Dr. Dan Reed was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1951. He was saved at the Woodland Avenue Baptist Church in 1973 while studying engineering at Auburn University. Sensing the call to preach in 1973 he enrolled at Tennessee Temple College under the ministry of Dr. Lee Roberson. Finishing his B.A. in December of 1975 he was called to Emden, Missouri , a town of 61, to pastor the Community Baptist Church. Pastor Reed has started two churches and two Christian schools during his 33-year ministry. He is currently the pastor of Harvest Baptist Church of Acworth, Georgia. (Learn more about Dr. Reed HERE)
QUALITIES OF A GREAT LEADER
Scripture Reading: Acts 20:17-27
Text: Acts 20:28 “Take heed therefore unto yourselves…”
In this passage the great apostle has called together the elders of the church of Ephesus to speak to them. It was a pastor’s conference if you will. Paul, when he had last been at Ephesus, had caused a riot and had to leave the city. Now he stops at Miletus, several miles outside of Ephesus, probably so as to avoid trouble if he went into the town of Ephesus, and he sends word for all the elders (i.e. the pastors) of the church there at Ephesus, to come and meet with him (Verse 17). In this passage he challenges these men with regard to their leadership of the church.
All of us are leaders in one way or another and if we expect to be used of God in any way, we must always be working on our leadership skills. Mothers lead children and husbands lead their families and all of us lead souls to Christ and are the best Christian somebody knows. So all of us are in some fashion leaders.
“A leader is one who knows the road, who can keep ahead, and who can pull others after him.” – Lord Montgomery
I am constantly studying leadership because I desire to be a better leader. Lord Montgomery said, “A leader is one who knows the road, who can keep ahead, and who can pull others after him.” Someone else has said that “a leader is someone who sees further down the road than others can.” Still someone else has said that “leadership is the ability to obtain followers.” One of my favorite little sayings is, “He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk.” A leader should occasionally look behind him just to see if anyone is really following!
Someone else has said in regard to leadership that a good leader inspires rather than requires. But the best definition of leadership I ever heard is that leadership is “influence.” Your influence is your leadership. You are a leader to the degree that you influence people. The great apostle Paul was able to inspire and influence men to achieve great potential for the Lord. If you really want to measure your spiritual leadership, look at the people you have influenced to live for God. The amount of your spiritual impact is the amount of your spiritual leadership. Judging by that criteria, the apostle Paul’s spiritual leadership is a great example to all of us.
In this passage, Paul holds up some of his own qualities to inspire these pastors to greater leadership. What are some qualities of great leadership?
I. Humility – Acts 20:18,19 “Ye know from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons, Serving the Lord with all humility of mind…”
Paul was an humble man. Now mind you, he was not a weak man by any means. He didn’t lack force of personality. I am afraid some think that humility is a cowering weakness. But such is not the case at all. Actually humility is both an attitude and an action. In attitude it is realizing that God and others are responsible for any achievements in my life. Paul said in First Corinthians 15:10 “I am what I am by the grace of God…”
The first quality of a leader that he held out to these pastors was humility (Acts 20:18,19) ”Serving the Lord with all humility of mind…”. Someone has that “humility is the garden in which all other graces grow.” The attitude we must cultivate as leaders in order to develop further in other areas of our life is that God uses men and people to hone us. God puts people around us to help us to grow. If we do not recognize that God has placed our pastor, our Sunday School teacher, our parents, and our authorities over us to help us, we will miss the boat of growth in grace.
Oftentimes it is when we chafe the most that God is using those people the most. But it is also true that God uses them simply by holding some of them up as examples to be copied by us. We become like that which we admire. I can look at my preaching and see in it many different preachers whom I have admired. I did not set out to copy them but simply by admiring and studying their preaching I have taken on some of their qualities and even mannerisms. This is why we must be very careful whom we admire and whom we read after. But humility causes us to recognize that God does use people! “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” (I Peter 5:6) The “mighty hand of God” is those people whom God has placed over you!
