What Do We Want From Student Leaders?

Address delivered at the Church Student Ministries conference (CSM), January 2008

 

Exercise:

What do we want from student leaders?

 

I recently met a new church trainee from a church in a sensitive part of the world. He became a Christian last year at a university in the UK. He was in his last year so never really got stuck into campus witness. God laid a striking conviction on his heart that He should be involved in taking the gospel overseas. Never having heard of such a thing as a mission agency and having just enough money for a visa and a one way plane ticket, off he went on his own, having been a believer 6 months. He pitched up at the church and told them that he thought God had sent him. They helped him settle in the city, find a job, and were sufficiently impressed that 6 months after that they asked him to be their church trainee. I had coffee with this guy and he reflected on the whole process with me. He said “I’m not sure it was too clever or that I would recommend others do it, do you think I did the right thing?” And then his eyes lit up and he said “but we had 120 of our youth for a sleepout last night and they brought 120 of their non-Christian friends and we talked about Jesus all night.”

My friend still doesn’t know very much and the church have taken quite a risk with him. I would have him tomorrow. If someone doesn’t know very much but loves the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, if they show signs of being grace-filled, servant-hearted people, if they are teachable and prepared to exercise faith because they think God has told them to then I will take a risk on them like a shot.

But those weren’t always the things I prized. Being a bright guy, working with bright people, for years I fell into the trap of equating leadership primarily with intelligence, with skill, perhaps with Bible-handling ability above character, above love, above repentance and sacrifice. I don’t think I would have had any space in one of my leadership programmes for an uneducated Galilean fisherman, for example. If someone could vocalise the correct things accurately I was easily fooled by that and to a degree had bought into the world’s criteria for spotting a good leader.

If you are tempted to fall into that trap, here is what Jonathan Edwards would say to you:

If I have no delight in what I have discovered about God, if an intellectual assent only but no sensibility of it [no personal appropriation so that I take pleasure in it], then the knowledge is useless to me. Merely discovering that God is holy without joy is the position of the devil

In other words the intellect is not enough. Nobody is saved by their intellect because God can’t be grasped and apprehended by the intellect alone. In fact Paul says that not many were wise by the world’s standards when they were called. Every one of you who has a degree should be saying “phew I was blessed to get into the Kingdom.”

 

A Spiritual Task

Now, don’t mishear me. You do have to know some stuff and to be able to do certain things to be a Christian leader. Knowledge and skills are important, but they are not the most important. Because what we are trying, under God, to develop is spiritual leaders who are servants. And that is harder to identify and more time-consuming to develop because you can’t just tick off the training programme someone has completed. But it is the very heart of what we want from student leaders – that they exemplify godly discipleship and servant-heartedness in the task of campus witness.

In this session I want to consider what it means for anyone, for our students, for us, to be spiritual leaders and what it means to be led by the Holy Spirit as we grow and exercise gifts in spiritual servant-leadership.

 

Exercise:

Q. What should someone exercising spiritual leadership look like? 

Some possible answers: 

A. Relationship with God

•   Aheart that is hot for Jesus
• God is daily delight and joy
• Concerned for God’s glory in their life
• Outdoes others in repentance

B. Growing in character

• A spirit that is humble and loving
• Thanksgiving, full of adoration
• Puts aside their own interests for the sake of the Jesus in the lives of others
• Knows God’s grace abounding to them in sin-covering, transforming power

C. Developing and implementing clear vision

• Is desperate to see God-centred witness
• Is passionate about his glory being spread
• Leading activities that implement the vision

Of course most of that should describe every Christian. Every Christian has the supremacy of Jesus as our chief aim. So what is different about being a student leader? The thing that is distinctive is that we are looking to help the people God is calling to help others be strong followers and witnesses of Jesus. We are looking for people who help others prize and honour Jesus by their example and their service, so that the grace of the Lord overflows from them to other people.

 

Exercise:

Q. How are your students doing in the list of things you wrote down? Which do they excel in? Which do you find it hardest to disciple them in?

 

Doing A Spiritual Work 

We could talk about all sorts of things under the title of developing spiritual leadership:

• Developing gospel convictions
• Being a person of vision
• Good communication
• Practical tasks of leadership
• How to be someone who is full of thanks and worship

But in this session I want to concentrate on the fact that we are helping young leaders learn to do spiritual work and to think about what that means for their character.

Leadership is listed in Rom 12:8 as a spiritual gift. Perhaps there it is referring to strategic eldership, but the thing I want us to get hold of is that leading is a spiritual task, enabled by the Holy Spirit.

Firstly it is exercised firstly with regard to God, dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit, out of a heart of faith and love that governs how the gift will be exercised among others. God is more concerned with your heart, and the attitude with which you receive his gifts, than he is with what you do. I regularly meet students, especially the guys, who think that the way to seem impressive is visible activity. I was chatting with one student worker who told me that he did 6 one to ones a day and wasn’t that good? Well it might be, but it might not be. I would rather know about that person’s private devotions than how much work they do. Because its so easy to fool yourself into a wrong measure of success. And when you have a wrong measure of success you will have a wrong measure of what to look for in student leaders because you will have a wrong understanding of spiritual living.

