Should You Become a Christian Leader?

No, you absolutely should not. It will wreck you. People will destroy you. The Lord God will not take it easy on you.

But it will also be one of the most rewarding and fulfilling and refining things you've ever done.

First I'm going to give you a warning and tell you all the reasons you should not ever take on a leadership role in any sort of Christian ministry. And then I'm going to give you the only reason you should get into Christian leadership. And finally, I'll tell you the most important thing you'll need to be successful in Christian leadership.

 

You Will Make Mistakes in What You Say

James 3:1 says, “not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly.” James is giving us a warning not to become teachers. He says that if we do, we’ll be judged more strictly. It's not clear who he's saying will judge us, but I'm guessing he means we'll be judged strictly by both God and by other people.

Why will you be judged more strictly? To start, the rest of James 3 talks about taming the tongue. As a Christian leader, you will sometimes say the wrong thing. You will be teaching or mentoring or just sharing in a group, and unintentionally, you will be mistaken on some theological point or in your interpretation of Scripture, and you will confidently say the wrong thing and skew people's understanding of God. And you’ll be judged for it.

You will be counseling or mentoring someone, and though you're wanting to tell them what they need to hear, you will sometimes say the wrong thing and hurt or offend that other person. You will cause harm in some way rather than help. And you’ll be judged for it.

Sometimes, you'll be joking or making casual comments, and you'll say something that is in some way inappropriate. And people will call you out on it and judge you more strictly, because you're a leader, and you're supposed to set the example for what Christians say.

 

People Won’t Listen to You

Another reason you should never be a spiritual leader is because as a Christian leader, you have to know things about others in order to keep them accountable, or to discern who else is fit to join you as a leader, or to handle issues and conflicts within the members of your ministry. 

A young man named Matt once asked me if he should accept the invitation to join his church board. I told him, “If you want to keep enjoying going to church, no, don't join the board, because if you do, you'll have to know and make decisions on all the ugly that comes with dealing with people in a church.” He decided not to join the board, but he and wife were the leaders of their adult Sunday School class, and they had to deal with the aftermath of the husband from one couple in the class having sex with the wife from another couple in the class.

When you're in leadership, you will eventually have to deal with things you really don't want to have to deal with.

Part of having to deal with people is having to correct them when they sin or are in some sort of error, and it usually doesn't end well. When I was pastoring one church, I found out that one of our worship leaders, while still married to her separated husband, was sleeping with her ex-boyfriend rather than trying to work things out with her husband. I told this woman we couldn't have her up on stage leading worship until she discontinued the affair. I never told her she had to leave the church. But guess what? She got upset that I had corrected her, and she left the church. 

You have to correct people and discipline people, because you have to maintain your ministry's integrity and commitment to Scripture, but know that when you do correct someone, they will most likely leave rather than submit to your discipline.

 

You Will Make Wrong Decisions

As a leader, you have to make, or help make, decisions for the ministry. When you make those decisions, you have to make sure you're on your spiritual game, or else you'll make the wrong decision and negatively affect other people. 

Can you always be on your spiritual game? Of course not. Just like with speaking, you will make mistakes in how you approach a decision. 

I once decided to involve our church with another ministry that was holding after-school Bible Clubs in elementary schools. It soon became clear that I had made the wrong decision in partnering with this other ministry, and we needed to pull out. But by that time, one of the ladies in my church had already invested emotionally in the students, and was hurt when we had to break ties, not to mention the disappointment of the kids when we didn't show up the next week.

The Lord told me soon afterward that I had made the wrong decision to get involved with this other ministry because I hadn't prayed about it ahead of time. I wasn’t on my spiritual game, and at the time I made that decision, I had no idea I wasn't on my game.

So, you will make decisions, and some of them will be wrong, and those wrong decisions will have consequences not only for you but also for the people in your ministry who count on you to make the right decisions. 

 

You Will Be Attacked

As a leader, you will be constantly on the defensive. You will be a target to outsiders who are hostile to the faith, and a scapegoat to insiders. It will seem like everyone is looking at you sideways and waiting for you to mess up. In Matthew 5:11, Jesus says, “people will mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you.” This applies to all followers of Jesus, but especially those who are out front as the leaders.

Paul often felt like he needed to defend himself from other Christians misunderstanding him. Here’s one example from 2 Corinthians 1:13-14 - “Our letters have been straightforward, and there is nothing written between the lines and nothing you can’t understand. I hope someday you will fully understand us, even if you don’t understand us now. Then on the day when the Lord Jesus returns, you will be proud of us in the same way we are proud of you.”

People in the Corinthian church were misunderstanding Paul, accusing him of meaning things he never wrote. 

 

You Will Be Disappointed

Even when you're doing the right things, ministry is full of disappointment.

