Self-Denial and Leadership

Christian leadership is profoundly self-denying for the sake of others, like Christ’s ultimate example of self-denial for the sake of others. So the church must not elevate people to places of leadership who have many of the gifts necessary to high office, but who lack this one… You must be profoundly committed to principled self-denial for the sake of brothers and sisters in Christ, or you are disqualified. – DA Carson

Carson on Leadership, pt. 1

D.A. Carson, commenting on 1 Corinthians 4:

Those of us who want to be leaders in the church today must begin by recognizing that there is no special, elitist qualification… The most remarkable feature of the list [in 1 Timothy 3:1-7] is that it is unremarkable. It contains nothing about intelligence, decisiveness, drive, wealth, power… The demands of Christian leadership do not set a Christian apart into exclusive and elitist categories where certain new rules and privileges obtain. Rather, Christian leadership demands a focus of the kinds of characteristics and virtues that ought to be present in Christians everywhere… In the West, we must repent of our endless fascination for “leadership” that smacks much more either of hierarchical models (I am the boss, and, for all below me on the ladder, what I say goes) or of democratic models (give the people what they want; take another survey, conducter another poll, and scratch where they itch)…

Paul says he and his fellow apostles [are]… everyone’s castoffs, everyone’s offscourings, everyone’s garbage – all that is despised in a society of beautiful and successful people…

Leaders in the church suffer the most. They are not like generals in the military who stay behind the lines. They are the assault troops, the front line people, who lead by example as much as by word. To praise a form of leadership that despises suffering is therefore to deny the faith…