February 16, 2015

Leadership matters. A lot.

But sometimes I wonder if we’ve elevated the value of church leadership over a much more important biblical trait – followership. Also known as discipleship.

Before any of us are leaders, we’re all supposed to be followers. Followers of Jesus. Together.

At best, any leadership authority we have in the church is reflected and borrowed leadership from Jesus himself.

Paul encouraged the Corinthians to “follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” The very strong implication of that statement is that if the leader stops following Jesus, we should stop following that leader.

That’s why church leaders need to be very careful to be followers of Jesus first. In fact, our followership should be more on display than our leadership.

Another phrase for this is “servant leadership.” And the order of those words matters. Being a servant always comes first.

When we forget this, bad things can happen. I don’t need to go over the list of Christian leaders that have fallen. But it’s hard to think of any Christian servants that have fallen.

If you’re in church leadership – a high, noble and important calling – here are five cautions we should all be aware of: