The Call to Follow E-Book

Richard Langer

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Reexamining the Nature of Leadership and "Followership" in Light of Biblical Teaching The market is flooded with books, conferences, and workshops on how to be a better leader. In most companies, leaders are noticed and applauded while followers are often viewed as weak and passive. However, Scripture tells us a different story; although leadership is valued and respected, being obedient followers of Christ is at the very heart of faith.   In The Call to Follow, Richard Langer and Joanne J. Jung teach readers that "followership" is essential to both organizational and spiritual flourishing. They argue that followership requires the development of specific skills and virtues modeled and extolled throughout Scripture. They point to examples of people from the Bible and church history who focused on following in the footsteps of their Savior rather than positions of leadership among others. This helpful book seeks to dismantle the idol of leadership that's so prevalent in our culture and points us instead to the biblical concept of followership.  - Biblically Centered: Contains examples of "followership" from Scripture and church history  - Mission Oriented: Explains how being a follower of Jesus Christ is a missional calling - Community Focused: Written to encourage Christ followers, in both leadership and followership positions

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“With a myriad of books on leadership adorning my bookshelf, I now have the book for which I have been waiting a long time. The Call to Follow not only reinforces the essential calling of followership but rightly makes a persuasive and compelling biblical case that leadership’s most intimate companion is followership. A paradox of effective leadership is that to lead well we must follow well. I could not recommend this book more highly for all apprentices of Jesus who long to live a faithful and fruitful life.”

Tom Nelson, Senior Pastor, Christ Community Church, Kansas City; President, Made to Flourish; author, Work Matters and The Economics of Neighborly Love

“Everyone wants to lead; few want to follow. Turns out that Jesus was a follower. He did the work his heavenly Father gave him to do. It’s time to follow his lead in relationships, in marriages, and in our work worlds. Joanne Jung and Richard Langer address a topic no one wants to tackle in our leader-crazed culture. Don’t worry, this is not a pedantic primer on followership. It includes a practical section, ‘Soul Rhythms for Faithful Following’, that will jump-start your followership skills. If you love leading and bristle at following, follow my lead and put this book on your list.”

Greg Leith, CEO, Convene

“It turns out that great leaders have great lieutenants. Jesus himself is a consummate follower—of the Father. Langer and Jung wisely point out that following can be dangerous, even deadly; lemmings and cliffs come to mind. So they don’t advocate blind following—the blind following the blind—but offer strong exhortations to wise and courageous following, which comes down to a matter of heart and pays lasting fruit. Their chart contrasting followership stereotypes with biblical followership is worth the price of the book.”

Sam Crabtree, Pastor for Small Groups, Bethlehem Baptist Church; author, Practicing Thankfulness

“Langer and Jung provide a clarion call for the church to take followership seriously. They present a refreshing vision of biblical followership and remind readers that mission-centric and faithful obedience is what sets people apart whether they are leaders or followers. The book puts followership and leadership in proper perspective and offers timeless principles and examples for believers to be faithful Christ followers.”

John Shoup, Executive Director, Dr. Paul & Annie Kienel Leadership Institute; Professor of Leadership Studies, California Baptist University

“The Call to Follow is such a refreshing read that relieves leaders of the pressure of working harder to lead better. I’ve been waiting for a book like this! What if we just spent time thinking about following Jesus, pure and simple? Joanne Jung and Richard Langer, my dear Biola University colleagues, remind us all in these pages that we are best when following, not to be more effective leaders but to be more faithful disciples. This book is a true gift to Jesus followers, which is all we need to be. We may move in and out of leadership, but there is never a day when we will not be followers. We are ‘disciples’ of Christ, a term that means followers. We have no higher aspiration than to follow the author and perfecter of our faith.”

Barry H. Corey, President of Biola University; author, Love Kindness: Discover the Power of a Forgotten Christian Virtue

“I am grateful to have a work in hand that focuses on following for the sake of serving rather than seeking to eventually lead. Langer and Jung reveal the repeated theological, cruciform importance of God-fearing followership to the mission of Christ and his kingdom. Local congregations and Christian ministries will be dramatically influenced and empowered for congregational-maturing and neighborhood-transforming good works if they recover this vision for biblical followership. May we accept this invitation to embrace the soul rhythms that beautify our callings to be followers.”

