Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

by Paul David Tripp

we have seen them act and speak too soon, only to then retract what they have said and done and then suggest another view and another course of action that they soon also modify. We’ve seen leaders in these churches publicly disagree with one another. We have seen loyalty, power, and division control decisions rather than biblical wisdom. How many failed pastors will there be, how many more broken and hurting churches, before we humbly ask questions about how we are leading the church that the Savior has entrusted into our care?

Humility means that each leader’s relationship to other leaders is characterized by an acknowledgment that he deserves none of the recognition, power, or influence that his position affords him. It

We all sin, but we don’t all sin the same. For reasons of history, experience, gift, biology, and a host of other things, we aren’t equally tempted by the same things.

True biblical love doesn’t just accept you, bless you with patience, and greet your failures with forgiveness. Along with all these things, it works to do everything it can to protect you from the eternal weaknesses of heart that make you susceptible to temptation.

One of the most beautiful, hopeful, and encouraging gospel themes that courses its way through Scripture is the theme of fresh starts and new beginnings. Fresh starts and new beginnings are a hallmark of the rescuing, forgiving, restoring, and transforming power of God’s grace. For

Grace means we are not held to our worst moment or cursed by our worst decision. Grace means out of the ashes of sin,

leaders can rise because the Savior has resurrection power.

Achievement becomes dangerous when it dominates the leadership community.

Hear the cautions for us in the spiritual history of Israel, as they tasted the success and affluence of the promised land: It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought; but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me. (Hos. 13:5–6)

In your ministry community, has the quest for institutional achievement become dominant? Don’t answer too quickly.

Achievement becomes dangerous when it controls our defi...

True failure is always a character issue. It is rooted in laziness, pride, lack of discipline, self-excusing, failure to plan well, lack of joy in labor, and failure to persevere during hardship. Failure is not first a matter of results; failure is always first a matter of the heart. It’s failure when I have not invested my God-given time, energy, and gifts in the work God has called me to do. Ministry laziness and unfaithfulness are failure.

In ministry, success and failure are not a matter of results but are defined by faithfulness. Faithfulness is what God asks of us; the rest is entirely up to his sovereignty and the power of his grace. How does your leadership community define failure, and how does that shape the way a leader is viewed whose work has not produced the desired results?

Achievement becomes dangerous when it silences honest leader communication.

We all fail somehow, someway every day. Often failure is the workroom God uses in our lives to reform us to be what we need to be in order to be more successful tools in his hands. And, by the way, we are commanded in Scripture to confess our faults to one another. I will say more about this in the next chapter.

Hiding, denial, and fear will keep a ministry community from spiritual

health, and the lack of spiritual health will prohibit the ministry longevity that is a necessary ingredient ...

A disciple has no such separation in his thinking. For him, being part of the body of Christ is an identity that doesn’t just define a set of gatherings he attends but redefines everything in his life. Everything about him—his relationships, his work, his time, his money—is being transformed because he is part of the transformational community of disciples called “the church.” This work is much, much harder and requires much more patience and grace than achieving facility and program goals, and the gospel tells us why. We have the power to build church stuff, but we have no power whatsoever to build people. When it comes to people building, we are completely dependent on transforming grace. The Savior is the people-building achiever who uses us as his tools but works in his own way and on his own time.

Achievement becomes dangerous when it tempts us to see people as obstacles.

It’s important as leaders not to lose sight of the fact that we have been called to people who are in need of fundamental heart and life change, while we confess that we, like them, are often in the way of what God is doing rather than being part of it. The church will never be a community of spiritually mature people if leaders are so busy achieving that they fail to treat immature people with patience and grace.

Church leadership is a people-building

ministry; to function any other way is both unbiblic...

Achievement becomes dangerous when it causes leaders to take credit for what they never could have produced on their own.

There are two things that need to be observed here. First, God doesn’t call us to ministry leadership because we are able, but because he is. Second, as leaders we should not fear weakness, because God’s grace is sufficient. It’s our delusions of strength that we should fear because they will keep us from seeking and celebrating that very same grace.

One of the sure signs of a spiritually healthy leadership community is the degree to which heartfelt, humble, honest confession is not only possible but a regular ingredient of the life and work of that community. Do the members of your community fear being honest about their sin, weaknesses, and failures, and, if so, what changes do you need to make?

But when the gospel is nurtured in the hearts of leaders, they lead with a robust rest in God’s sovereignty; his wisdom; his convicting, convincing, and transforming grace; his love for his own church; his faithfulness to his promises; his willingness to intervene; and his timing, which is always right. How has impatience interfered with the ministry work God has called your leadership community to do?

There are too many angry leaders in the church of Jesus Christ. There is too much gossip in our leadership ranks. Too many of us are quicker to judge than we are to forgive. Along the way in ministry, too many of us have lost our tender hearts. Too many of us are quick to separate from people who have failed us in some way. Too many of us find it difficult to give room for God to grow a young, immature leader. Too many of us are quick to forgive in ourselves what we struggle

to forgive in others. Forgiveness serves, anger dominates and controls; it’s not hard to discern which of these is the way of the gospel. Our leadership communities really do need an outpouring of God’s forgiving, rescuing, transforming, and delivering grace.

If, as a leader, you deny the possibility of personal spiritual blindness and trust the accuracy of your self-view, you are not humbly open and approachable to fellow leaders whom God has placed near you to help you see what you won’t see on your own.

If personal spiritual insight is the fruit of God’s grace, then a gospel-shaped leadership community functions as an instrument of seeing in the hearts of the members of that community.

You are not just a package of strengths, gifts, and experiences; you are also a collection of weaknesses and susceptibilities. It is here that the gospel is such a sweet encouragement. We do not have to fear our limits because God doesn’t send us out on our own; where he sends us, he goes too. We do not have to curse our weaknesses because our weaknesses are a workroom for his grace. We do not have to hide or deny our places of immaturity because God is able. Our limits and weaknesses are not in the way of what God can do through us, but our denial of limits and our delusions of independent strength are.

Four Limits 1. You Have Limited Gifts

No leader, because he has powerful gifts, should view himself as the smartest person in the room. Smartness is a subset of giftedness. Every leader needs to rely on the contributions of other leaders who are smart in ways that he isn’t. Ministry must always be done in humble, respectful, and submissive community because the gifts God has given us come to us with built-in limits. By God’s grace I am an influential leader, but I get up every day and do the work that has been assigned to me by people who work with me and are smart in ways that I am not because they bring gifts to our work that I do not have. I would be silly and proud to dominate every discussion and make every decision and assign every task.

I am afraid that one of the reasons the ministry leadership community is broken is that we have idolized domineering leaders who fail to recognize the limits of their gifts, who disrespect the God-given gifts of fellow leaders, and who have been allowed to think that they are smart, gifted, and strong in ways that they are not. So they try

to do what they were not designed by God to do, they try to manage what they were not designed to manage, and they try individually to do what will only ever be properly done in respectful community

with other equally gifted leaders. Pride in one’s own giftedness coupled with devaluing the gifts of others is a recipe for leadership disaster. Independent, domineering leadership is functional denial of what the Bible teaches about both the nature of t...

1 Corinthians 9:24–27 are interesting, in that as part of his gospel calling he keeps his body under control. You may be thinking, Control to what, for what? The answer is, control to the Christ of the gospel for the sake of the spread of the gospel. What Paul is saying is that until the Lord returns, we will have colliding passions in our hearts. Perhaps it is my passion for food colliding with my passion to invest my energies in gospel ministry. Perhaps my passion to chill out collides with the fitness I need to get up and do spiritual battle every day.