The Rise of the Papacy
This article explains how the Roman Catholic Church came to have the papacy as its system of church government.
Is Luke an Exponent of "Early Protestantism"? Church Order in the Lukan Writings
How does Luke represent Christian leadership in the early church? Giles finds it inappropriate to regard the ecclesiology of Luke as "early catholic." He emphasizes that those would lead in the Christian community are not rulers but servants.
The Role of the Church and Its Place in Our Thinking The Role of Office-Bearers in Our Thinking
Ten Ways to Build Trust as a Church Leader
As a church leader, you should be trustworthy. Therefore, building trust is essential. How can you build trust? Here are ten ways you can build trust.
The Office and Leadership
How to Delegate
4 Steps to Prevent Sexual Abuse in Your Church Written by J.W. “Bill” Phillips
How Churches Lose the Plot
How to Lead a Meeting
Christian Leadership Part 2: Introduction to Leadership
Christian Leadership Part 1: Introduction to Leadership
Thus Sayeth the Pastor: The Nature and Limits of Pastoral Authority
How would you describe the nature of the pastor's authority? This article shows that authority in the church is a delegated authority, limited by the Word of God, Christ-like in its demeanour, honouring to the freedoms of the Christian, and concerned with obedience to God and not the pastor.
Leadership as Stewardship (Part One)
Convictional Christian leadership is defined by one's faith. And so if one's beliefs about God are not true, everything else will be warped by that false knowledge—and this is a huge problem in our culture when it then comes to leadership. A proper understanding of the sovereignty of God will help one see that Christian leadership is an act of stewardship.
The Service of Leading
Using an example from the world of music, this author illustrates the kind of commitment and humility that is required in leaders. These qualities are required in pastors as leaders of the church, and fit with Ephesians 4:15-16.
Servant Leadership Whosoever wants to be great among you must be your servant
The Office in the Light of Christ’s Return
Identifying False Teachers A Biblical Checklist for Identifying False Teachers in the Church
The Heart of Presbyterianism: Christ's Saving Rule
God rules over us and leads us through this life by his Word and Spirit. Out of grace, He empowers individuals with his Word and Spirit to serve as officebearers in the church.
The Marks of a Spiritual Leader
Spiritual leaders know where God wants people to be and take initiative to get them there, relying on God's power and using God's methods.
The Elder and Teacher: Oversight of the Training of Adults
Being in the Lead: The Task of Officebearers as Leaders
What Happens When We Don't Listen Well
Listening well is important for every church leader. If we do not listen well, these ten things happen.
Seven Ways Church Leaders Hurt Themselves
You may be hurting yourself as a church leader. How? Here are seven ways in which church leaders can hurt themselves.
Peter: What’s in a Name?
What characterizes biblical leadership? Looking at Christ’s training of Peter, the article explains the battle between the temptation of sin and the call to spirituality in leadership.
Peter: Raw Material for Leadership
What characterizes biblical leadership? Looking at Christ’s training of Peter, the article explains three raw materials of leadership: being inquisitive, having initiative, and being involved.
Peter: Learning from Life Experience
What characterizes biblical leadership? Looking at Christ’s training of Peter, the article explains the place of life experience in leadership.
Peter: The Submissive Leader
What characterizes biblical leadership? This article considers Christ’s training of Peter in order to show that submission is something that should characterize leadership.
Peter: The Compassionate and Courageous Leader
What characterizes biblical leadership? Looking at Christ’s training of Peter, this article explains two characteristics of leadership: compassion and courage.
Peter: The Servant Leader
What characterizes biblical leadership? Looking at Christ’s training of Peter, the article explains three characteristics of leadership: restraint, humility, and servanthood.
Three Traits of a Biblical Leader
What does a biblical leader look like? This article discusses three important qualities that a loving leader needs to have.
Twelve Ways to Read More as a Christian Leader
Leaders are readers. Without reading you cannot lead. How can you learn to read more? Here are twelve ways to read more and be a fruitful reader.
Twelve Things Staff Members Want to Say to Their Pastor
Do you have church staff members? As a pastor, what do you think your church staff members want you to know? Here are twelve things they want you to know.
What Young Leaders Want
What are young leaders looking for? This article lists twelve things.
Fifteen Ways to Welcome New Church Staff
Here are fifteen ways to welcome new church staff.
Ten Negative Equations in Recruiting Church Workers
What are the important things to consider when recruiting church workers? This article, as a word of caution, describes ten so-called negative equations.
Thirteen Questions to Ask Potential Church Leaders
Are you looking for a church leader? What criteria for choosing a church leader will you use? To help you, this article gives you thirteen questions you can ask a potential church leader.
Nine Vision Blockers for Church Leaders
A church leader needs a vision for ministry. This article identifies nine things that sometimes block a church leader's vision.
Seven Steps to Building a Strong Team
How do you build a strong team, for church or otherwise? This article suggests seven steps.
