We can have the best army in the world, but it can still be defeated without good leadership. Likewise, even with competent leadership, it can still be defeated without a well-trained and disciplined army. We need both. However, we will first focus on the leadership because any great organization or force will only perform according to its potential if it is led well. This is why leadership should always be the highest priority when we begin an endeavor, and it was the highest priority with the Lord when He began to build His army on the earth, the church.

Leadership is not just at the top, but throughout the ranks. We have the greatest leader there could ever be, because the Lord Jesus is Himself “the Captain of the hosts.” We could never have a better top leader, but there must also be quality leadership at every level for any army to be a truly effective force. This is what we are focusing on here. How can the leadership of the rest of the church be improved?

First, we need to focus on this as a real issue that must be addressed. Throughout church history, we can see the effective work of the church to being the light of the world and salt of the earth, but the church was dependent on the quality of its leaders at that time. When there were great leaders, the church would arise and do great things. When there was no dynamic leadership, the church would languish. It was the same in the Old Testament, which is why it was considered to be a curse on a nation to have poor or immature leaders. 

Two of the best examples of this principle are with the first two Crusades. The first was led by Peter the Hermit, who mobilized many people across Europe to liberate Jerusalem from “the infidels.” It was not a true army as much as a mob. They had little or no military training, and in route to the Holy Land, they plundered and pillaged Christian cities and property to the point where Christians dreaded them as much as they did the Muslims. When they finally engaged the Muslim army, it was an immediate and devastating rout to the point where the entire Christian “army” was virtually wiped out except Peter the Hermit and a handful who fled the field.

After this great and embarrassing tragedy for Christendom, Richard the Lionhearted, raised an army of knights and militia that was a true army, and they marched to victory, taking Jerusalem. Even though the above “victory” may have been a spiritual tragedy in some ways, it was still a military victory.

Both Peter the Hermit’s “army” and that of Richard the Lionhearted are reflective of how the church has “marched” spiritually throughout history. More often it has been like a mob than an army, and more often it has been defeated because of this lack of discipline, training, and leadership. This has been on almost every level—from local battles against darkness, to national or even world conflicts. However, there have been times when leaders have arisen with great vision, focus, and wisdom in preparing those they led, and remarkable spiritual victories and advances have been the result.

Another tragedy has been something akin to what has taken place recently in Iraq. We had a great strategy for winning the war, but almost no thinking about occupying after the war, resulting in the casualties after the war being much greater than during the actual war. Even though things may be going much better in Iraq than is projected by our media, there was little planning about the occupation after the conquest, and we paid a high price for it. The church has very often done the same thing, taking land it has no strategy for holding, or sometimes, even had no ability to hold. This allows the enemy to come back in like a flood, and the situation ends up seven times worse.

Of course, even with our folly, we know this is not a fair fight anyway. The Lord could snap His finger, and all of His enemies would instantly perish. However, He has allowed the enemy to continue to fight us for our sakes. He is building the most noble family to rule with Him in the age to come. This is all “training for reigning.” Nevertheless, it is serious business, and we need to take it with the utmost seriousness. The Lord will not go out with our armies unless He leads them, and He will lead a disciplined, well-trained, and well-led force that can first win the battles and then occupy the territory gained.

Leadership and management abilities are gifts, but many believe that these are something you are born with. That is not the case. As a ministry, we have had a continual stream of people who promoted themselves as leaders or managers who felt “called to this” but turned out to be remarkably incompetent. Many of them could have been leaders or managers if they had devoted themselves to serious training and preparation, but they assumed it was just “a gift” or “a calling” that did not require much effort on their parts. They were tragically mistaken. II Peter 1:10 states the need very well:
 

Most of the incompetent leaders and managers we have had to release or demote gained their position in our organization because the department managers hired them because they had such a heart for what they were brought on to do. I appreciate this, and we do look at the heart first, but that is not all that we should look at. We must also consider if they had enough of a heart for what they wanted to do to get the knowledge and training in leadership and management so that they could lead or manage well what they had a heart for. Heart is first, but it is by no means all.

Again, in the Lord, heart is first. We recently evaluated the leadership of our ministry and found out that there was not a single leader on our team who had any official qualifications, such as a degree in the area that they were leading. I was not alarmed by this because it is how the Lord chose His leaders, the very ones who would lay a foundation for the church. Our basic qualification for a position is to have a heart for it, because it is out of the “innermost being,” or the heart, that the living waters flow (see John 7:38). However, Jesus did not leave His disciples untrained or unprepared, but gave them a different kind of training than the world would have. We have done the same, and the fruit has been remarkably good.

As we have matured as a ministry, we do begin looking for people’s passion and hearts for what they want to do, but we have also learned to look long and hard at their preparation for it. We look at their resumes, their work history, and their education, and we look at it harder if they are seeking a management or leadership position.

We then take people on for a trial basis to evaluate their actual abilities before we add them to the team. This is because anyone can have a lot of experience in an area and still not be competent at it, at least not at the level he thinks he is. These are usually not insincere people, but there is a lot of delusion in the body of Christ at this time because of skewed beliefs about what faith is. We have had to deal with quite a number of Christians who sincerely “believed” they could do things they really could not do. That is not faith—it is deception. 

Some of the greatest leaders have been those who seemed to have limited abilities until they resolved to develop them. There are some exceptions, but this is the general rule. The most effective leadership skills can be learned and practiced by just about anyone who is willing to devote himself to it. However, nothing of this magnitude, the power that leadership can have, comes cheaply, and it shouldn’t. To become truly effective leaders who can accomplish anything, we must have the ability to evaluate and make distinctions. This should begin with ourselves and our own present abilities.

This is not said to dissuade Christians from seeking positions of leadership, but to encourage all to become true leaders. All Christians are called to be leaders, which is what it means to be the light in this world. However, truth is what we are fighting for, and truth must be on all levels. Truth is not just about biblical doctrine, but it is also about stating reality accurately. For this reason we will take a bit of time over the next couple of weeks to review some basic principles that can help those who have a heart for something to actually be able to do those things.