“Who Do You Want to Follow?” by John MacArthur
John MacArthur,
A glance around the evangelical landscape today offers a wide variety of leadership models and styles: entrepreneurs, kings, rock stars, motivational speakers, armchair psychologists, and modern-day monks. You would have to look much harder to find a simple servant.
Christ’s views on leadership are conspicuously out of step with the conventional wisdom of our age: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25–28).
According to Jesus, then, the truest kind of leadership demands service, sacrifice, and selflessness. A proud and self-promoting person is not a good leader by Christ’s standard, regardless of how much clout he or she might wield. Leaders who look to Christ as their Leader and their supreme model of leadership will have servants’ hearts. They will exemplify sacrifice.
I realize those are not characteristics most people associate with leadership, but they are essential qualities of a biblical approach to leadership, which is the only kind I’m interested in.
Notice, by the way, that Jesus was expressly teaching Christians to approach leadership in a different way and from a radically different point of view than the leaders of this world. It’s folly for Christians to assume (as these days many do) that the best way for Christians to learn leadership is from worldly examples. . . .[Continue reading at Grace to You]
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John MacArthur is the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, president of The Master’s College and The Master’s Seminary, and featured teacher with the Grace to You media ministry. Grace to You radio, video, audio, print, and website resources reach millions worldwide each day.
