hinders their fullest delight in God and service of others.

5. Thick-skinned

One thing is for sure: if you begin to lead others you will be criticized. No one will be a significant spiritual leader if his aim is to please others and seek their approval. Paul said in Galatians 1:10, “Am I seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men I should not be a servant of Christ.” Spiritual leaders do not seek the praises of men, they seek to please God. Dr. Carl Lundquist, former President of Bethel College and Seminary, said in his final report to the Baptist General Conference that there was hardly one of the 28 years in which he served the Conference that he was not actively opposed by many people.
If criticism disables us, we will never make it as spiritual leaders. I don’t mean that we must be the kind of people who don’t feel hurt, but rather that we must not be wiped out by the hurt. We must be able to say with Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:8, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” We will feel the criticism but we will not be incapacitated by it. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “We do not lose heart.”

Leaders must be able to digest depression because they will eat plenty of it. There will be many days when the temptation is very strong to quit because of unappreciative people. Criticism is one of Satan’s favorite weapons to try to get effective Christian leaders to throw in the towel.
I should, however, qualify this characteristic of being thick-skinned. I do not want to give the impression that spiritual leaders are closed off to legitimate criticism. A good leader must not only be thick-skinned but also open and humbly ready to accept and apply just criticism. No leader is perfect and Jonathan Edwards said once that he made it a spiritual discipline to look for the truth in every criticism that came his way before he discarded it. That’s good advice.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org
(Used with Permission: See full article here )

Related posts:

1. Marks of a Spiritual Leader (Part 4)
2. Marks of a Spiritual Leader (Part 6)
3. Marks of a Spiritual Leader (Part 1)
4. Marks of a Spiritual Leader (Part 5)
5. Marks of a Spiritual Leader (Part 2)