How We Get There Matters

One of the final steps to complete my Doctor of Ministry was “the defense” for my dissertation. I had spent the better part of a year writing the project. It was over 250 pages in length. My focus was leadership within the local church.

To “defend” my project, I traveled from Reno to Boston to meet with a review committee at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Since I am a perfectionist, I was appropriately confident that the committee would have abundant accolades for my carefully-written and well-researched efforts. It had been decades since I received anything less than an A in school. So, I assumed my Doctor of Ministry project would also be graded appropriately.

Imagine my surprise when the committee shredded my project from top to bottom. Throughout the document, I had quoted leadership experts from every imaginable background. I had done my due diligence. I am a bit of a “leadership fanatic.” Before I gave away my library to move to Costa Rica, I owned more books on leadership than any other topic. My strongest spiritual gift is “leadership.” For me, this is an area of vocation and avocation.

But the review committee was not impressed. As I mentioned, I had quoted dozens of leadership experts in the project. I had footnotes upon footnotes. But the committee asked two haunting questions to summarize their dismantling of my dissertation. “Steve, is leadership within the church (or any other ministry) the same as leadership elsewhere? Isn’t there something unique about God’s vision for ministry leadership?”

Those two questions resulted in me spending an entire year re-writing my project. Why? Because the review committee was correct!

Despite all my previous research and reflection, I had missed the one indispensable ingredient to biblical leadership. I had overlooked the essential key that separates ministry leadership from every other kind of leadership.  What is that key? LOVE.

Biblical leadership is not simply about moving the ball downfield. It’s more than marshalling resources to accomplish goals. Biblical leadership is more than goal-setting and then coordinating a team to reach those goals. If I understand Jesus correctly, doing leadership his way means that HOW we achieve goals is as important (and maybe even more important) than actually achieving those goals.

Jesus put it like this: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

As a consummate goal setter, this rocks my world. This means if ECF grows to be 5,000 people, but our team does it by cajoling people or pushing people or using people instead of loving them, then we have not succeeded in God’s eyes. The metric that matters most to Jesus is not how large a ministry grows, but how well we love people. 

This week we are holding an offsite for ECF’s ministry team leaders. Our goal is to plan, pray and strategize about reaching the next level as a church. I have taken part in dozens of these kinds of retreats over the years. But this is my first at ECF. And one of the most important messages I will bring is this: How we get there matters.

Love is not an optional feature in church leadership…like leather upholstery might be in a car. Love is essential. Jesus made this very clear.

This is a game changer. This affects how we speak to one another, how we think the best about one another, how we pray for one another, how we encourage one another, how we hurt for one another, how we serve one another, how we submit to one another, how we value one another, how we correct one another, and so much more.

Love is not unique within the church. Love may also be present in business teams or sports teams and in many other types of teams. But it’s not optional in a Jesus-honoring ministry team. And I don’t want it to be optional at ECF either.

Setting ministry goals is important, no doubt. But how we get there is even more important.