Ten Suggestions for Church Staff Members
How do you build effective church staff members? Take into consideration these ten suggestions.
Addressing Signs of Leadership Fatigue
This article explains thirteen causes of leadership fatigue and how to address the problem.
Fifteen Ways to Take Care of Guest Speakers
How do you care for guest speakers who come to your church? Here are fifteen ways of caring for guest speakers.
Words of Advice for Young Church Leaders
How can young church leaders grow in their roles? Here are twenty words of advice to young church leaders for giving good leadership.
Ten Questions for a Six-Month Spiritual Checkup
Regular spiritual examination is important for healthy leadership. This article offers ten questions you need to ask yourself for your spiritual checkup in your leadership.
Ten Ways to Recognize Our Arrogance
Pride and arrogance are the leading factors in causing the fall of many in leadership positions. This article identifies ten ways of recognizing your arrogance.
Ten Reflections on Leadership
What are important things to learn in leadership? This article reflects on years of experience as a leader in the church.
Seven Reason Why Church Leaders Should Memorize Scripture
Church leaders need to memorize Scripture. The article gives seven reasons why Scripture memorization is important for church leaders.
Nine Ways for Church Leaders to Pray More
As a leader do you long to pray more? What are the causes of prayerlessness? This article gives nine causes of prayerlessness, and nine ways to cure them in order to attain to a greater prayer life
Ten Characteristics of Leaders Who Last
This article draws your attention to ten characteristics of leaders who last.
Five Leadership Insights from a Firefighter
What does it mean to be a church leader? This article explains five things that are crucial for healthy church leadership: understand your role, love what you do, have proper training, value teamwork, and be proactive.
Two Signs You're an Insecure Leader
Insecurity kills leadership in the church. How do you know if you are an insecure leader? This article discusses two signs: you are slow to compliment or encourage others, and quick to deflect blame and criticism.
Praying in the Consistory Room? The prayer of elders before the worship service
Managing Conflicts in the Congregation
Reformed Ministry
What is a Reformed ministry? This article explains that the Reformers saw ministry as God's gift to his church. It deals with the work of the ministry, and the weakness of the ministry.
Women in the Church
What does the Bible say about women in office? To answer this question the article looks at the general office of believers and how this is different from a particular office. It shows that all Christian women hold the general office of all believers.
The Kind of Leadership That Glorifies God
Christian leadership is rooted in a conviction that glory and power belong to God, and God displays his glory through weakness. From 1 Corinthians 4:1, 9, 13 this article explains how this is so.
The Key Element of Successful Fishing (For Fish or Men): Optimism
Rooted Leadership: Values
This article considers the matter of leadership, showing the importance of a leader who lives and leads out of his values. The article discusses what values are, and explains why some leaders live lives out of sync with their values.
Rooted Leadership: Relationships
This article discusses leadership, showing that relationships greately influence the character of a leader.
Rooted Leadership: Identity
This article explores the topic of leadership by explaining that every leader leads out of an identity, whether it is a false or authentic identity.
Ministers of Grace in Need of Grace
What is the need of pastors in their pastoral work? The thing that pastor's need most is grace. This article identifies five reasons why grace is the essential need of every pastor.
The Problem of Shifting Treasure
When faced with challenges in ministry, pastors have a tendency to allow the kingdom of the self encroach upon them. This article describes this problem as one of shifting treasure, and explains how this happens in terms of our identity, maturity, reputation, essentiality, and confidence.
No Longer Amazed by Grace
What is one cause of losing excitement in ministry work? This article suggests that familiarity with the things of God can cause you to lose your awe and amazement at the grace of God.
Leaders, Find Your Identity in Christ
Grace for Our Grieving
How do you deal with grief in ministry? This article draws six lessons from 1 Samuel 15:34-16:1 on how to face grief in ministry.
Forgiveness: The Key to Ministry Unity
Forgiveness is essential to bringing unity in the ministry. There are three things forgiveness does to resolve conflicts and bring unity.
Nine Questions for Ministry Leaders
Understanding the lifestyle and habits of the people you are ministering to is important for bringing God's Word to them. Here are nine questions to help you in understanding the people you are ministering to.
Every Ministry Morning
How do you face every new day in the ministry, even those days where you awaken with discouragement or even dread? This article offers five reasons why you can experience comfort every morning of your ministry.
Our Definition of Ministry Is Too Limited
Is your definition of ministry as comprehensive as the Bible's? This article considers Colossians 3:12-15 and its call to and definition of ministry.
Encouraging the Next Generation of Church Leaders
The Call to Serve
The Burden of Shepherding
Shepherding God's church is not without its challenges. One challenge is the possibility of developing an unhealthy anxiety. This article explains that there are two causes of anxiety in caring for the church, and three ways to cure this unhealthy anxiety.
Knowing and Loving Your Leadership
This article encourages pastors to love know and love those who serve in leadership positions with them in the church. It illustrates the point with Colossians 4:7-14, where Paul provides an excellent example of this issue.
