Leading with Love

by Alexander Strauch

leaders and teachers set the spiritual tone for the church. They have the power to create a more loving atmosphere within the local church. If they are lovers of God and lovers of people, their followers will more likely be lovers of God and people. If, however, leaders are self-centered, critical, proud, angry, and impersonal, the people will adopt these same ugly dispositions.

“Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love”

love is “the life-breath of the church,”1 essential to its evangelistic witness and spiritual growth (Eph. 4:16).

Understanding the New Testament principles of love will significantly enhance healthy group leadership, group meetings, and congregational life as a whole. Without love, we cannot live and work in harmony.

I firmly believe that truly understanding what the Bible says about love would significantly improve the relational skills of our church leaders and teachers and greatly enhance their effectiveness in ministry.

God requires that you and I lead and teach with love and continually grow in our love for Him and for all people.

D. L. Moody could not have been more biblically correct when he said, “God’s work cannot be done without love.” That is the message of the most famous love chapter in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13.

This love gives itself in total self-sacrifice for the good of others.

I remind them that this is what they are like to others and to God when they use their gifts apart from love. They are nothing more than “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

I know of a pastor who had a phenomenal knowledge of the Bible but who hurt many people with his doctrinal scrutiny and divided his own congregation repeatedly until there was no one left but himself. He had a big head but a little heart. His theology was as clear as ice and twice as cold. Such is the path of one who has knowledge without love.

Without love, the Christian leader is on the wrong path of the Christian life.

[God] delights in little things when they spring from sincere love to himself. A cup of cold water given to a disciple in sincere love is worth more in God’s sight than all one’s goods given to feed the poor, yea, than the wealth of a kingdom given away, or a body offered up in the flames, without love.”10

Only when martyrdom is the result of love for God and others is it the “more excellent way.”

They had works, but the joy, creativity, responsiveness, and energy that love produces had disappeared. The quality of their love had changed, and this became apparent even in their works. Jesus rebukes them and calls them to “do the works you did at first.” He admonishes them to remember from where they “have fallen” (Rev. 2:5).

The object of this love is not specifically stated in the text. It does not say love for Christ or love for fellow believers. So it is best to understand Jesus to mean love in general (love for Christ, one another, and the lost).

It is an earnest love (1 Peter 1:22) that makes us willing to give up our lives for one another (1 John 3:16).

At Ephesus, the Lord was looking for his people to be sacrificially caring for one another’s needs, opening their homes to one another, living like an extended family, joyously serving one another, praying fervently for one another, crossing racial boundaries, and enjoying life together in the church and home. But their love had withered away.

This love for the lost and the needy had shriveled away to nothing at Ephesus.

“No wonder,” writes Puritan preacher Nathaniel Vincent, “that Satan, who labors to destroy churches, endeavors to kill love.”4

Loss of love is sin.

Jesus warns the local church at Ephesus and its leaders that they can work hard, fight heresy, have spiritual gifts, teach sound doctrine, and yet be deficient in love and on the verge of divine discipline.

its leaders must guard their own heartfelt love for Christ and continually monitor and encourage the church’s love.

When the leaders lose their love, it will not be very long before the people do.

There is no substitute for all other loves wane: Our love for fellow Christians, our love for the needy, our love for the lost, and our love for the truth.

The man who will present Christ to others must be occupied with Christ for himself.6

External performance had replaced true, inner, heart faith and love.

In a sin-saturated world, repentance and spiritual revitalization are never-ending tasks.

love! How much want is there of you in the Church of Christ! And how much does the Church feel for this want! It groans, it languishes, it dies daily because of your absence. Return, O love, return! Repair breaches, restore paths to dwell in, edify the old ways and places, and raise up the foundations of many generations.8

What motivates you to want to lead and teach people? Desire to help people, a sense of duty, enjoyment of leadership, money, the pleasure of teaching people, peer pressure? For Christian leaders, the primary answer must be love.

he came to see the love of God expressed in the death of Christ in a way which overwhelmed him. Everything which was happening to him in his new spiritual life was occurring because of what had first happened to Christ.4

if money could motivate the merchants of England to cross life-threatening oceans and enter the interior of China at great personal risk of loss of life, could not the love of Christ motivate missionaries to do the same for the sake of the gospel?

The great truth we must come to again and again throughout life is this: Not that we love God, but that he first loved us and demonstrated his love by sending “his only Son into the world … to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). This is what should most thrill our hearts and motivate us to serve others.

Love is to be our chief motivation for serving people. It is to be the sustaining power that enables us to endure the many difficulties of leadership.

Jesus Christ is to be the supreme object of our affections. More than anything or anyone else in the world he is to be loved, treasured, and enjoyed.

When our leadership is motivated by love for God and Christ, we are most pleasing to God and most effective with people.

Ministry for ministry’s sake does not please God; rather, it is ministry born of love for him that is pleasing and acceptable (1 Cor. 13:1-3).

There is, therefore, hardly anything better we can do for those we lead than to love the Lord Jesus Christ supremely and keep our love relationship with him fresh and growing every day!

An elder in a church told me how he had experienced numerous abuses during the many years he had served his local church. He had been physically choked, punched, had his jaw broken, been spit on, cursed at, falsely accused, and threatened with a lawsuit.

Here, then, is a key to endurance in spiritual leadership: We must serve people out of love for Christ.

Love motivated leadership will make an impact because people are hungry for love.

“To forgive without upbraiding, even by manner or look,” wrote Robert Chapman, “is a high exercise of grace—it is imitation of Christ.”

people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Compassionate care for the sick includes prayer, visits, practical helps, calls, notes, and cards.

We may want to think of ourselves as loving people, but in reality, when acts of love become time-consuming or demanding, we don’t want the burdens of love—just the benefits.

The phone is an invaluable tool that we should use effectively to encourage and check on those who are suffering. People appreciate a thoughtful phone call. They know we can’t visit every day, and sometimes a visit isn’t appropriate, but we can call. Loving leaders find themselves making lots of phone calls.

Genuine love desires to pray for people. Hypocritical love promises to pray but doesn’t.

what motivated Paul to pray was “a passion for people.”

Let us not be prayerless leaders, but let us be vigilant.

Failure to pray is serious negligence of both our privilege and our responsibility as leaders, teachers, and ministers of the gospel.

In every congregation, spiritual problems and physical needs exist for which the only solution is believing, persistent prayer.