Eric C. Redmond, Professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute

The Call to Follow

The Call to Follow

Hearing Jesus in a Culture Obsessed with Leadership

Richard Langer and Joanne J. Jung

Foreword by Gavin Ortlund

The Call to Follow: Hearing Jesus in a Culture Obsessed with Leadership

Copyright © 2022 by Richard Langer and Joanne J. Jung

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7803-8

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7806-9

PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7804-5

Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7805-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jung, Joanne J., author. | Langer, Richard, author. 

Title: The call to follow : hearing Jesus in a culture obsessed with leadership / Joanne J Jung and Richard Langer. 

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. 

Identifiers: LCCN 2021048713 (print) | LCCN 2021048714 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433578038 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433578045 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433578052 (mobipocket) | ISBN 9781433578069 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian life. | Followership. | Leadership. 

Classification: LCC BV4509.5 .J85 2022 (print) | LCC BV4509.5 (ebook) | DDC 248.4–dc23/eng/20211118

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048713

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048714

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-06-20 01:37:01 PM

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1  Of Leading and Following

2  Mistaken Beliefs about Followership

3  A Kingdom of Followers

4  A Crisis of Followership

5  Glimpses of Faithful Following

6  Still I Will Follow

7  Soul Rhythms for Faithful Following

8  The Rewards of Following

Conclusion

Study Guide

General Index

Scripture Index

Foreword

I read a statistic recently about how many pastors would leave the ministry if they could. I won’t tell you what it was. It would probably be a bit of a downer to start a book like that! But the figure was high. The sad reality is that right now many pastors are discouraged and many churches are in decline or crisis.

While there are obviously many factors contributing to this situation, an important one may be an overemphasis on leadership.

Overemphasis on leadership? Did you read that right? Yes, you did. It may sound strange, but the fact is that leadership is often misunderstood, idolized, overvalued, or uncritically pursued. This problem pervades our culture and, unfortunately, affects the church as well.

Rick Langer and Joanne Jung have written an enormously helpful, wise, and important book to help us address this problem. Langer and Jung do not deny the goodness or importance of leadership—far from it! But they show how certain ways of thinking about leadership can be from the flesh, not the Spirit. It is so easy for worldliness to creep in right in the midst of our efforts to advance the kingdom of heaven. Yet, our methods as well as our message must follow the way of Christ—and that includes how we think about leadership.

Langer and Jung show that in order to understand leadership, we must understand followership. Followership is often misunderstood and undervalued. (Just think of how rarely the word “followership” is used!) Followership does not mean uncritical passivity or weakness. It is not less noble than leadership. It is not less valuable. It is not even less difficult. On the contrary, followership is a rewarding, honorable, and fulfilling aspect of both our humanity and our spirituality.

When you think about it, the importance of followership is a matter of common sense. If there are no followers, then by definition no one can be a leader. That means that if everyone is striving for leadership, everyone will be frustrated in that leadership. Thus, when we teach our people that “everyone is a leader,” we are setting ourselves up for problems. All institutional health depends on give-and-take, complementary roles of leadership and responsiveness.

As Langer and Jung demonstrate, followership is essential to the flourishing of all human institutions, but it is especially imperative in the church. After all, we worship a man who said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Followership is at the heart of being a Christian. We are the sheep; he is the shepherd. Thus, for Christians, followership is primary and essential, while leadership is derivative. We are all called to cultivate the skills and virtues associated with following. Some of us will also be called into roles of leadership; but when we are, our leadership will only be effective to the extent we are following Christ. True leadership is not superior to followership; it flows out of followership.

Just consider what a huge factor this is for the flourishing of our churches! How might our churches be healthier and more cohesive if they were filled with people who intentionally valued following? How many difficult membership meetings would go more smoothly? How many ministries would function more fruitfully? How many pastors and elders would find sudden wind in their sails? How many more people would hear about Jesus in our communities?

