For almost 13 years, my day job has been working to equip people for gospel ministry in Queensland, Australia, where I live, and beyond. Over that time, I have steadily grown in the conviction that what God asks of leaders is essentially what he asks of all his people—except that leaders have to do it at the front, in full view of God’s people and the watching world.
This clearly raises the stakes for leaders. If a member of the church family fails morally or displays deep character flaws, it’s not great, but the impact is mainly felt by those directly involved or who are closest to the person. When it comes to leaders, however, the stakes are higher because the whole church is affected if the leaders are living inauthentically. And nothing damages the church’s reputation more than hypocritical leaders. That’s why it matters so much that leaders lead like Jesus. And if leaders are to do that, then they need all the help they can get. Christian leaders need other people. In particular, they need other people to help them to stay grounded.
Leaders of every kind in church need to make sure that the words of Jesus in Mark 10 are constantly on repeat in their ears: Jesus called them over and said to them:
You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45, CSB)
In Jesus’ day, to be a leader came with the same strong temptation to hubris as leadership does today. But our Lord is very quick to make it clear that the only leaders in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ are servant leaders. Christian leaders “go below,” rather than promoting themselves. And that’s a big ask.
But it isn’t a new thing. This is made startlingly clear by the first extended discussion of what we would call “leadership” in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 17, God anticipates the day when ancient Israel will ask for a king. He says they are allowed to have one on several key conditions:
Appoint a king from your brothers. You are not to set a foreigner over you, or one who is not of your people. However, he must not acquire many horses for himself or send the people back to Egypt to acquire many horses, for the LORD has told you, “You are never to go back that way again.” He must not acquire many wives for himself so that his heart won’t go astray. He must not acquire very large amounts of silver and gold for himself. When he is seated on his royal throne, he is to write a copy of this instruction for himself on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It is to remain with him, and he is to read from it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to observe all the words of this instruction, and to do these statutes. Then his heart will not be exalted above his countrymen, he will not turn from this command to the right or the left, and he and his sons will continue reigning many years in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:15-20, CSB)
Notice the conditions that God puts on who can be king and what that king can do. For a start, the king must be an Israelite—one of God’s own people. Second, he must not “send the people back to Egypt to acquire many horses.” God’s people had only relatively recently escaped from slavery in Egypt—so the king of Israel was not to resort to using Egyptian military might to strengthen his kingdom. That would be a sure sign that he was trusting in horsepower rather than Yahweh. This king (and his kingdom) was to be different. Third, leadership among the people of God should be in the hands of someone whose heart has not gone astray (a single-minded, wholehearted worshipper of Yahweh) and whose heart is not exalted (who is humble, expressing that humility in obedience).
The message of Deuteronomy 17 is that if we start to get above ourselves, then we are in real trouble. If we stop listening to those around us, we are in real trouble. If we start ignoring parts of the truth of the gospel or stop listening to it as it is taught to us by others, we are in real trouble—because, if that’s the case, our heart has either gone astray or been exalted. We are no longer leading like the Lord Jesus, who, as Philippians 2 makes clear, humbled himself to serve, even though he is God and King. This is what makes godly leadership so daunting and so demanding. And this is why Christian leaders desperately need the help of other people.
Paul’s extended metaphor of the church as a body makes it very clear that every part of the body needs every other, and this is just as true of leaders as everyone else. Just because the “head” is the “head” doesn’t mean that it has moved beyond dependence on the rest of the body. But what does that actually mean in practice?
