By Dan Rogers
Superintendent of U.S. ministers
By Dan Rogers
Superintendent of U.S. ministers
PASADENA—In this column we are looking at issues addressed in the new WCG-USA Church Administration Manual. Among these is our leadership ethos—the leadership principles that inform and shape leadership in our denominational departments and in our congregations.
We began by looking at shared leadership. This time we’ll examine two principles: love-motivated leadership and mission and vision-driven leadership. It’s important that we consider these two together.
Leaders within the body of Christ are called to lead with balance—as shepherds and overseers (1 Peter 5:1-4, where the specific reference is to elders). A shepherd-leader leads with tender care. An overseer leads with diligence and purposeful intent.
Peter seems to be calling for a balance of the two. To be tender (like a shepherd) without being purposeful (like an overseer), leads to aimlessness. But to be diligent and purposeful (like an overseer) without having tender care and concern (like a shepherd), is ineffective at best and abusive at worst.
Our goal is that our leaders be both love-motivated, and mission-and vision-driven.
Love-motivated leadership
Peter notes that leaders can be wrongly motivated by a mere sense of duty, by greed or by a desire for power (5:2-3). But the only appropriate and Christlike motive for leading in Christ’s body is love of the sort that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
As we note in the manual: “Love-motivated leadership promotes the fellowship and caring that is essential to Christian community. The church is to be a community of individuals who have equal standing before God—united in a mutual love for one another that expresses the outgoing, mutual life and love of the triune God who is eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
Thus we’re talking here about being motivated by God’s love, which by God’s grace is “poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).
In the one of the sessions I’m teaching in the 2004 regional conferences, I address the environment that leaders help create within a congregation. If that environment is to be conducive to the birth and growth of disciples of Jesus, it must be characterized by what we call “an atmosphere of love.” Leaders play a significant role in creating and sustaining such an atmosphere.
To be love-motivated as a leader in the body of Christ is to share in Jesus’ heart and to obey his new command. Jesus said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). In our training of leaders we often refer to this as Jesus’ Great Commandment.
Mission- and vision-driven leadership
Motivated by love, leaders must be passionate and skillful in leading others toward fulfillment of the church’s mission. That mission is the Great Commission to make disciples (Matthew 28:19). And so we talk about being motivated by the Great Commandment to pursue the Great Commission.
Mission-driven leaders are passionate about the Great Commission. They also have a clear vision of what obedience to Jesus’ command to make disciples will look like as it emerges within the ministry they lead. That ministry may be the entire denomination, a single congregation or a ministry segment within a congregation.
No matter the setting, we share the same general mission, and leaders must clearly and persistently communicate a vision for how that mission will be lived out in and through the lives of those they lead.
As noted in the manual: “Visionary leaders are catalysts for change—able to lead members to embrace and pursue clear and attainable mission-enhancing strategies and goals. Such change involves inspiring within people both new expectations and the desire to sacrifice to reach forward.”
This is no small task. And we recognize that not all leaders are equally gifted in seeing and in communicating the vision. That’s why we need each other and why we need to work together as leaders. That’s also why each leader needs to seek to be deeply connected to Christ, who gives us his love and his vision for mission effectiveness. And that’s also why we each need to seek equipping to be more skillful in leading in these ways.
In our regional and district training conferences, we seek to communicate a clear and compelling vision of the church living out Jesus’ command to make disciples. We seek to help leaders first become personally devoted to the Great Commission, and then lead others to do likewise.
The current regional conferences focus on achieving disciplemaking balance in our congregational programming so that each congregation participates in the fullness of Jesus’ four-part disciplemaking strategy: winning the lost, building the believer, equipping the worker and multiplying the shepherd-leader.
This strategy is not merely another set of programs; it’s a disciplemaking life-style lived out by leaders who inspire and train others to follow where they have already gone.
It is challenging to lead in the body of Christ. At times it means joining Jesus in suffering, but Peter reassures us with this promise: “When the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Peter 5:4).
I thank God for our leaders, and I challenge us all to be love-motivated and mission- and vision-driven.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2004