Leaders that are disciples

From The Passionate Church:

Our culture, and as part of it the church, has developed into a management-oriented society. We want to manage growth, manage productivity, and manage human resources. In times of crisis, however, people do not turn to managers for help. In those times, we need leaders…

That is what the church is crying for today. Dan Kimball puts in this way: “Leadership in the emerging church is no longer about focusing on strategies, core values, mission statements, or church-growth principles. It is about leaders first becoming disciples of Jesus with prayerful, missional hearts that are broken for the emerging culture. All the rest will flow from this, not the other way around.”

We need leaders who will step out of “doing church” and lead us to be the church. We need those who are not afraid to dive headfirst into our culture with the message of God’s unconditional love and his incredible buy-back offer of redemption. But we in the church have failed to train men and women to lead in the style of Jesus. Perhaps we are ignorant. Maybe we are afraid. Whatever the excuse, we now have churches full of managers but lacking in leaders.