Secondly the gift is exercised for others, specifically for the Church of Jesus Christ, for her building up to maturity, for the equipping of the saints for mission, for arranging her in a godly and effective way. It is not exercised for worldly gain or for personal pride or status. In Christian leadership you go down in servanthood rather than up in rank or class. Leaders are prepared to do the hard and unpleasant things and to go to the difficult places because they want to hear “well done, good and faithful servant” from the chief servant. I will never forget the very gifted leader who came to me before a conference I was running and asked for the job of cleaning the toilets. I asked her why and she said “because nobody else will want to.”

What Does it Mean to Live by the Spirit or in accordance with the Spirit?

So it’s a spiritual task. Before we come specifically to the matter of leadership I want us to think about how we are led by the Holy Spirit in any area.

 

Exercise: 

Question in groups: what does it mean to be led by the Holy Spirit? 

This takes us right to the heart of spiritual living and serving. We should know the answer, shouldn't we? We should be able to express it clearly and basically because its at the heart of Christian living and the New Testament talks about it all over the place.

But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Gal.5:5-6

These verses teach that we don’t yet have all the fullness of being made right with God. There is still a lot more to come when we get to Heaven. In the meantime we have to wait. Waiting for the fullness is not frustrating, however, but full of excited anticipation because God’s Holy Spirit is producing faith in us. He is making us certain of our hope and eager to receive it.

The Spirit characterises the wait with faith expressing itself through love. This is the heart of what it means to live by the Spirit:

• that we live by faith
• trusting the Lord for things we haven’t yet received
• and that our faith is worked out in love to others

That isn’t any surprise. Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are to love the Lord with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and our neighbour as ourselves.

 

Being Led By The Holy Spirit

Sometimes the Bible uses the similar idea of being led by the Spirit. How are we led by the Spirit? What is the means by which he leads us? Paul says it has to do with our desires:

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under Law.

Gal.5:16-18

And in Romans 8:5:

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.

Rom.8:5

So this is what spiritual living is:

• we are progressively setting our minds on what the Holy Spirit desires, with His help
• we are putting off the old man with its desires and living in accordance with who we have become - children of God with Christ's righteousness

But notice what the practical outworking is: faith expressing itself in love. Galatians 5 says that the whole law is summed up in a single command "love your neighbour as yourself."

This is keeping in step with the Spirit. This is being led by the Spirit. This is how we exercise spiritual gifts correctly, using them to serve others in love. Let this be the chief thing that we want from student leaders: that they want to grow in loving and knowing God and serving others in love.

 

The Spirit and Leadership

So what about leadership? Being a young leader is a spiritual task. Lets just see that the Bible makes the connection between learning to lead and serving in love explicit.

Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith in Christ Jesus.

1 Tim 3:13

The reason they gain great assurance and excellent standing is that the Holy Spirit is at work producing that service. They are conscious of the work of the Spirit in their lives and ministry.

This is the thing I most want for us to pray for our student leaders pray: that they serve others in love in the power of the Holy Spirit. I want you to put it in your note pad and pray it for yourself and for them every day, that God will produce this more and more in their lives. It is godliness.

 

Character and Attitudes of Spiritual Leaders

Serving in love isn't the only thing that the Bible has to say about spiritual leadership but it is the most important. The one other thing I want for us to reflect on this afternoon is that our servant heartedness and love are demonstrated by attitudes and character. Or are disproved by our attitudes and character. It is no good to say we are serving in love if our attitudes don't bear it out. We undermine what we say by how we act.

The 1 Timothy 3 passage on leadership is almost all about attitude and character. You know for years I taught this passage and only emphasised the one skill required of leaders – ability to teach. Despite the fact that every other requirement isn’t a skill but a character trait. It is so easy to do that when trying to spot young leaders.

Read 1 Tim 3:1-7

(optional: Pick one characteristic of leadership listed and say how exhibiting it may serve other Christians in love)

Paul tells Timothy (1 Tim 4:6) that if he holds these things and leads others in them then that is good leadership . In 2 Tim 3 he shows the opposite. He says that ungodliness is loving yourself, loving money, being without love for people, loving pleasure rather than God.

So serving others in love is being led by the Spirit. But loving yourself instead of God and others is ungodliness. Either way it is all about what you love. What you love determines what you pursue and the person you become and what kind of example you set.

I have known plenty of student leaders who thought that leading was a real power trip. They were supreme over their group. They commanded and others jumped. That is ungodly leadership to be repented of. It is not spirit-led. It doesn't matter how good the mission activity they run is, how well they lead meetings or how accurate their Bible studies are, if they aren’t exemplifying this kind of love then they aren’t exercising the gift of Christian spiritual leadership.

Keep this in mind when thinking about what you want in student leaders:

• Their attitude is more important than their skill
• Their love is more important than their activities
• The display of God's glory in their character is the most important thing of all

Only when we help people lead with that in view will they grow as spiritual leaders.

The older I get the more I want to ask of any young leader, what are your worship and prayer life like? I want to look at them and be able to see He has that one’s heart. They are the ones who will act in faith, they are going to be the teachable ones. Lets make it our habit to ask our student leaders whether they are delighting themselves in the Lord and making it a priority every day to ensure their soul is happy in God.

 

Exercise:

Why is it easier to concentrate on developing skills rather than character in student leaders?

How good do you feel you are at discipling people in development of spiritual character as opposed to training them in skills?