THE FIRST QUALIFICATION OF LEADERSHIP

I have been doing a lot of prayerful reflection on leadership in the church--and the lessons I have learned. Sometimes those lessons have been learned through mistakes. Sometimes they have been learned through the insights of others accompanied by the Lord saying "Think outside your box and pay attention." Here is something that has become a firm conviction for me and was recently reinforced in reading the work of Robert Lewis and Wayne Cordeiro in their book Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church From the Inside Out.

The first qualification is a spiritual one. Lewis and Cordeiro write: "... the cultural epicenter of a church is not a static code or rules, but life-on-life equipping that ultimately allows a person or a team you trust to apply biblical principles your your specific context." (SPECIFIC CONTEXT=THE PEOPLE GOD HAS GATHERED TOGETHER IN 2010 TO DO MINISTRY AS THE CHURCH OF GOD OF LANDISVILLE."

When we design a church's mission and ministry, we really cannot step away from a reality that impacts our ultimate frutifulness. The church is not an organization--it is a spiritual organism. It is the continuing body of Christ. Our DNA is Christ's DNA and our character should reflect Jesus Christ's values and our behavior should quite literally be defined as what Jesus would do as the Church of God of Landisville.

Being the people of a great God requires us, to use Lewis and Cordiero's words is to "incarnate not duplicate." We are not trying to reproduce successful programs that others have used in their specific settings. We are trying to incarnate (give life to) the mission God has called us uniquely to carry out as a congregation on the mission field that is Landsville in 2010.

This is what the first qualification of leadership is a spiritual one. In Acts, David is described in such a way that defines this qualification: "He’s a man whose heart beats to my heart, a man who will do what I tell him." The Message translation.

If this is not true of a church leader, then that leaders ideas, plans, and actions will not result in a church that truly honors God or that God blesses.