5 Things | Sep 3, 2010 | 0 Comments

Five things I have learnt about Christian Leadership

1. The first thing I have learnt about leadership is that leadership of a Christian community is by prayer and preaching of God’s word. God loves and tenderly cares for his people. He nurtures us by feeding us with his word. And so those who serve in leadership do so fundamentally by calling on the Lord in prayer and teaching the word of God.

2. Second, a leader is only ever a sub- leader, under Jesus. All people and every thing that we lead belong to him, and not to us. That means that you’ll never be a better leader than you were a follower. It also means that you can never lord it over people, since they belong to the Lord.

3. Third, true leadership is done from fullness – the fullness of the Lord – and not from emptiness in order to be filled. Leadership often brings rewards – being at the center of a community, being seen and appreciated etc. If a leader doesn’t have a soul that is filled with the grace and love of God, then those things will be used as substitutes. That is a recipe for disaster!

4. The best gift a leader can bring to a community is a non-anxious presence. A non-anxious presence is neither defensive, withdrawn, aggressive, domineering or demanding. It is being able to acknowledge one’s own values, stand for them, without demanding that others be the same as you. A non-anxious leader doesn’t require that everyone is the same in order to get on with people.

5. At the practical level, what a leader does is indicate a pathway from here to there. That is, the is a present reality, which needs to be understood accurately. And there is a vision, a picture of a preferred future that inspires commitment and action. And the practical task of the leader is to articulate the facts about the present, the vision of the future, and the pathway between the one and the other.

Andrew Katay is the senior minister of Christ Church Inner West Anglican Community (CCIW). He is currently doing a Doctor of Ministry program through Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, with a concentration in Leadership.