Modern business and sports gurus talk about being a marked leader, having the mindset of a forward thinker, being a big picture individual, a visionary, a leader of leaders, and the list goes on. I’ve attended my share of leadership summits, seminars and conferences. These can be beneficial, but do we sometimes miss the heart of spiritual leadership amid the spiritually-coated leadership principles mostly borrowed from the business world? Perhaps we should recall that Jesus contrasted Gentile leadership with spiritual leadership (Matthew 20:25-28). Early on in my “career” of being a shepherd of God’s people, someone asked me this oft-quoted question from sages of years gone by (forgive me if my memory fails to quote it accurately): “Does you heart break with the things that break God’s heart?”
The church does not need great leaders. The church needs godly leaders, whose hearts are knit together with God’s heart! Forgive me for dicing the pickles here, but this is a significant distinction. A great leader without a godly heart will never accomplish great things for God—because those great things that he devises will not be the things God desires. Let me explain by looking at an obscure Old Testament passage:
“Then the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherub on which it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed in linen at whose loins was the writing case. The Lord said to him, ‘Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst.’ ” (Ezekiel 9:3–4) “ … Then the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple …” (10:18).
By any reasonable assessment Israel had failed, and God removed his Shekinah glory, the ultimate symbol of His presence, from the temple. Did anyone notice, did anyone care? Yes, there were some whose hearts were broken, who “sigh[ed] and groan[ed]” over the unholiness among God’s people. The clear implication is that the vast majority carried on without feeling any weight of grief or burden at all, because they looked to external things for their glory. The Lord noticed and singularly marked out those few who really understood God’s glory and the tragedy of His presence departing from the temple.
I wonder if that is what weighed the apostle Paul down when he wrote: “Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches” (2 Cor 11:28)? The word “pressure” can be translated, “anxiety, worry, care.” Paul was driven by his concern for God’s people, not for projects or the quantity of bodies gathered, but for the quality of souls in the living Church of God for whom Christ shed his blood. He was not focused on the size or the expansion of his ministries by which he might measure his personal successes. Clearly Paul was burdened over God’s people, and the desire for the glory of God to be fully manifest in them. “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen” (Rom 11:36).
A godly heart comes out of a love for the things that our Lord loves. Such was the heart of the shepherd turned king, for God called him “a man after my heart” (Acts 13:22, see 1 Sam 13:14). That should be the heart of an elder in the church. Anything that falls short of God’s glory in the lives of his followers weighs down the heart of a godly shepherd and motivates him to care for the people of God. That’s what marks him out in God’s eyes.
What marks you out as a godly leader? What’s in your heart today.