The opposite of humility is pride. Pride will bring any leader down. Proverbs 18:12 “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty and before honor is humility.” James 4:6 “God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble.” Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Pride brought down Lucifer, son of the morning. Pride destroyed the great king, Nebuchadnezzar and caused him to eat straw like an ox. Pride caused Herod to be eaten of worms. It was pride that caused Peter to fall and deny the Lord. Someone has said “The degree of success you will have as a man of God will be in direct proportion to how often you die.” Humility as an action is death to self.
Satan is the epitome of pride in this sense for 5 times in Isaiah 14 he said, “I”. “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.” Satan’s trouble as well as our trouble is “I” trouble! Contrast that with Paul who said, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Paul was a servant leader with the mind of Christ Who, even as God, picked up the towel in John 13 and washed His disciple’s feet as a servant. If you and I would be true spiritual leaders, we must have the mind of Christ Who was willing to serve others in the spirit of humility.
The apostle Paul, in challenging the pastors of the Ephesian church shows them the qualities of a great leader. We have looked at the quality of humility which must be in every servant-leader. Now let’s look at another quality:
II. A Leader Must Have The Courage To Say What Needs To Be Said…
Acts 20:20 “And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you and taught you publicly and from house to house…” 20:27 “For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.”
Leaders sometimes have to say hard things to people. There must be correction sometimes. Paul said that he had done that publicly. He meant that in his preaching he had said what needed to be said in order to lead them properly.
All the Bible is not salvation. In fact, most of the Bible tells us how to live the Christian life. In order for us to live properly we must be corrected and someone must have the courage to do that. Preaching on how to live is not always popular. The Bible tells a man how to be a godly man and it says that he “must not walk in the counsel of the ungodly nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of the scornful” in order to be a godly man. Those are negative things but if I would be a leader of men in spiritual matters I must warn them about things that will hurt their Christian life and testimony and I must be specific. That is not something many people enjoy, particularly when it affects them! But Paul said also that he had taught them from “house to house” and had held back nothing that was profitable unto them. In other words Paul confronted people personally face to face and corrected them.
Many times a work suffers because a leader will not confront people personally and correct them. A whole church can suffer because no one will take the bull by the horns and correct an errant Sunday School teacher or bus worker or assistant. Sometimes people’s feelings are put above the work of God because of a lack of courage on the part of a leader. Paul even confronted Peter in one place (Galatians 2:11-14) “because he was to be blamed.” The scripture says there that “Paul withstood him to the face.”
It is true that leaders must learn and work at proper confrontation. Proverbs speaks of “a wise reprover upon an obedient ear.” I remember one time confronting a Christian school teacher over an error. She was very angry with me and her husband came to me over it. He asked that the next time I speak to him if I had a problem with her. So the next time I had a problem I went to him and he too, became angry about it! Sometimes, no matter how you correct, you do not have an “obedient ear.” But whether there is an obedient ear or not, leadership demands confrontation. The leader who cannot or will not correct wrong direction in fellowship must not remain in leadership long! How would you like to be on an airplane where the pilot would not correct a co-pilot who was steering the plane in a wrong direction or allowing things to remain undone in preparation for a landing? Leadership must be willing to do what needs to be done.
We have looked at two qualities of a great spiritual leader thus far from the life and ministry of the apostle Paul. He was meeting with the pastors of the Ephesian church when he challenged them with these leadership qualities to be developed in their own life. We now look at the third quality:
III. A Leader Must Have The Courage To Do What Has To Be Done…
Acts 20:22,23 “And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there. Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.”
The Spirit of God had moved Paul to go to Jerusalem but had also communicated to him that trouble awaited him there. But Paul had to do what God told him to do no matter what it cost him. A leader has to take the right course not knowing how some people will react to his decision. A leader is not like some politician who takes the course of expediency; he must do what is right whether people understand him or not.
I have only had to fire one man in the course of 24 years of ministry. In that case, the reason for his firing was such that if I had told it publicly, I would have hurt the man and his family in the community. I had to do what I had to do without the great bulk of my church even understanding why I had to let him go. He was a much loved man and there was much misunderstanding about why I had to fire him. Yet for the sake of the work of God I had to do what I had to do. It was a tough time in my ministry, but many times leaders know things that others do not know and they have to deal with the information they have. Actually this is true in every home, business, and church.
