Twenty-One Questions For Spiritual Leaders

Twenty-One Questions For Spiritual Leaders 

From 1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9

I. GOD

 

Not a new convert

1. Can you point to definite areas in your life in which you have spiritually matured during your four years in seminary?

 

Devout

2. Does your lifestyle reveal that your highest priority is knowing and walking with God?

 

II. YOURSELF

 

Temperate

3. In the everyday situations of life do you tend to react to them according to a biblical perspective? That is, are you alert to biblical teaching as it bears on your daily living?

 

Prudent

4. Are you prudent and sober minded to the extent that you can apply biblical principles to walking wisely?

 

Not quick tempered

5. Do you have a short fuse?

 

III. YOUR FAMILY

 

Husband of one wife

6. Are you totally devoted to your own wife, and not distracted, even mentally, by other women?

 

One who manages his own household well

7. Do your wife and children love, respect, and obey you and are they responding positively to God?

 

IV. OTHERS

 

Hospitable

8. Do you make it your practice to invited to and share your home with both Christians and non-Christian outsiders?

 

Able to teach

9. Are you able to communicate the Word of God to others in a non-antagonistic manner and able to handle those who disagree with you in a patient and gentle manner?

 

Not self-willed

10. Are you able to set aside your own preferences in order to maintain peace with people?

 

Loving what is good

11. Do you take advantage of opportunities to do good to all men (both Christians & non-Christians) and to build people up rather than tearing them down?

 

Not a bully

12. Have you overcome the temptation to use the position of leadership to bully people?

 

Uncontentious

13. Have you developed a dislike for becoming involved in quarrels?

 

Gentle

14. Are you able to handle other people in a gentle and mild-mannered way?

 

Just

15. In your relationships with other people are you able to make just decisions; that is, ones which are wise, objective, and honest?

 

Above reproach

16. Is your lifestyle above reproach when evaluated by those closest to you?

 

Respectable

17. Do others around you respect you in that your life adorns the Word of God?

 

Having a good reputation with those on the outside

18. Do you have a good reputation among nonbelievers in the way that you pay your bills, manage your affairs, and react to situations? That is, do they respect you even though they may disagree with your theological viewpoint?

 

V. THINGS

 

Free from the love of money

19. Is the amount of salary you will receive in a position low on your priority list?

 

Not addicted to wine

20. Are you free from being addicted to anything that might take control of your life and cause a weaker Christian to stumble?

 

VI. THE BIBLE

 

Ability to use the Bible

21. Are you able to use the Word of God to exhort people with sound doctrine and to refute those who are antagonistic? 

 

Source:

John Best and Gary Carter, Unpublished class notes, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1985

Found in Kenneth O. Gangel’s Feeding and Leading: Practical Handbook on Administration in Churches and Christian Orgnizations, pp.42-43 (1989)

Feeding and Leading (ch.2) by Kenneth Gangel

Following yesterday’s pattern, here are my notes from chapter 2 of Kenneth Gangel’s Feeding and Leading.