The Call to Follow: Hearing Jesus in a Culture Obsessed with Leadership is a word in season. Langer and Jung point to helpful models of leadership and followership, such as Abraham Kuyper’s relationship with his local church members (see chap. 5). They give practical advice on how to cultivate healthy habits of followership. And they show how cultivating the virtues necessary to be a follower of Christ is not a burden but actually the key to finding rest for our souls. If Christians take to heart this counsel, our churches will be both healthier and happier—to the glory of God.

Gavin Ortlund

Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Ojai

Ojai, California

Acknowledgments

This book was born in a hallway. It sounds strange but it is true. Without a whole series of tiny conversations that took place in the hallway that connects our offices, Joanne and I would never have had a few big conversations; without a few big conversations, we would never have realized that we had a whole book’s worth of things we wanted to say about leading and following. We are keenly aware of the blessing of hallways because we were both at Biola University during many years when the Bible department was scattered between seven different buildings. It was a time before hallways—a time with far fewer of the tiny conversations that are the seeds of the bigger ones.

So we offer a heartfelt acknowledgment to many donors who made the Talbot East Building at Biola University possible. Without those donors, there would have been no building, no hallway, and no book. Your generosity has truly been a blessing to us and, we hope, a blessing to the many people who will read this book. 

Introduction

Our culture promotes leadership in myriad contexts—sports teams and clubs for elementary-aged children, campus clubs for junior high students and high schoolers, degree programs for college students, and more. Professional schools, whether in business, law, medicine, or theology, all offer extensive training in leadership. Once our prospective leaders have graduated, they continue their leadership pursuits in the marketplace with countless programs for identifying potential leaders and developing leadership skills. Books, blogs, seminars, workshops, and retreats are available for all stages and ages. Retirees are not immune—we recently discovered that the American Society on Aging has a Leadership in Aging blog. Leadership training is a multibillion-dollar industry that continues to grow, independent of all economic trends.1

Followership, in contrast, is almost completely ignored. We talk about a call to leadership but never a call to followership. We have little or no imagination for the gifts or skills of followership. Have you ever attended a followership training workshop? Imagine a youth program that marketed itself as “training the next generation of followers!” Not surprisingly, it seems to be the opposite. For example, the 2020 season of Girl Scout cookie sales kicked off with a new fruit-flavored offering, Lemon-Ups, and one of eight motivational messages stamped and baked into these shortbread cookies reads: “iamaleader.” It is doubtful that “iamafollower” was ever considered. Apparently, what’s good for cookies is also good for cars. The new 2019 Volvo S60 is the sports sedan that rewrites the driving story because it’s designed for those who “Follow No One.” This clear aversion to following—both the word itself and what it stands for—is readily accepted, broadly promoted, and crosses all generations.

Academic studies of followership have shown some traction in recent decades, but the amount of literature and the attention it draws is negligible in comparison to leadership literature. To put it mildly, it has certainly not lived up to the prediction of Warren Bennis, who enthusiastically wrote in an introduction to a 2008 book on followership that within a decade the existing categories of leadership and followership would become as “dated as bell bottoms and Nehru jackets.”2His prediction was based on his sense of the rising appreciation of followership, particularly in the face of what he assumed would be the erosion of traditional notions of leadership. Yet, a search of leadership titles on Amazon published since 2010 finds 30,000 books. The same search for followership finds only 70—a ratio of over 400 to 1. It seems that traditional notions of leadership and followership have proven more enduring than bell bottoms and Nehru jackets.

Setting aside the disappointing growth projections for the followership market, it is worth noting that a substantial portion of the followership literature is written with leaders in mind. In other words, followers are discussed, but with an eye to making leaders successful. It seems that even books that focus on followership often end up being read through a leadership lens. This is seen, for example, in a leadership blog that reviewed Barbara Kellerman’s book Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders. It is a valuable book, and we were glad to see it garner attention. However, we were surprised to see that the cover of the book had apparently been photoshopped for use as the lead graphic for the blog.3 The subtitle of Kellerman’s book was changed to read “Good Followers Make the Best Leaders.” Apparently, we can study following as long as it is done for the sake of making leaders. Otherwise, it appears, there would be no point. It is as if followership is a shadow; it is a nothing rather than a something, an absence rather than a presence.

