Ever notice how the best restaurants reflect their leadership?

Walk into Owl's Place, for instance, and you'll quickly discover whether someone competent is running the kitchen.

Well, the same is true for churches, businesses, and families.

But here's what might surprise you.

The most effective leaders aren't the loudest voices or the most impressive personalities.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall points to Paul's radically different leadership

model in First Thessalonians, one where success means working yourself out of a job by raising up others.

Chuck titled today's message, a leadership style that works, guaranteed.

The best leaders come from a scarred past.

They understand suffering.

They understand mistreatment.

They've earned the right to be respected because they have labored against much opposition.

Now there are some things that you don't want to have as a leader. In verses 3 through 6, you will find those negatives, and there are four of them I find here.

And then verses 7 through 11, you'll find four positives that you do want to have.

First, deception.

Verse 3.

Our leadership, our style of exhorting, our approach, our ministry does not come from error

or impurity, it has reference to a faulty motive or by way of deceit. We didn't come lacking integrity. We didn't come with deception.

Verse four is the second negative characteristic. It's flattery. Or, as he puts it, being a people

pleaser. Let me read it for you. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel,

and so we speak not as pleasing men, but God, who examines our hearts. So good.

When you come to the place where the word of God, the goals of God, the principles of God,

...