Lead Quotes

“Here’s how gospel growth works: you cannot grieve what you do not see, you cannot confess what you haven’t grieved, and you can’t repent of what you haven’t confessed.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Humility means you love serving more than you crave leading.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“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 means knowing, as a leader, that as long as sin still lives inside you, you will need to be rescued from you. Humility means you love serving more than you crave leading. It means owning your inability rather than boasting in your abilities. It means always being committed to listen and learn. Humility means seeing fellow leaders not so much as serving your success but serving the one who called each of you. It means being more excited about your fellow leaders’ commitment to Christ than you are about their loyalty to you. It’s about fearing the power of position rather than craving it. It’s about being more motivated to serve than to be seen. Humility is always being ready to consider the concern of others for you, confess what God reveals through them, and to commit to personal change. Humility is”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“The church is in desperate need of a leadership community whose function is not just structured to achieve with efficiency but is more deeply shaped by the comforts and calls of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“I marvel, once again, that the Lord would ever use me, that he never thinks it was a mistake to call me, that he is never disgusted with me, and that he greets my struggle with boundless love, incalculable patience, and mercies that are thankfully new every morning. I know too that he hears my longing and is, by grace, molding my heart into a servant shape.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Perhaps there is no better defense against spiritual attack than humility;”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Leaders unaware of the spiritual war that is ministry begin to minister with kidnapped hearts, distorted vision, and misguided motivations.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“No leadership community should compromise its integrity to accomplish its vision.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“No leader can be left to himself. No leader should be permitted to drive away fellow leaders who have godly concerns.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“The success of his ministry is loved by his fellow leaders more than he is. The castle he has built has become more precious than his soul.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“As a leadership community they convince themselves that maybe wrong isn’t really that wrong.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“In getting to know a leader, he is watched carefully for how he does his work and relates to others. He is surrounded by the kind of community every leader needs. But as the months and years go by and the leader’s gifts bear fruit in rich and exciting ways, the leaders around him begin to close their eyes and shut their ears.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“As I noted earlier, whenever there is a public fall of a well-known leader, my first question is, “Why didn’t the surrounding leadership community see it and address it before it got to this horrible place?”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Every leadership community needs to understand that ministry can be the vehicle for pursuing a whole host of idolatries.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“It is time for leaders to confess that in many places and in many ways we haven’t represented our loving Lord well.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Restoration should not be confused with being soft on sin. Gospel restoration never minimizes sin. Gospel restoration never values efficiency over character. Gospel restoration never compromises in the face of position and power. Gospel restoration never puts the needs of the institution over the heart of the person. Gospel restoration never compromises God’s ordained qualifications for ministry leadership.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Encouragement focuses leaders on the glory of what God has already done and on his power to do even more, and in so doing, builds hope, courage, and confidence in the face of whatever difficulties, challenges, or obstacles may be in their leadership pathway. Encouragement captures the hearts of leaders with the gospel and guards their hearts from discouragement and feelings of inability.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“It needs to be said that forgiveness is not to be confused with permissiveness, where you turn your head away from wrong and let it slide. When a leader responds that way, he doesn’t do so because he loves the one who wronged him but because he loves himself and doesn’t want to go through the hassle of tense and awkward moments that might result if he lovingly speaks truth into that wrong.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Leader pride produces personality cults, while leader humility stimulates worship of God.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“As I said before, if you gain a half of a pound every month, you and the people around you will not notice, but that’s six pounds a year, thirty pounds in five years, and sixty pounds in ten years. Then you are a completely different person physically, but not just physically. Along the way you’ve had to deny the fact that you eat way more than you need, that you have to continually buy bigger-sized clothes, and that you can’t walk up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath. You have become comfortable with swindling yourself into believing that you’re okay when you’re not okay.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“So it is important for a ministry leadership community to keep asking the question, “Is what’s important to God still important to us?”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“our labors will not be in vain but also that our Lord fights for us even when we fail to fight for ourselves and for one another.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Jesus, whose heart was balanced in every way, came to live the life that sin made impossible for us to live, to die the death we deserved to die, and to rise as a conquering Savior King, so that balance would be restored in our hearts.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“What would make us want to quit is meant by him to strengthen us for the battles to come. Institutional achievement is not the Redeemer’s ultimate goal but a means to a greater, more glorious goal: the rescue and transformation of his people. So your core leadership community must be a pastoral community where leaders are carefully and intentionally pastored and where strategies to pastor the pastors are held in as high a regard as missional strategies.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“You see, difficult things in ministry are meant by God to be redemptive things. What often beats us down is meant by the Savior to be a tool to build us up.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Today there will be pastors and leaders who lose their heart and their way in the middle of the hardships of ministry, and many of them will lose their way because they are not warned, encouraged, confronted, supported, and loved by a group of leaders who function as a community of grace.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“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.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“grace is the essential ingredient in the success of anyone’s ministry,”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“Every leader leads while being in desperate personal need of the full resources of God’s grace.”
― Paul David Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

“si la principal fuerza que impulsa el liderazgo en las iglesias locales de todo el mundo fuera el evangelio de Jesucristo, muchas de las cosas tristes que hemos visto en las vidas de los líderes y sus iglesias no habrían sucedido.”
― Paul David Tripp, Sé líder: 12 principios sobre el liderazgo en la iglesia