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The Leadership Dynamic
Harry L. Reeder with Rod Gragg
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from The Leadership Dynamic: A Biblical Model for Raising Effective Leaders by Harry L. Reeder III with Rod Gragg (Crossway).
God’s Model for Leadership
“These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.” – Acts 17:6
Why do we do it? Why do Christians want to learn leadership from the world’s models when we know that “worldly wisdom” inevitably conflicts with the Word of God and brings chaos and despair? Genuine, effective leadership must be learned from God’s Word, developed through disciple making, nurtured in God’s church, and then transported into the world. When this happens, we can anticipate a consistent reproduction of multiplication leaders who have been transformed by biblical leadership.
It’s God’s chain reaction. A transformed leader produces more transformed leaders—leaders who have been mentored within the church, then sent out to impact the world. By God’s grace they will become change agents, and the process will continually repeat itself just as God intended. By faithfully applying the model of leadership revealed in the Word of God, the church can again turn the world upside down. At the moment, however, we face a cultural meltdown.
The American Models
The American church is standing at the brink of a self-inflicted death spiral accelerated by worldly leadership. God’s people are the “salt” and “light” of surrounding culture, so when the church begins its free fall, all of American culture will soon follow. What’s the poisonous elixir that the contemporary American church seems so determined to consume? The answer: the leadership model now practiced and promoted in the boardrooms of American big business. What? Is traditional American capitalism wrong?
Unbiblical? Dangerous? The answer is no—traditional capitalism is not the problem. The leadership model that is infecting the church today—with disastrous results—is a product of contemporary capitalism, which is a greed-based, wealth-consuming mutation that has replaced the historically Christian-influenced system of capitalism that created the wealth upon which our nation thrived and blessed the world. Today’s self-promoting, infected corporate leadership is a deadly potion that countless churches are drinking as they thoughtlessly imbibe the contemporary corporate leadership models of the day.
Christian influenced capitalism was put to work immediately on American soil, and helped to shape our nation in a powerfully positive manner. The fresh influence of the Protestant Reformation spilled into America’s English colonies, forging American law
Most Recent User Comments
rofaith
12/16/2008 10:42 PM
Good article about biblical leadership. Although business leaders have produced some good, also some bad in the time span he speaks of... what of the Union movements, child labor laws that were required due to unChristlike management styles. In addition, where is the evidence that the church has adopted this worldly leadership model ? Granted some churches have bookstores etc. Pastors sell books and helps that I think are good and granted it is somewhat a self promoting concept... however, necessary since they cannot support their families on church salary....nevertheless, the Body of Christ is edified... where's the evidence that the church is spiraling down due to a worldly leadership model..... again great article, just needs evidence so that it isn't a empty theological pronouncement but rather a real-world view of what is happening in the Body of Christ wrt this very important topic.
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