If the church is to make a difference in the world, every one of its members must begin to act and think like leaders. Leadership is not for the few and the special, the exception rather than the expected. Whether this mysterious thing called "leadership" comes naturally or is an acquired talent, every Christian must come to terms with it. A biblical style of leadership and language of leadership must become endemic in the church.

In the Old Testament and Gospel lessons for this week both David and Jesus illustrate the mysterious qualities and unique characteristics God has chosen to hold up as necessary for those who would lead the people of God on their life journeys of faith. The surprising nature of their faith, their lives, and their words combine to write what might be thought of as a Christian's "job description" of a leader.

As Warren Bennis points out in his book On Becoming a Leader (1989), leadership still remains the most studied and least understood topic in all the social sciences. In spite of all the recent studies on leadership by MacGregor Burns, Tom Peters, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Cary Cooper, Alistair Mant, et al., leadership is all too often still "like beauty, or love, we know it when we see it but cannot easily define or produce it on demand."
Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1990), 133.

Leaders are servants first of all. The only gospel passage in which Jesus summed up his ministry in a single sentence defined leadership in terms of service: "The son of man did not come to be served, but to serve" (Luke 28:28). Jesus did not define his ministry in terms of ruling over others, but serving others. "This is how one should regard us," Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4:1, "as servants of Christ and as stewards of the mystery of God." The Book of Revelation begins "This is the revelation given by God to Jesus Christ. It was given to him so that he might show his servants what must shortly happen. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John ..."

The word used over and over again for "servant" is hupertes, which originally meant an "underrower," someone who worked in the galleys, or the lower deck of a ship's crew. It eventually came to mean a servant or steward. Jesus' "upside-down thinking" defined leadership first in terms of followership. The best definition of a Christian leader is as a follower or a servant. A Christian leader is one who follows Christ, and in the name of Christ, serves the needs of the world.

Christian leaders are followers: people who resign their self-appointed positions as captains of the ship and who reside as part of the ship's crew. Servants don't sit at captains' tables; servants sit where a Savior can be found in straw, or are with Christ on a cross.

Just to make sure we comprehend properly, Paul reminds us that the most important thing about servants is that they do what they are told. In other words, it is not originality, not success, not influence, but "Trust-and-Obey" faithfulness that defines our calling. A server, even diakonos, is a person whose function is not determined by his or her own will. Servant leadership is not subservient leadership. But servants can recite the words of Mary (Luke 1:38) and mean them: "Let it be to me according to your word." Servers are wholly at the disposal of those they serve.

If you became a Christian in order to get something out of it yourself, you are now the most miserable and frustrated of human beings. A Christian leader stands amid the world and says, "I am your servant not your judge; not your star-of-the-show." Christian leaders are servants, galley-rowers for the gospel. No more. The word "leader" has no higher meaning than that in the Bible's lexicon of faith.

When considering the qualifications of yourself or someone else for Christian leadership, it would be wise to post a few requirements for candidates. Item number one in the job description for a leader is found in the second verse of this week's Old Testament lesson: "The Spirit of the Lord speaks through me ..." The first requirement for leadership is to have been touched and called by God's Spirit. Or in Jesus' words to Nicodemus: "You must be born of the spirit."

This means that true biblical leadership is not a skill or a technique or a body of knowledge that one reams and then practices. To be called by God to lead in some way is to have been chosen by God's Spirit regardless of whether you think you are able or not. Of course you are not able. None of us is. But we have a God who is able. In the words of Martin Luther, "God carves the rotten wood and rides the lame horse." Or in the more recent words of former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden, "Don't worry about the horse being blind. Load up the wagon." God uses even the likes of you and me to show God's glory and to proclaim God's truth, beauty and goodness.

The second item in this job description might be best encapsulated by the text from 1 John 4:18 which claims that "Perfect love casts out fear." Without this love, the fear which chased away those potential disciples traveling along with Jesus in Capernaum was a fear of being associated with the scandalous message Jesus was proclaiming. Without confidence in God's love, King David could not assert his commitment to ruling with justice and righteousness as his constant guides.

Christian leaders grounded in love are capable of shaking off the bonds of a timid, status quo-loving church and taking on the challenges of the gospel. MacGregor Bums talks of the "transforming" leader as opposed to the merely "transactional" one. Your sermon for this week might suggest some particular ways that members of your congregation might be more than "busy fixers' or "status quo-its" and instead embrace the scandal of Christian love.

Among those "scandalous" activities they might participate in: a weekly Friday luncheon fast as a sign of solidarity with the poor; organizing and participating in a 24-hour prayer vigil for peace; or even hitting the highways, the waterways, or the abandoned byways with garbage bags and a sense of responsibility for the safekeeping of our fragile planet. Christian leadership is not afraid to act on God's commitment to the ideals of justice and social action.

The third item in this job description gives the encouragement "never faltering, never breaking down." A Christian leader never loses hope or courage. That doesn't mean there won't be reason to. The spiritual life of people with a transforming mission burning in their hearts is more susceptible to breakdowns and burnouts than that of other people. The itinerant preacher William Colbert, who itinerated in the Genesee Conference (Saratoga Circuit) between 1801-1810, wrote in his diary: " My life is a life of toil. I scarcely have time to read a chapter in the Bible some days."

If Christian leaders are not to falter or break down, they will need the special prayers of a servant community behind them, and in front of them a personal resolve to set aside sacred time for the soul's feeding and growth. The techniques of "continuing instant in prayer" (Romans 12:12) are especially useful. It is a technique perhaps most fully developed by General Stonewall Jackson, the brilliant Southern tactician, who testified to a surge of prayer every time he licked the envelope of a letter he had written, shook hands with a stranger, waved goodbye to a friend, sat down to a meal with his officers, or signed an order to his men. He developed this facility to such a degree that his instinctive response to virtually everything that happened was to breathe a little "thank you" to God. By being continually "instant in prayer," his life became one long prayer of praise and intercession.