Welcome to Conversations that matter podcast, where we are forging a bold Christian vision for America.

I am your host, John Harris.

We are going to talk today about leadership

according to the New Testament, specifically leadership in the church, which I think can serve

as a template for broader leadership in terms of cultural stewardship. I want to talk about this

because I think we have a leadership crisis going on. We have managers, we have celebrities, but we have

very few leaders in institutions that are very influential. And we need more leaders. I think a lot of

our social ills would actually be quite a bit better if we had leaders at the helm.

People who exhibited masculine leadership that included virtues like bravery and temperance and fortitude

and self-control, but we don't seem to have a lot of virtue. And in fact, virtue doesn't seem to be a big metric anymore

for even determining if someone should be a leader. And we see a very different model in scripture.

We see a model that is primarily about three things. Desire, virtue, and competence.

Desire, virtue, and competence.

And that's what I'm going to talk to you a little bit about today.

What does that look like in a church setting?

And then maybe we'll talk a little bit about how that looks in the broader culture as well.

So I already wrote down a number of my thoughts on this,

and there's a lot of scripture in it in a substack article entitled Shepherds, not celebrities. This may end up also getting

posted on truth scripts. So at the time I'm recording this, it has not been posted yet, but I think

it probably will be by the time I release this recording because I'm recording it ahead of time.

Shepherds,

not celebrities. And the subtitle is leadership according to the New Testament. Now, as I'm

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