I stumbled across this looking for leadership material. It’s from Darryl’s blog at dashhouse.com. It’s Tim Keller speaking at a conference in London England.

My dear friends, most churches make the mistake of selecting as leaders the confident, the competent, and the successful. But what you most need in a leader is someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus’ costly grace. The number one leaders in every church ought to be the people who repent the most fully without excuses, because you don’t need any now; the most easily without bitterness; the most publicly and the most joyfully. They know their standing isn’t based on their performance.

I’m especially interested in this because throughout the month of March I’m teaching a class on the spiritual life of leaders at Christ Community in Daytona Beach. I’m interested in hearing feedback not only on Keller’s comments about leadership but the previous post relating to this same issue.

At one point in his message Keller said some interesting things about repentance and the gospel in relationship to marriage as well as leadership.

All of life is repentance, and repentance increases joy. It’s not traumatic; it’s joyful and it’s healing. What this means for us is that as we look at the criticisms we are getting, especially from inside, it’s like when I do marriage counseling. A husband and wife are both saying something critical about the other. In each case, 80% of what they are saying is wrong. And yet 20% is right. Yet with the 20% that is right, the way it’s expressed may be exaggerated, and the motivation may be wrong. It may be expressed outrageously. It’s almost impossible for each side to hear the truth.

What I say to them if they are Christians is, “If you believe the gospel, you will be humble enough and assured enough that you can admit your sin and admit the 20% that’s right without excuses or rancor. Just ignore all the exaggeration and bad motivation and admit that ‘what you say about this is right and I’m going to repent of it.’ If you both do this, it’s a tremendous opportunity for growth. If you don’t do it, it’s because you don’t believe the gospel no matter what you say.”

I came across two interesting quotes that underscore the importance of this issue.

We believe many legalistic, controlling and ultimately abusive leaders may simply have lost sight of, or never experienced, the life of grace in Christ. Many, through no fault of their own have been taught legalism or formula Christianity. Others, perhaps through ministry burnout, have simply forgotten the simple, wonder-filled, joyous relationship each one of us can experience with God because of Jesus Christ. The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, By David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen, P.107

Year after year we watch as highly gifted Christian leaders shipwreck their lives, families ministries, and businesses. What they lack is an examined and healthy inner life. This is the missing piece in leadership today. Leadership From The Inside Out, Kevin Harney p. 17

It seems to me that too often we go straight to teaching leadership skills and techniques while neglecting the underlying issue of heart-deep gospel transformation for leaders. It’s like only addressing the tip of the iceberg. The result is that a lot of underlying issues untouched by the healing power of the gospel show up in our influence on others as well as in our responses to the stresses of leadership. I know that at Reformed Theological Seminary, Steve Childers teaches a class titled, Spiritual Dynamics for Leaders. It seems that classes like this should form an essential part of our leadership development strategy at the level of the local church.