Our book rejects these assumptions about followership. We believe followership is something in its own right, not just the lack of leadership. We believe it is worth studying for its own sake. It has its own set of skills and excellencies; it has its own challenges and rewards. Followership may be a stepping-stone to leadership, and it is certainly an activity that forms character needed for leadership, but it can also be useful in and of itself. It deserves its own Girl Scout cookie. And for Christians, followership is more foundational to our spiritual lives than leadership. We may move in and out of leadership, but there is never a day when we will not be followers. We are “disciples” of Christ, a term that means followers. We have no higher aspiration than to follow the author and perfecter of our faith.

This book is written with many groups of people in mind. First of all, we write for countless ordinary people faithfully doing the tasks of daily life. You may be a leader in your church or community or you may not. But if you read leadership literature or attend a leadership seminar, you discover that everything you hear is wrapped around a vision for “changing the world” or “making a difference.” Very little of what you hear helps you validate and embrace your daily tasks. In fact, quite the opposite—it makes you question the value of your daily life or even disdain it. Tish Harrison Warren expresses this sentiment beautifully as she reflects on her own life, which for many years after college was wrapped up in world-changing pursuits until, after some time, she discovered she had misunderstood the importance of ordinary life. She writes,

A prominent New Monasticism community house had a sign on the wall that famously read “Everyone wants a revolution. No one wants to do the dishes.” My life is really rich in dirty dishes (and diapers) these days and really short in revolutions. I go to a church full of older people who live pretty normal, middle-class lives in nice, middle-class houses. But I have really come to appreciate this community, to see their lifetimes of sturdy faithfulness to Jesus, their commitment to prayer, and the tangible, beautiful generosity that they show those around them in unnoticed, unimpressive, unmarketable, unrevolutionary ways. And each week, we average sinners and boring saints gather around ordinary bread and wine and Christ himself is there with us.4

This book is also written for people with a deeply felt passion and sense of mission. This passion may be a central part of your daily activities or it may be pursued in your discretionary time. Either way, it is something that you clearly see needs to be done. You may not be part of an organization and you may not have anyone who is following your lead, but there is a task that needs to be done, and you are doing it. We have several friends who have a concern like this for children in need. It may be a child from war-torn Africa, it may be a child with a disability, or it may be a child in foster care. These friends have been willing to put their concern into action. They have been foster parents themselves; they have adopted children; they have made room within their families for those from other families. But they have not necessarily started a revolutionary movement or become public advocates for their cause in the community. So do we call our friends “leaders”? We could if we wanted to, but why would we? Most of them are not doing these acts of love because they want to be leaders but because they want to be servants—not servant-leaders, just servants. In this case, they are serving children who need an extensive amount of care. They often lack followers precisely because what they are doing is not an easy job. But their lack of followers doesn’t keep them from following Jesus’s example of letting the little children come to them and loving because he first loved us.

Last, this book is written for people who are part of an organization, church, or business that is pursuing a mission. You may just be playing a small part. Perhaps you have simply been caught up in the passion and mission of others. They are running a soup kitchen because they have a passion for the poor. You just happen to be their friend. You could never see yourself running a soup kitchen, but you can certainly see yourself helping a friend. And you may not have the gift of service, but you can dish out soup with the best of them, so you do it. Every Friday night. And as you do it, the words of Jesus run through your mind, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Matt. 25:40 NKJV). You realize you do it because you have decided to follow Jesus.

So this book is written for disciples—that is, for people who follow. But this book is also written for people who are leaders or, more precisely, for people whose following has put them in a place of leadership. You give direction, make decisions, and cast vision for other people—people who, in the providence of God, have been placed within the scope of your leadership responsibility. And you realize that even as you lead—in fact, especially as you lead—you are still answering your first call, and that is the call to follow Jesus.

We hope that for all these groups of people, this short book will help you appreciate and understand what it means to be a follower. We hope this book will increase the effectiveness of both followers and leaders by promoting common ownership of the vision, deepening our appreciation of one another’s contributions, and seeing more clearly where our organizational and vocational tasks fit within our spiritual lives. We hope that it will help you fall in love with following and find that your faithful following becomes a deep well of meaning and a fountain of joy for your life. And we hope that God will use this book to make you contagious—a contagious follower!

