Pastor John, I have a leadership question for you and it's really a foundational question.

Broadly speaking, how do you define leadership?

What does Godly leadership look like and what does Godly leadership aim to achieve?

I would define leadership as acting and speaking so as to create a following toward a goal.

That would be the most generic way I could think of doing it, which of course is morally neutral.

I haven't said anything about what makes it Christian or Godly, but that's what it would be wherever you talk about it.

It seems like how you act and how you speak so as to create a following toward a goal.

And then what makes that Christian, it seems like what makes it Godly or biblical, is the goal is defined by Scripture.

You want to take people, move people toward godliness towards worship, towards honoring Jesus, towards loving people.

And secondly, what makes it Christian would be that you care that the following be every people in tongue and tribe and nation.

In other words, you're not prejudicial. You don't want to just get behind you the really cool people.

That would be an ungodly leadership. You say, I want to lead people, but the only people I want behind me following are people who are so rich or so famous or so cool that they reflect well upon me.

And that way, you don't have that attitude at all. You want the people following you to be of all kinds of people without that kind of prejudicial, partial bit.

And then the third thing, it seems like, would be that the things you do when I say acting and speaking to get a following to go to a goal.

Well, those kinds of actions and that kind of speaking is going to have a certain flavor to it if we're being guided by the Scripture so that we'll be, which Jesus said, all the nations are trying to get people to bow to their authority and yield to them.

And you should not be like that, but he who would be great among you must be the servant of all.

So this leadership is going to have a servant quality about it, a humble quality about it.

It's going to be trying to get under people and lift them up to something good as they're servant rather than getting over people and oppressing and manipulating and using them to accomplish your private ends.

So it seems like those three things, the goal, the breadth of the following, the humility and the servant quality of the acting takes this definition and makes it Christian and the assumption in all that is all those are being defined by the Bible.

It seems like in our culture there's an animosity towards leadership because leadership is agenda driven and it seems the self giving nature of leadership is really a key element. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, totally. I agree exactly when, for example, this pro-life things are on my mind these days and when we try to lead people to be engaged in the pro-life movement more actively on the ground, it was clear that the more humble, the more readiness to suffer, the more caring, the more empathetic that leadership was, the more authentic it was, the more ready to follow.

But if it was strident and forceful and mean spirited, then people should know, I know one thing to do with that and that's right.

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