The Challenge of Spiritual Leadership
Three Ways to Love Negative Nancy
How should you deal with negative church members? Be humble, shepherd, and be biblical.
Three Ways to Grow Leaders
How do you develop leaders in a church plant? This article discusses three essential things to do for the development of leaders.
A Better Way to Find Leaders in the Church
Is the celebrity culture influencing how the church thinks about church leadership? This article argues that the church has been influenced, and this emerges in how the church chooses its leaders more according to giftedness than godliness. The author explains why this is a problem, and points to a better way to find leaders.
The Church and Its Leadership The Life of the Church Series: Sermon Eleven
Authority and Confidentiality
Office-bearers are required to keep confidentiality. This article discusses three reasons for the necessity to keep confidentiality and three situations that may tempt office-bearers to break such confidentiality.
Humbling Hezekiahs
Pride is an enemy to pastoral ministry and leadership. From the life of Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20:12-19, 2 Chronicles 32:24-31, and Isaiah 39:1-8 this article shows the dangers of pride, its workings, and how to crucify it.
Thinking Wrongly About Leadership
This article identifies three ways of thinking wrongly about leadership in the church: not reading 1 Timothy 3 correctly, unhealthy thinking about eldership, and seeing deacons as junior varsity elders.
Nine Types of Leaders in Scripture
Biblical leadership is leading in dependence on God's grace. This article looks at nine types of leaders in the Bible to show how this is important for leadership.
Reformed Spotlight: What Is Spiritual Abuse?
What is spiritual abuse? It is a sinful use of spiritual authority by Christian leaders to promote, protect, or enrich a person or a Christian institution regardless of the spiritual damage done to innocent parties and the cause of Christ. The article unpacks this definition.
What Does Gospel-Centred Leadership Look Like?
How does the gospel shape Christian leadership? This article explains eight aspects of gospel-centred leadership.
Three Pitfalls for Young Evangelical Leaders
This article warns against certain pitfalls that face especially young Christian leaders in their leadership roles.
Leadership as Stewardship (Part Two)
Convictional Christian leadership is defined by one's faith. And so if one's beliefs about God are not true, everything else will be warped by that false knowledge—and this is a huge problem in our culture when it then comes to leadership. A proper understanding of God will help one see that Christian leadership is an act of stewardship. This article explains aspects of the leader's stewardship.
Does Your Leadership Reveal the Character of God?
Christian leadership is related to who God is. Here are eight questions to consider for how leadership should reveal the character of God.
Cream from Al Mohler’s Book on Leadership
What does Christian leadership entail? This article explains several principles, including how leadership calls for conviction, embraces the biblical worldview, is full of passion, thinking, and teaching.
Addressing the Damaging Effects of Professionalism in the Local Church
Professionalism is a threat to Christian ministry. It tends to produce consumerism and harms the life of the church. The article explains what can be done about it.
Twenty Leadership Tips in Tweet Length
Are you a leader? What does leadership look like? Here are twenty tips for answering this question.
Seven Pitfalls of Leadership Which Can Derail a Leader
How can you improve your leadership capabilities? You need to avoid these seven pitfalls of leadership that can derail you, including pride, passiveness, isolation, loneliness, and boredom.
Seventeen Tips for Better Church Meetings
Church meetings are a part of the life of the church. How can you have profitable and edifying church council meetings? This article offers seventeen tips.
Ten Ways to Delegate but Not Frustrate
Delegation requires a clear definition of the task. Done in this way, leadership delegation will of great service to the church. This article discusses ten steps needed for equipping ministry leaders so that they can fulfill their tasks delegated to them.
Seven Steps to Avoid Sexual Sin and Stay in Ministry
You may know a pastor who moved out of the ministry because of sexual sin. Can it happen to you? This article gives seven steps to avoid sexual sin.
How Basic Economics and Effective Church Leadership Go Together
Is there a relationship between economics and church leadership? If you see economics as stewardship, then there are some lessons to take from economics. An economically wise church leadership requires that out of all the ministry opportunities before you, allocate your limited resources to the most effective ministry opportunities.
Finding Evangelists for Staff Positions in the Local Church
This article considers three aspects to finding evangelists that can function in the local church: develop a culture of evangelism, develop and teach a model for evangelism, and deploy people into evangelistic ministry.
Where Are the Shepherds?
The Challenge of Spiritual Leadership
This article discusses various virtues for a spiritual leader in the church to embody.
What about Deaconesses?
Does 1 Timothy 3:11 support the office of deaconess? This article argues that 1 Timothy 3:11 refers to women serving in diaconal ministry but who are not deaconesses.
The Gospel as Centre – Gospel-Centred Ministry
This chapter offers a history of how and why the Gospel Coalition was formed. At first it wanted to identify and strengthen the confessional foundation of evangelicalism, and so produced a confessional statement of its own that it discusses herein.