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David Platt Up Now

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Piper introduced David Platt with two things he loves about him most: his love for the Scriptures and passion for God’s glory among the nations.

Platt remarked how the passages he planned on speaking on are the same ones Louie Giglio went to last night — so maybe the Lord wants us to go deep into these passages.

Reading from Isaiah 6 now.

“There is no one like our God. It is folly to compare anything to our God. All of the earth is a continual explosion of the glory of God. ‘He brings the stars out one by one and calls them each one by one.’ And he is sovereign over all nations. Go to Isaiah 46. This is part of the purpose of Isaiah — to show the sovereignty and supremacy of God over the nations.”

This is a key point he is making: God’s sovereignty over nature is meant to buttress our confidence that God is sovereign over human history as well. We shouldn’t think “God is sovereign over rocks and trees and stars, but human history is out of his control.” He is sovereign over human history just as much as he is sovereign over the course of the stars and workings of nature.

The Difference Between the Natural Leader and Spiritual Leader

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From J. Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer. I can’t get it to work as a table, as it is in the book, but you should be able to see the comparisons well enough:

Natural

Self-confident

Knows men

Makes own decisions

Ambitious

Creates methods

Enjoys command

Seeks personal reward

Independent

Spiritual

Confident in God

Knows men and knows God

Seeks God’s will

Humble [and ambitious for God’s aims]

Follows God’s example

Delights in obedience to God

Loves God and others

Depends on God

Is Leadership a Biblical Category?

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Sometimes people say to me, “leadership is not a biblical category. The right terms are shepherding or stewardship or discipleship.”

Shepherding, stewardship, and discipleship are indeed critical things. And the absolute last thing I would want to say to pastors is “you aren’t shepherds, you’re leaders.” That would be horrible. Shepherding is a massive, valid, critical, and biblical category, and I think it communicates more about the nature of the pastoral role than simply the term “leader” does.

However, leadership is a biblical category. Pastoring (shepherding) is a type of leadership. And there are other types of leadership in the church and in all sectors of society everywhere that we are unable to properly describe and understand if we abandon the term “leadership.” Leadership is a good and right and proper category for these things.

In other words, if we abandon the category of “leadership,” we abandon an essential and necessary grid for understanding the task of (dare I say it) leading people. That’s what school superintendents, project managers, small group leaders, managers, CEOs, directors, vice presidents, marketing managers, executive pastors, senior pastors, and on and on, are doing.

Saying “that’s not leadership, that’s stewardship” doesn’t help a ton — stewarding what? Neither does saying “this is discipleship.” In the church and among Christians, that’s a helpful category. But is the marketing manager at Target discipling his or her employees? Maybe there is an element of that, even in the general arena of work. But if so, it’s discipleship in the context of leading a department, or carrying out whatever your role is.

We might be tempted to say that leadership is the right category for the task of leading outside the church, but it’s not a biblical category for inside the church.

But this would ignore the fact that the Bible actually speaks of leadership, and uses that term to describe the task of leading and shepherding inside the church as well. For example:

Luke 22:26: “Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.

Hebrews 13:7, 17: “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. . . . Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls.”

Acts 5:31: “God exalted him at his right hand, as leader and savior.”

One interesting thing to note, and this is one reason this matters so much: In Luke 20:26, Jesus is drawing a contrast with how the Gentiles led, and how he wants the church led. The Gentiles lorded it over people and saw exercising authority and controlling people (for the leader’s benefit!) the main thing in leadership. Jesus said: “Not so. That’s a wrong view of leadership. It will not be that way among you.”

Here’s the point: If we remove leadership as a category of thought, we are unable to make these sorts of contrasts and comparisons. If what a person in the general society is doing can be called “leadership,” but what we are doing in the church can’t be, we lose the ability to learn from comparisons and contrasts. Jesus couldn’t have made the point he did here.

And, it is to be noted, Jesus’ point was not “you aren’t leaders.” His point was: “Lead in this way, not that that way. You will lead for the benefit of those you serve, not your own benefit. You will not focus on controlling people and exercising authority, but building them up for their good.” That’s true leadership.

The problem is not the concept of “leadership.” It’s that there are lots of wrong ideas about leadership out there. The problem is not leadership, but bad leadership.

We don’t need to be afraid of the term leadership — it is a biblical category. Let’s not eat the confusing fruit of overspiritualization that seeks to eliminate real, biblical, helpful categories in favor of more spiritual-sounding, but often ambiguous, ways of speaking.

Your Job is a Good Work!

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My guest post at the Willow Creek Association leadership blog. Here’s the start:

When most of us think of good works, we tend to think of things like giving money to those in need, encouraging a friend who is discouraged, or going on a short-term mission trip.

