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Who are Good Leaders?
A friend of mine just asked me over lunch, “Who are some good leaders?” Having been wrestling on some writing projects involving different categories of leadership, I instantly thought about all the different ways that question could be answered. Based on what? Achievement, character, integrity, amount of influence, reputation, size of organization, personal relationships? The lens…
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Vision Hiding Personal Ambition
From Upside Down: The Paradox of Servant Leadership by Stacy Rinehart: What is called ‘vision’ can be merely a ‘spiritually correct’ synonym for personal ambition…Visionaries operating in the flesh promote messages like these: ‘If you’re not getting my vision, you’re not listening to God, or you are spiritually immature and inferior.’ ‘This is the only true spiritual…
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Biblical Insights of Leadership, part 2
Leadership is a fundamental Biblical activity. There are at least three insights from Scripture that offer a glimpse of what leadership is in the biblical perspective. Part 2: Divine calling and obedience. God purposefully chose Moses to be a human leader in God’s act of delivering the Israelites out of slavery. God called Moses in a personal…
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Transforming the Leader
Moral character and virtue play a significant role in leadership. Current research is growing more and more convinced of the vital role that spirituality and ethics play in leadership. One theory that gives more attention to this than most any other is servant leadership1. Servant leadership comes from moral love (agape) and is expressed in…
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The Paradox of Power and Service
Servant leadership is seen as a paradox of leading through giving up power and serving others. This oxymoron is usually framed as a contrast of power and service. A biblical understanding of human sinfulness and salvation reveals, however, the real contrast is not power versus service, but service versus self-interest. The opposite of true servant…
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Leadership Under Authority
My doctoral colleague, David Wright, posted the following in a recent discussion forum: “…leadership is never totally mastered and leadership means being led…When I consider the topic of leadership I have the following portion of scripture as a foundation: And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, And…