You'll be working with someone and think they're growing closer to Jesus, and then they'll relapse, or go back to some sin, or just lose interest and drift away. And you'll be left feeling disappointed.

Or you'll be following the Lord’s leading and thinking that some part of your ministry is really going to blossom and take off and people are going to join you in the work you're doing for the Lord, and then it doesn't go the way you thought, and you're left feeling disappointed. 

 

You Won’t Have Friends

Leading involves you having some level of authority over other people. You decide how the mentoring session is going to go, or what the class is going to study, or the focus of the ministry. You set and enforce the rules of the relationship or the group.

When you're in authority over someone, it's difficult to be real, equal friends with them. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's difficult. The people inside your ministry are people who can either discipline you or whom you have to discipline. Can you be friends with someone in that type of relationship?

Many ministry leaders decide it's better - maybe just easier? - to find friends who are their peers outside of their ministry. And many ministry leaders find it difficult to have any friends at all because their ministry, and the people they've decided can't be their actual friends, take all their time. That's not the fault of the people in the ministry; I'm simply pointing out a difficulty that Christian leaders have.

 

You Have to Both Submit and Rebel

Speaking of authority relationships, as a Christian leader, you should be under the authority of someone else. It scares me when Christian leaders are completely autonomous and don't have to answer to anyone. 

As a leader, you might have official bosses: a senior ministry leader you serve under, a church or organizational board, a denominational structure, etc. to provide checks and balances and oversight for your decision-making and conduct.

But besides your official bosses, everyone else is also your boss - because you're supposed to be serving everyone - and anyone can at any time give you constructive criticism, or negatively complain about something. 

But your prime authority is God, and you have to be the leader and  sometimes disagree with the authorities in your life and sometimes shrug off the criticism from others and stay on the path God is directing you on.

I'll give you an example from one of the first churches I served. I was the children and youth pastor, serving under the authority of a senior pastor and a church board. Through working with the kids in the church, I found out that one of the moms serving on the board was having her boyfriend stay over at her house. I informed the pastor and suggested that this board member no longer be allowed to serve in leadership. 

After conversations with the board member and the board member's parents, who were also members of the church, the pastor and board decided that I needed to apologize for bringing up the issue, or else I would be let go. What should I do? The official authorities of the church were ordering me to do one thing… but I felt God telling me to do something different. 

So, you need to come under the authority of someone in ministry, but you also have the responsibility of discerning when not to obey that authority. 

 

Why Take On a Leadership Role?

With all those reasons not to get into a Christian leadership role, why would anyone ever decide to do it?

In 1 Corinthians 9:16, Paul wrote, “preaching the Good News is not something I can boast about. I am compelled by God to do it. How terrible for me if I didn’t preach the Good News!”

In Jeremiah 20:9, the prophet says, 

“if I say I’ll never mention the Lord

    or speak in His name,

His word burns in my heart like a fire.

    It’s like a fire in my bones!

I am worn out trying to hold it in!

    I can’t do it!”

If you can be happy just being a normal Christian with no leadership responsibilities, do that. But if the call of God won't leave you alone, you have to serve in leadership. 

The only reason to become a Christian leader is that you can't do otherwise. You were made and gifted and chosen to lead. You’re compelled.

 

How to Succeed in Ministry

So, if you have to do it, how can you succeed? 

The key is staying humble. You have to understand deep inside yourself that even though God gifted you and chose you to lead, you are not perfect at leading. 

You have to acknowledge that you are going to make mistakes in what you teach, in what you say to people, and in the decisions you make, and you have to be humble enough to admit and apologize for those things when they do happen. 

You have to be humble enough to submit to authority and to be criticized and to be questioned. Even when you are right on spiritually, you need people to question you and check you, because sometimes, you won’t be right on, and it's worth it to answer the questions when you are right on so that you can be checked when you're not.

You have to be humble enough to communicate more than you think is necessary to make sure people understand you. You can't assume that things can go unsaid or that people will know what you're thinking and trust your motivation. You have to make it easy for people to hear your thoughts and see your heart.

You have to be humble enough to think of others above yourself. You can't think about what you need. You have to think about what others need from you: how can you best serve them? What do they need you to be in their life? 

If you're humble enough to think of others above yourself, God will supply your needs - either indirectly through other people caring for you or directly by strengthening you through His Holy Spirit. 

Finally, you have to be humble enough to hold on to people and things and ideas loosely. The Lord is in charge of your ministry, not you, and at any point, He can decide that someone in your ministry needs to go somewhere else, or you need to serve somewhere else, or the direction of the ministry needs to change, or the lesson you had planned for the day needs to be put on hold, or whatever else it might be. 

The Spirit blows wherever it wishes, and as Solomon taught, you have to be humble enough to understand that it's useless trying to hold onto the blowing wind.

Be a leader if God says you must. But be humble, so that you will not fail more than you need to.