All of those things are critical and important, and definitely are good works.

However, it’s easy to think that these types of things are the only things that God considers good works. That good works are something relatively rare and infrequent. If you go on a mission trip, you are engaging in good works. But when you go to your job each day you are doing … what, exactly?

How to Glorify God at Work

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A great post by John Piper. He gives quick thoughts on 9 areas:

  1. Dependence
  2. Integrity
  3. Skill
  4. Corporate shaping
  5. Impact
  6. Communication
  7. Love
  8. Money
  9. Thanks

One additional word on skill: If you show love by being the first to order the pizza, or drive the van, or do whatever to serve people, but aren’t good at what you do, everything will fall flat. You have to be good at what you do. Good intentions are not enough.

And this usually means, in part, reading about your industry and about the best practices (and unconventional practices!) for your role and about management and about leadership and other such things.

Which likely means reading secular resources as well as Christian. You won’t learn what it means to be a great manager, for example, simply by reading Christian books on management (unfortunately!). Same with leadership. Marketing. And so forth.

And this is acceptable and good. As John Wesley said, “To imagine none can teach you but those who are themselves saved from sin, is a very great and dangerous mistake. Give not place to it for a moment.”

Likewise, the book of Acts points out that Moses (Moses!) was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). And we could go on and talk about Daniel (Daniel 1:4, 17), Paul, Luke, Joseph, the book of Proverbs (most scholars recognize that many of the Proverbs were adapted from the wisdom literature of other civilizations), Jonathan Edwards, and on and on.

The point is: If we want to glorify God in our workplaces, we need to learn from the best thinkers in our fields, whether they are Christians or not. And, this creates a better testimony to the gospel.

Don’t be the guy who volunteers first to go get the pizza, but that everyone groans about because he thinks that’s a substitute for being an expert in his role.

Marcus Buckingham's New Book, Standout, Now Available

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Marcus Buckingham’s new book, StandOut: The Groundbreaking New Strengths Assessment from the Leader of the Strengths Revolution, is now available. I’m very much looking forward to reading it, and the new strengths assessment that has been released along with it sounds very helpful.

Michael Hyatt has an excellent review. Here’s an excerpt:

As usual, Marcus does a great job striking the balance between theory and practice. He gives you just enough of the theory to understand the statistical validity of the testing instrument. Yet he does this without making your eyes glaze over. He also does a fabulous job of providing lots of real-world illustrations and personal anecdotes.

If you enjoy self-assessments, want to further exploit your strengths, and make your greatest contribution, this book is for you. If you lead a team, it would be well-worth the investment to read the book, take the test, and then discuss the results as a group. It will provide you with insights into how you can better tap the strengths of your team and recruit roles that aren’t currently represented.

And here’s a video of Buckingham talking about the book:

Redeemer's Conference on the Gospel and Culture

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Registration is open for Redeemer’s new faith and work conference, The Gospel & Culture. The conference will be November 4-5.

Here’s the gist:

The Gospel & Culture Conference represents the culmination of more than eight years of the Center for Faith & Work’s ministry targeted at equipping, connecting, and mobilizing Christians to engage the world from a gospel-centered foundation.

Drawing on the experiences of one another as well as more than 10 speakers representing various sectors, conference participants will gain:

  • Sharpened discernment of God’s work in the world.
  • Renewed understanding of the importance of community in cultural engagement.
  • Heightened awareness of the power of the Holy Spirit in changing motivations of the heart.
  • Excitement for our daily work as it contributes to building for the great City that is to come.

And here’s the agenda:

The Conference opens Friday evening, November 4th, with participants engaging the culture of NYC through “Glimpses,” events happening throughout the city which point toward evidence of God’s glory and His sovereignty over all things.

On Saturday, November 5th, all attendees convene at St. Bart’s for a full day of interacting with practitioners from across various sectors who will showcase their work in ways that highlight God’s work in the world.

Speakers include Tim Keller, Richard Mouw, and many others.

The Alternative to Failure

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Great post by Seth Godin:

“What would you have me do instead?”

To the critic who decries a project as a worthless folly, something that didn’t work out, something that challenged the status quo and failed, the artist might ask,

“Is it better to do nothing?”

To the critic who hasn’t shipped, who hasn’t created his art, anything less than better-than-what-I -have-now appears to be a waste. To this critic, progress should only occur in leaps, in which a fully functioning, perfected new device/book/project/process/system appears and instantly and perfectly replaces the current model.

We don’t need your sharp wit or enmity, please. Our culture needs your support instead.

Each step by any (and every) one who ships moves us. It might show us what won’t work, it might advance the state of the art or it might merely encourage others to give it a try as well.

To those who feel that they have no choice but to create, thank you.