• Christian leadership: the exercise of one’s spiritual gifts under the call of God to serve a certain group of people in achieving the goals God has given them toward the end of glorifying Christ.
• John R. W. Stott: Five distinctives that makes leadership Christian:
  1. vision
  2. industry
  3. perseverance
  4. service
  5. discipline
• He [Stott] concludes: “…that God has a leadership role of some degree and kind for each of us. We need, then, to seek His will within all our hearts, to cry to Him to give us a vision of what He is calling us to do with our lives, and to pray for grace to be faithful–not necessarily successful–in obedience to that heavenly vision.”
• The spiritual leader and the servant leader are synonymous. Without spirituality there is no servant leadership. Without a servant mind-set, there is no spirituality in leadership.
• The Bible describes spirituality not as something which comes automatically at the time of regeneration, but rather a state of maturity into which one grows as the result of a vital Christian life
• One church’s categorization of developing Christian maturity:
  1. Unconditional Love. There is nothing that you have done or will do that can make me stop loving you.
  2. Availability. The mature Christian leader sacrificially puts time, energy, insights, and possessions at the disposal of the group (Acts 2:43-47).
  3. Vulnerability and confidentiality.
  4. Responsibility and accountability. The spiritual leader takes seriously the responsibility for growth of others.
  5. Spiritual authority. A mature leader willingly submits himself to appropriately appointed congregational authority.
  6. Integrity* (added by author). Identified the mature leader as incorruptible, honest, and dependable.
• The Christian leader is the servus servorem dei–the servant of the servants of God.
• Theological conclusions of spiritual leadership:
  1. Spiritual leadership links inseparably with identifiable spiritual gifts and a clear-cut call from God to distinctive leadership positions.
  2. Spiritual leadership consists of a servant attitude patterned after the ministry-to-others demonstration of Jesus Himself.
  3. Spiritual leadership places a strong emphasis on the involvement of people in participatory decision-making as opposed to autocracy and authoritarian techniques.
  4. Spiritual leadership always includes the responsibility of teaching and nurturing those whom we lead.
  5. Spiritual leadership requires an attitude of humility and meekness thoroughly demonstrated by Moses and Paul (among others), and not to be confused with weakness or indecisiveness.
• Spiritual leadership from Romans 12:3-8
  1. Spiritual leadership is meekness. (Rom. 12:3)
     • Absolute monarchy may indeed be the most efficient system the world has ever known, but we had better wait for the absolute control of the Perfect One, in the meantime resisting any pretenders to teh throne.
  2. Spiritual leadership as membership. (Rom. 12:4-5)
     • Peter Drucker reminds us that the word ‘organization’ fails us unless we understand that it means people, a helpful clue to better church relations.
  3. Spiritual leadership is ministry. (Rom. 12:6-8)
     • Spiritual leadership as ministry is not giving orders but nurturing the people of God.
• Christian leadership from Galatians 6:
  1. People who have it know it. (Gal. 6:1)
     • “you who are spiritual” (v.1)
     • Here again we find a recognition of gift and call, the fact, that Christian leaders in any given group, especially a local congregation of the body of Christ, can be spotted by the qualities they possess (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1) [See Twenty-One Questions For Spiritual Leaders From 1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9]
  2. People who have it also have greater responsibility. (Gal. 6:2-5)
  3. People who have it can lose it. (Gal. 6:1)
     • “but watch yourself, or you may also be tempted”
• Ward Gasque on learning from “secular leadership”:
  • Christians do not cease to be human when they commit their lives to Christ. Rather, they share a common humanity with all people. Therefore, it is not surprising that they should learn truth from people who are not themselves believers. The church has done so in the past, to its everlasting benefit, and will doubtless do so in the future. This will come as no surprise to anyone who believes in the biblical doctrine of creation.

Feeding and Leading by Kenneth Gangel

Okay, so I have a confession. Two years ago this month, I was able to attend Steven Covey’s FOCUS Conference. In it, he emphatically calls participants to set aside time to sharpen the saw. Truthfully, I haven’t…and it’s showing! So this weekend I stumbled upon an old college text. In my possession is a book that would have helped me tremendously over the last 8 years, if I would have just READ it!

This morning I scheduled an hour to sit and do nothing but read. These are the notes I developed in that hour. I thought I’d share them with you. They’re great summaries, but if you want to go deeper…buy the book Feeding and Leading: Practical Handbook on Administration in Churches and Christian Organizations by Kenneth O. Gangel. You can find it here.