1  “The Leadership Training Market,” Training Industry (blog), March 28, 2019, https://trainingindustry.com/.

2  Ronald E. Riggio, Ira Chaleff, and Jean Lipman-Blumen, The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), xxvi, ProQuest.

3  Michael McKinney, “Good Followers Make the Best Leaders,” Leadership Now (blog), March 14, 2008, https://www.leadershipnow.com/.

4  Tish Warren, “Courage in the Ordinary,” The Well (blog), April 3, 2013, http://thewell.intervarsity.org/.

1

Of Leading and Following

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

John 12:25–26

There will be much in this book that challenges common intuitions about the proper place of leadership in human organizations in general and the Christian life in particular. But we want to be clear at the outset that our complaints about leadership are analogous to the complaints that we might make about money. Money itself is not bad—in fact, quite the opposite. It is a blessing both to ourselves and to others. It makes possible a whole host of economic activities that would be impossible in a barter economy. In so doing, money also makes for economic growth that would be impossible without it and thereby contributes greatly to prosperity and human flourishing. Unfortunately, money is also seductive, deceptive, and dangerous to our souls. It is an instrumental good, meaning that it is good for the sake of other goods, not good in and of itself. But we often pursue money as if its goodness was intrinsic—as if it was to be desired for its own sake. Money is good within bounds: in his prayer found in Proverbs, Agur asks, “give me neither poverty nor riches” (Prov. 30:8). But we often pursue money as if it was a boundless good—as if it was good in any measure and more was always better. Money has a proper place in our wallets, but it often wants to steal a place in our hearts and become an idol, occupying a place that should properly be reserved for God. Money sneaks into our affections, guides our choices, serves as the altar for our most extreme sacrifices, and ultimately tunes its voice to the key of final judgment, whispering, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Money is equal parts good and downright scary.

And leadership is like money. Leadership, too, is an instrumental good. It helps get things done. But it is not an intrinsic good—it is not to be pursued for its own sake. We should aspire to serve and love and care for others, and fulfilling those aspirations may require us to lead, but leadership often becomes its own aspiration. We find successful leadership to be satisfying, so we seek to climb the ladder. As with money, we think that if a little bit satisfies, more of it will bring even greater satisfaction. If one promotion is good, two will be better. We lose sight of the needs of others and the flourishing of the whole, which were the goods that originally drew us to leadership, and we focus instead on our own fulfillment. Power and influence become as addictive as wealth and luxury. Leadership can become an idol just as money can—filling our hearts, guiding our choices, demanding our sacrifices, and speaking in the key of final judgment.

Leadership, therefore, should be approached with caution—not because we might fail in our leadership tasks but because leadership can distort our souls, disorder our affections, and draw us to the praise of men rather than the praise of God. Successful leadership can only be sustained by a well-formed soul. In weak souls, it easily becomes a predatory virus that devours its host. One might think that if leadership is so dangerous that we should avoid it altogether but, as we have already seen, it is a needed good. It can be shunned no more than material goods can. And ironically, it is often in accepting leadership tasks that our soul becomes better formed. Virtues demanded in leadership roles are often hard to cultivate in other ways, and becoming fully formed in Christ often demands that we fill leadership roles in one way or another.

Thus, what is needed is a nuanced view of leadership that extolls its benefits even as it warns about its perils. This chapter will take a few steps toward this goal by first identifying some of the common statements about leadership and its importance that we agree with. Then we will turn our attention to some equally common statements about leadership that we believe are either misleading or simply mistaken. The hope is that we can refine our thinking about leadership and generate what communication scholars call “cognitive complexity.” We are pushing back against the common perception of the transcendent importance of leadership. Leadership is neither everything nor the only thing; it is just a thing. It has its place, but it is not the highest place and certainly not the only place. In fact, keeping leadership in its place helps keep it healthy. The greatest aid in doing this is to properly value leadership’s most intimate companion: followership. Not unlike money and generosity, leadership and followership are born from the same womb and beg to be viewed as beloved siblings. Yet, unfortunately for both followership and generosity, our culture gives them the status of a neglected stepchild relative to their favored siblings—leadership and money. But that is to leap ahead; let’s begin by looking more closely at leadership and assessing what we tend to get right about it and what we tend to get wrong.

