Every leader needs to be sure of his or her calling and be able to work effectively with teams. We also need to understand that the posture of a godly leader is that of a servant and a spiritual parent who brings others into maturity through loving discipleship. Remember, our service is all about the Kingdom!
A healthy leader realizes he is a servant
Jesus is our role model for leadership. He was and is the greatest leader who ever lived. He led by being a servant to all of those around Him. He knew who He was because of His intimate relationship with His Father, and out of that relationship He ministered to the needs of individuals.
Leaders and servants are synonymous in the body of Christ. When our first DOVE church started, we never used the term “leader” in isolation. We called our leaders, “servant-leaders,” which implies true leadership, fashioned after Christ, based on serving others.
Matthew reports that when Jesus called His disciples together, He told them, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28).
When the mother of James and John came to Jesus and asked if her sons could sit on the right and left hand of His throne in His kingdom, Jesus responded by saying, “You do not know what you ask” (Matthew 20:22). When the other ten disciples heard about this request, they were angry, jealous, and resentful. Jesus responded with these words, “Whoever desires to become a leader must become a slave” (Matthew 20:26). Jesus did not say that it is wrong to be great, or wrong to be a leader. However, His words clearly point out that greatness according to the system of the world is totally different than greatness from God’s perspective.
In John 13 we read that Jesus sent His disciples to prepare the Passover. When Jesus arrived, He realized there was a problem. The disciples were arguing about who should wash their feet. There was no servant present, yet it was customary for a servant to wash the feet of the family and guests as they came in from the dusty streets. Without a word, Jesus took a towel and put it around Himself. He knelt down and began to wash the disciples’ feet. This upside down, against-the-culture approach was too much for Peter to handle. He balked at the idea that Jesus was doing the job of a lowly servant. Like Peter, we are sometimes prideful and reluctant to be served. Other times, we must strip away our selfishness in order to serve others.
Rehoboam became king of Israel after Solomon died. He consulted two groups of counselors for wisdom to govern God’s people properly. The older group, who had served his father, Solomon, said; “If you are kind to these people, and please them, and speak good words to them, they will be your servants forever” (2 Chronicles 10:7). Then Rehoboam went to the younger group who told him to tell the people, “If you thought you had a heavy yoke to bear under my father, just wait. I will be much tougher” (2 Chronicles 10:14). Listening to the advice of the young men, he lost ten of the twelve tribes of Israel, simply because he did not obey the biblical principle of serving.
God says if we serve others and are kind to them, then they will also desire to serve us. Our true motive must be to serve others because Jesus Christ served us unselfishly on the cross two thousand years ago. As we serve out of a pure heart, our sowing in servanthood will allow us to reap the benefits. We reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7).
A leader is a spiritual father or mother
One of the greatest ways we serve others is by obeying God’s call to become a spiritual father or mother. Paul the apostle admonishes us in I Corinthians 4:14-17, “I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. Even though you have ten thousand teachers in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore, I urge you to imitate me. For this reason, I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.”
Timothy was Paul’s spiritual son, and Paul trusted Timothy to be a spiritual father to the Corinthian believers. He encouraged the Corinthian believers, in turn, to follow his example and become spiritual fathers and mothers to the next generation. Paul explained that there is a desperate need for leaders and all believers to become spiritual fathers and mothers to the next generations among us. The Great Commission recorded in Matthew 28:19-20 commands us to go and make disciples. This was a main focus of Jesus’ ministry. Discipleship and spiritual fathering and mothering are two different terms for the same ministry of walking alongside a younger believer to help them grow. We are all called to this ministry.
Paul encouraged Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2 to find faithful men to spiritually father for four spiritual generations. Christian college campus ministries have done this well over the years. But churches have often focused more on meetings rather than on making disciples after the pattern of Jesus. While scriptures testify that John was Jesus’ closest disciple, there was a group of three that Jesus spent a lot of time with: Peter and James in addition to John. Jesus also had twelve disciples and a larger group of seventy-two disciples. In this example, we can notice that there were levels of spiritual fathering in Jesus’ relationships.
In I Thessalonians 2:7-8, 11-12, Paul explains how he practically served as a spiritual parent to the Thessalonians: “But we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”
Can you hear Paul’s heart? Paul served the early church as a spiritual father and he calls us to do the same in our generation.
There have been excesses in the guise of spiritual parenting that have fallen into the trap of trying to control others. This is wrong. Spiritual parenting God’s way is never controlling; it is releasing. A spiritual parenting relationship can be short term or long term. It is also possible to have several spiritual fathers or mothers in our lives.
You can read more about how spiritual parenting works practically in my book The Cry for Spiritual Fathers and Mothers.
A healthy leader focuses on the Kingdom of God as the final goal.
Rather than focusing on his enterprise, church, or ministry, a healthy leader has eternal perspectives and makes the relationship with God a priority (Matthew 6:33).
After I had served for fifteen years as a senior pastor, our multisite church of a few thousand people in Pennsylvania decentralized into eight individual churches. We released each site leader and team and congregation to pray and decide if they wanted to be a part of our newly formed family of churches called DOVE International, or if they desired to move out on their own. Everyone was released to do what God was speaking to them to do.
Every one of the eight churches in Pennsylvania and three overseas churches we helped to plant joined our new global movement. A few overseas churches that we planted chose not to join this new international family of churches. It is interesting that one of the churches we planted in Brazil that decided to not be a part of our family of churches at that time came back and rejoined the DOVE International family more than twenty years later. They started more new churches in Brazil and are a great blessing to the DOVE International family of churches!
We are called to build the kingdom of God, not just our own church or ministry. It is the kingdom of God that is important, not just our personal ministry or church or movement. Two years ago, we turned the leadership of DOVE International over to younger leaders. This how the intergenerational kingdom of God works. We are all called to be kingdom people!
It is my belief that faithful churches of many different denominations can work together, united for the gospel, reaching a lost world, and building His kingdom. We love the body of Christ, knowing that each church, denomination, and movement represents a vital part of God’s glorious kingdom worldwide. I have spent much of my life ministering with groups of pastors and Christian leaders from many denominations who have come together in various parts of the world to pray and learn from one another. In these gatherings we always had one goal—to experience God’s kingdom together in the city or region. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).