• A servant leader is characterized not by his doormat demeanor, but by the way he considers himself in relation to other members of the congregation (Phil. 2:1-5).
• Christian leadership in the church certainly cannot be limited to one office or even a small team of professionals.
• Amid the plethora of problems which have surfaced in the world as the twentieth century winds down, two central issues have surfaced in the church…The first is family disintegration, and the second, a lack of leadership.
• It may very well be that until the church solves the problem of family disintegration, it cannot solve the problem of lay leadership development.
• The “product” of the church is not new believers, as important and strategic as evangelism certainly is. The ultimate product is rather a mature and equipped lay leadership able to minister to others.
• Walt Henrichsen and Bill Garrison, Layman, Look Up! God Has a Place for You.
  • “…a ‘good’ layman has traditionally been asked to do four things:
    1. regularly attend all church functions,
    2. liberally give money in support of the church’s program’s,
    3. support all church programs established by the leadership,
    4. and adhere to the ‘eleventh commandment,’ which is ‘don’t rock the boat.’”
• Leaders vs. Managers, according to Dr. Thomas C. Stanton, the vice president of Academic Affairs at James Madison University,
  • Leaders tend to be goal-oriented while managers tend to be result-oriented. Managers strive for order but leaders tolerate ambiguity. Managers try to correct failures; leaders turn failures into successes. Leaders inspire people, but managers depend on systems. Managers attempt to adjust to change while leaders attempt to produce it.
• Louis Allen, The Management Profession (McGraw-Hill, 1964), divided all management into fur functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
• Four Tasks of Administrators
  1. Planning and Goal Achievement
     • a goal needs a plan to make it work.
  2. Leadership and Supervision of Staff
     • leadership is a learned behavior
       • Moses:
         1. learned that leadership was impossible in his own strength (Ex. 2:11-14)
         2. profited from his failures (Ex. 3:11)
         3. recognized his own call and commission from God (Ex. 7:14-18)
         4. persevered against all criticism and adversity (Ex. 16:1-12)
         5. showed a tender and warm heart for his people (Ex. 32:32)
         6. stayed in constant touch with God (Ex. 34:1-9)
  3. Organization and Control
  4. Delegation and Motivation
• Vision, according to Warren Bennis, is the capacity to create a compelling picture of the desired state of affairs that inspires people to perform.
• Four Ingredients in Administrative Leadership
  1. Gifts of the Leader
  2. Needs of the Group
     • Leadership doesn’t work unless felt needs of the group are being met.
     • people can only be led where they want to go while the leader “follows a step ahead”
     • Michael Korda, talking about presidential leadership at the beginning of the first Reagan administration:
       • Our strength makes him strong; our determination makes him determined; our courage makes him a hero; he is, in the final analysis, the symbol of the best in us, shaped by our own spirit and will. And when these qualities are lacking in us, we can’t produce him; and even with all our skill at image building we can’t fake him. He is, after all, merely the sum of us.”
  3. Dynamics of the Situation
     • Kenneth Blanchard,
       • Americans must stop thinking in terms of extremes in leadership styles. Instead of gravitating to the extreme, managers should adopt the one best style of leadership that suits the people they supervise. Sometimes people need direction, and lots of it. Sometimes they need support and direction. And perhaps sometimes they just need to be left alone.
  4. Characteristics of the Leadership Team
     • His [Michael Korda] picture of the leaders as a composite of his followers becomes especially dramatic when we narrow the focus of ‘followers’ to the leadership team.
• Two Models of Administrative Style
  • Complementary Type Model
    • amiable administrator tends to sit back, talk about people and feelings, and openly show reactions and emotions everyone can see. He is warm, approachable, and likable, but a bit slow to act and undisciplined in time and procedures.
    • expressive administrator heavy sentiment and empathy make him a feeling personality. He speaks quickly and easily to and about people, generally wants his opinions to be accepted, and appears generally impulsive, approachable, and warm. His major abilities lie in teaching, persuading, arousing enthusiasm, and communicating new ideas.
    • driving style administrator is the intuitive type we often associate with strong, natural leadership. Action-oriented, coo, competitive, and decisive, he wants to give the impression of being charge and eager to lead group process. As the visionary possibility-thinker of the organization, he looks ahead, nudges the group toward things which seem impossible, and furnishes the organization with new ideas.
    • logical administrative style. He speaks slowly, cautiously, and often seems wrapped up in his own logic and argument. He’s interested in research and rarely likes to act without a strong supply of facts and data within reach. He helps us find the flaws in group thinking, likes to organize and reorganize, holds consistently to the policy handbook, and though no Christian leader likes to do it, is the most adept at firing people when necessary.
    • the balanced middle brings together the best qualities of each style.
  • Team Management Model
    • impoverished management leader carries out only the minimal effort to do what is absolutely essential to keep the ministry going. He is low in both concern for people (idiographic dimension) and concern for production (nomothetic dimension)
    • authority-obedience leader concerns himself only with what people can give to the church and insists they be there every time the doors are open. He tends to be legalistic and demanding.
    • country-club management picture a pastor who lovingly relates to everyone while forgetting appointments, never preparing for business meetings, and failing to develop lay leadership. People may put up with him because they love him but they understand the church’s goals are not being achieved.
    • organization man management middle of the chart. An aim at mediocrity.
    • Team leadership is the genius of the New Testament. Work accomplishment is from committed people, interdependence through a ‘common stake’ in organization purpose leads to relationships of trust and respect.