Helpful Statements about Leadership

There are several statements about leadership that we fundamentally agree with. Some of them are overstatements and we may feel obliged to moderate them but, nonetheless, they identify real goods of leadership that deserve to be fully appreciated. Here’s a short list:

Leadership is essential to the flourishing of organizations, communities, societies, churches, governments, and businesses. Every sphere of human endeavor needs good leadership. There is much truth in the famous saying from Alexander the Great, “An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep.”1 Leadership is essential to organizational effectiveness, and there is really no amount of followership than can make up for its absence. In a similar vein, John Maxwell explains the reason for the rising importance of leadership:

Why has leadership become so important? Because people are recognizing that becoming a better leader changes lives. Everything rises and falls on leadership. The world becomes a better place when people become better leaders. Developing yourself to become the leader you have the potential to be will change everything for you.2

This quote needs a bit of nuance—we are not convinced that everything rises and falls with leadership or that becoming a leader will change everything for you—but it does capture enough truth about the importance of leadership that the hyperbole can be overlooked for the moment.

Anyone can become a leader, or, at the very least, there is not a single identifiable type of person who can become a leader. The best leaders are often not the people we would expect. Jim Collins, bestselling author of the book Good to Great, illustrates this principle well as he tells the story of what he calls a Level 5 leader:

In 1971, a seemingly ordinary man named Darwin E. Smith was named chief executive of Kimberly-Clark, a stodgy old paper company whose stock had fallen 36% behind the general market during the previous 20 years. Smith, the company’s mild-mannered in-house lawyer, wasn’t so sure the board had made the right choice—a feeling that was reinforced when a Kimberly-Clark director pulled him aside and reminded him that he lacked some of the qualifications for the position.3

But however mild-mannered his appearance and however weak his qualifications, Smith became a transformative CEO who served for two decades and helped make Kimberly-Clark a shocking economic success story. Collins masterfully unpacks Smith’s combination of a crystal clear commitment to corporate mission and an iron will to carry that mission no matter the sacrifice. It is a great story, but for present purposes all we really need to note is that the best leaders are sometimes the least likely ones. We don’t know ahead of time who will be a great leader, so we are far better off assuming that anyone can lead successfully.

Leaders need training and equipping—natural skills are not enough. This fact, combined with the previous observation about the importance of leadership, is sufficient to account for the abundance of leadership training programs. As we will argue, these programs are not without a downside, but nonetheless, leadership is essential to all we do, and therefore doing it better just makes sense. We are certainly not opposed to training and equipping leaders to be more effective.

Leadership is a gift and calling from God. God appoints leaders because good leadership is necessary for accomplishing divine purposes and because it blesses those who are led. Part of why we would never encourage Christians to be anti-leadership is that the Bible is not anti-leadership. When God wants to get something done, he calls and appoints a leader to the task. Consider examples like Noah saving a righteous remnant from the flood and Abraham being called out of comfort in Ur of the Chaldees to raise up a people of God’s very own. When God saw his people suffering under oppression in the land of Egypt, he called forth Moses to be their liberator. Years later, God sent Samuel to find David and anoint him while he was still tending sheep because he wanted to break the cycles of oppression Israel suffered from its neighboring tribes. The examples are endless. It seems that when a major task is to be accomplished in salvation history, God appoints a human leader to help accomplish the task.

Leadership should be respected, supported, and encouraged. Leadership is often a thankless task, so our first calling when it comes to leadership is to be supportive and to help it succeed (Heb. 13:7, 17). Much of the New Testament is written as an encouragement to leaders. It has been recorded for the benefit of all, but it was most commonly written with leadership in mind—guiding leaders and exhorting them to fulfill their calling.

Harmful Statements about Leadership

Having noted important truths about leadership, let’s turn our attention to some statements about leadership that are endorsed by our culture but may not be true. In fact, these statements may even be harmful to individuals and organizations and the missions they pursue.

Everyone is a leader.