If you want to be a Christian leader, you'll have no trouble finding advice. The world seems awash in books, articles, web sites, videos, and more on the subject. Practically all of this literature suggests that Christian leadership is distinct from other varieties (and on that I agree); a lot of it assumes that figuring out how it’s different is a relatively simple matter (on that I’m not as sanguine). I wonder just how simple it is to discern those principles in the first place, and especially how easily leaders can apply them in their own life. So in what follows I’m going to try to talk about what makes leadership Christian without resorting to easy answers.
What do I mean by easy answers? For one thing, I mean taking garden variety leadership insights, wrapping them in the thin layer of a story from the Bible, and calling them biblical. Folks often point to Exodus 18, the day Jethro taught his son-in-law Moses how to delegate authority, as an example of a biblical leadership principle. But other than that one chapter, when does delegated authority ever figure in the larger story of Moses and Israel’s encounter with God? The rest of the story focuses on how good a job Moses and the Israelites are doing (or not doing) in following God.
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