As Executive Pastor at The Door Church (TDC), I am tasked with making sure our mission to see lives restored with the gospel for God’s glory goes forth. I love my job, as I get to see our staff, volunteers, elders and broader community acting as Christ’s ambassadors—each in their own way. As we seek to fulfill our mission at TDC, we are reliant upon the Spirit of God to move and equip us as needed. Each of us have a part to play, and God empowers and leads us.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it certainly takes villages of villages to accomplish God’s command to share his saving gospel with the world. We cannot reach the world by mobilizing
our staff, or by mobilizing a couple dozen small group leaders…we need to raise leaders throughout our church family.
Recently the Lord put a wonderful book in my hands. It is called Designed to Lead
by Eric Geiger and Kevin Peck. As I read this gospel-saturated leadership book, it seemed like the authors wrote it for us, The Door Church.
As this book really resonated with me, I am compelled to share some of the principles with you. Whether it’s at home, in your community, or your workplace, I believe these principles will help you be a better leader for God’s glory.
First of all, as I read the book it struck me that we are all leaders. In every aspect of your life, when you influence someone, you are leading them.
“God has designed His people to lead. From the first recordings of history, God has made it clear that He has designed creation to be lead by His covenant people.”
We also need to know why we’re leading. As believers, we were given the precious gift of Jesus Christ’s redemptive love and grace through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are called (Matthew 28:19) to make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to observe Christ’s teaching. This is called the Great Commission. We are also called to serve each other (1 Peter 4:10) using our God-given gifts as faithful stewards of God’s grace. No matter who you lead, pursuing the Great Commission by using your unique gifting should drive your leadership. So, if you’re a CEO driving revenue to build our economy, provide jobs to support families, and deliver a great product …do it for God’s glory. If you’re blessed to be a stay-at-home mom, use your amazing gifts to bless your family and community for God’s glory. Contexts may change, but the heart of Christian leadership does not: we lead for the glory of God.
Once you have a handle of why you should lead, it’s really important to know what leadership is. The world tells you leadership is climbing to the top of an org chart, having a powerful title and making a ton of money. The Word tells you leaders are servants who die to self to see others grow and flourish.
So whatever leadership hat you wear (again, we all lead someone), this simple model for leadership development from Designed to Lead can be used: we are all leaders, we lead to the glory of God, and leadership is dying to self to see others flourish.
As one of the pastors at TDC, I intend to lead to the best of my ability so that many would come to know Jesus. I know I will fail at times, and thus I will need the grace of the gospel I try so hard to share with others. Do you see the beautiful pattern here? We are saved by God’s grace, we share the grace we’ve been given with others, and we return to God’s grace daily for forgiveness and sanctification.
Lead on, friends.