Leadership That Is Biblical

Leadership has been the most taught and discussed topic in the American church in my lifetime.  When I did a search recently on Amazon, there were 15,758 hits on the topic of Christian leadership.  It makes sense.  It doesn’t take much reading in Scripture to find leadership being manifested in one form or another by the notable individuals in the Bible.  Yet if we do a word search through the Scripture, we find a paucity of references under that word.  Why is that?  I think that the reason we find so little use of the word “leader” in Scripture is because that aspect, that virtue, is secondary in God’s view.  Perhaps not even secondary.  Therefore, I’m troubled when we have made it our number one emphasis for so many years.  If we read about God’s leaders in Scripture, we’ll find, overwhelmingly, an emphasis on only two traits: godly obedience and faith in the power and ability of God.

Since thousands of books have been written on this topic, it would be foolhardy to attempt a comprehensive study in one article.  However, if we look at what Moses, Joshua, Gideon and David did as leaders, we won’t find much detail on how they did leadership.  Over and over again, the recurring quality in these men is that they heard the words that God said, spoke them and acted upon them.  The Lord powerfully did the rest.

It’s that simple.

Simple, perhaps, but not easy.