We are living in a day when people want to know every detail. The media has so brainwashed the public that they think they have the right to know even what is going on during wartime such that our own military is sometimes jeopardized by publicized information. Leaders must learn to do what has to do be done and simply sometimes suffer being misunderstood and harshly judged. I personally believe that Kenneth Starr, the prosecutor against Bill Clinton, when all is said and done and history is written, will come out to be a hero and a man of great integrity. He had lots of information, much that was never published; he acted on what he knew. That took lots of courage and got him roundly criticized. But many of us respect his integrity and leadership. A leader must do what has to be done for the sake of the cause!
IV. A Leader Must Have A Caring Attitude…
Acts 20:36ff “And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down and prayed with them all. And they all wept sore…sorrowing…that they should see his face no more.”
“… people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
The reason Paul could be so stern was because he cared for those he led and they knew it and they loved him. They knew he was not out for himself but for the cause of Christ. It really is true that people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Two people can say the exact same thing and it will be received from one and rejected from another. Why? Because one truly cares and loves the people while another is not a self sacrificing leader. Leaders have to care and the people they lead must sense that the leader has their interest and welfare in mind, not the building of their own kingdom.
Paul is a good example of a great spiritual leader. In his conference with the pastors from Ephesus he showed his leadership ability. We have looked at four of those qualities. Now we look at some more.
V. A Leader Generally Has A Strong Will…
Acts 20:24 “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.”
If anybody had a strong will Paul did and it was exemplified in all that he did, even before he was saved. All of us have a will; it is our driving force. Leaders, strong leaders, generally speaking, are molded from men who have strong wills. Spiritual leadership is when a man or woman’s strong will coincides with the will of God. Moses was a strong willed man and sought to deliver Israel from Egypt on his own. Of course, he failed. But then God took him and molded him and made His will to be Moses great desire. Then he used him greatly. Who, but a man with a determinative will could have led those rebellious Israelites for 40 years? Peter, too, obviously had a strong will.
God, in His sovereign choices, chooses leaders from those who have strong wills. Weak-willed people rarely last in leadership because they are so easily molded by the public will. A man with a weak will will usually be controlled by his wife unless she is extremely submissive. A pastor with a weak will will give way to the whims of deacons or the people and will not be the man of God he must be to be the leader of his flock. This is not to say that a leader must be stubborn and self willed. In fact, scripture forbids an elder (pastor) to be self willed. But self will is not the same as strong will. If you have a child that is strong willed, do not despair but ask God for wisdom, for leadership material is in your home!
This is one of the reasons that successful pastors, when very young, usually run into big problems in their churches. Their strong will has not learned some patience and forbearance and thus, like Moses, they run over people trying to get things done. However, if people in churches could simply understand that successful leaders must have a strong will and could bear with some of the faults of the young pastor in order to let him get some patience, they could keep the man God sent them to lead them and he would become a great leader.
If people in churches could learn to look beyond the rough edges of a strong leader and help him rather than dismiss him as unusable, they would profit by it. Most churches who oust a strong leader will wind up with a wimp for a pastor who couldn’t lead anything and thus the church will never go anywhere! Let us learn in our children and young people to correct wrong behavior but not squelch their strong will! May God give us in our churches some men with strong wills who have a burning desire to do something with their lives!
Questions to Ponder
1. Name some qualities in your life that God has used other people to develop in you and then thank the Lord for bringing those people into your life. Perhaps you could write them a note and thank them.
2. Think of some ways you serve those people you lead. Do you reach out to them to build relationships? Someone has said that “Rules without relationship breed rebellion.” Could this be the reason some people under you are a bit rebellious?
3. Look up Pro. 15:10 and answer why correction is grievous to some people.
4. Some people are easy to correct. Why? James 3:17
5. In every group of people, a leader emerges. What is at least one quality of the one who emerges as the leader? However, if they are a spiritual leader, other qualities must be present. Not all leaders are spiritual leaders!
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