Chapter 7
Chapter 7: The Kind of Leaders the Kingdom Needs
Before You Lead Anyone, Who Are You?
If you’ve made it this far in the book, you’re likely already a leader of some kind. Maybe you’re a pastor or elder in a traditional church. Maybe you’re leading a small group. Maybe you’re just a believer who senses a calling to gather people around your table.
Whatever your current role, the question before you now is not “What do you do?” but “Who are you?”
In the Kingdom, leadership is not about position or platform. It’s about character. Not what you can accomplish for God, but who you are becoming in Him.
Jesus made this clear when His disciples argued about who would be greatest. He didn’t adjust their ambition. He overturned it.
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant… even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” ()
“It shall not be so among you.” That’s not a suggestion about attitude. It’s a structural command. The Kingdom leader is a servant. Not someone who occasionally serves, but someone whose identity is rooted in the towel, not the title. Someone who leads from below, not from above.
I need to tell you a story that shaped how I understand this.
Credentials Are Not Character
Early in my ministry life, a youth pastor hired me to lead worship. He was a sharp guy. He was getting his master’s degree, leading the youth and college ministry, and trying to mentor me. He had all the right answers. He could preach. He could teach. He was being credentialed and ordained within the denomination.
But over time, I started to notice a gap.
The way he spoke about people when no one important was listening. The way he treated people when it didn’t benefit him. Small things that wouldn’t show up on a resume but told a different story than the one he preached on Sundays. He once had a dog he didn’t want anymore, and he just abandoned it. It sounds like a small detail. But it revealed something about how he handled responsibility when it became inconvenient.
A few years later, after he had moved to Texas, his wife cheated on him and left. And I became the person he called. I walked with him through the wreckage. I listened. I counseled. I grieved with him.
And what became painfully clear was this: the system had credentialed him, but it had not formed him. He had a master’s degree, an ordination, and a title. But he had lost sight of his first ministry, the family God had given him. The institution certified him to lead a church. But the hidden life, the life no one sees, told a different story.
He could quote the right passages. He could pass the doctrinal exams. But Christlikeness is not measured by what you know. It is measured by who you are when the lights are off and no one is watching.
That experience marked me. And it shaped the conviction I want to share with you in this chapter.
The Kingdom does not need more credentialed leaders. It needs formed ones.
The Hidden Life
Your public ministry will never exceed your private devotion.
I don’t say that as a slogan. I say it as a warning.
Jesus, before He began His public ministry, spent forty days in the wilderness being tested. He chose the Father’s way over every shortcut the enemy offered. He said plainly, “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” ().
His public power flowed from His private submission. He regularly withdrew from the crowds to be alone with the Father. “He would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (). This wasn’t weakness. It was the source of everything He carried in public.
If Jesus needed the hidden life, we certainly do.
The leader who neglects the inner work will eventually be exposed by the outer demands. Not because God is trying to humiliate anyone, but because ministry puts pressure on every crack in the foundation. If your prayer life is hollow, the weight of people’s needs will crush you. If your relationship with Scripture is performative, preparing lessons for others while never sitting under the Word yourself, you will slowly dry up. If no one in your life has permission to ask you the hard questions, you are leading from a place the enemy already knows how to exploit.
The hidden life is not a checklist of spiritual disciplines. It is a posture. A daily decision to be formed before you try to form others. To be fed before you try to feed. To be honest about your own sin before you try to shepherd someone else’s.
The training resources that accompany this book will develop specific practices for cultivating the hidden life. But the principle is simple enough to state here: if your private life cannot sustain the weight of public ministry, do not pick up the weight. Get low first. The Kingdom has no use for leaders who skip the foundation.
The Progression: Self, Family, Community
When Paul wrote to Timothy about the qualifications for overseers, he didn’t hand him a job description. He gave him a developmental sequence.
“Therefore an overseer must be above reproach… He must manage his own household well… Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders.” ()
Read the order carefully.
Self first. “Sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable… not a lover of money.” Before you lead anyone else, can you lead yourself? Is your character being formed by the Spirit, or are you running on talent and willpower?
Family second. “He must manage his own household well. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” Your home is the testing ground. It is where your character is most clearly revealed. The leader who can hold a room on Sunday but cannot hold his marriage on Tuesday is building out of order.
Community third. “Well thought of by outsiders.” Your reputation in the world flows from the life you’ve built in private and at home. It cannot be faked. It can only be grown.
The progression is clear. Self. Family. Community.
If you try to lead a gathering before you’ve allowed God to form your character and order your home, you are building a second story on a cracked foundation. And what you build will reproduce what you are, not what you preach.
I saw this in the youth pastor who mentored me. He went straight from credentials to community leadership without the slow, honest work of letting the gospel reshape his character and his home. The institution didn’t require that work. It required a degree and an ordination. And the fruit told the story.
The Kingdom requires something different. It requires a leader whose private life can bear the weight of public trust. We will develop this progression more fully in the training resources. But the vision is here: character before competency, household before assembly, formation before function.
The Goal of Leadership
Paul described the purpose of church leadership with startling clarity:
“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood.” ()
The goal is maturity. Not dependency. Not an audience that needs the leader in order to function. A mature body where every member has been equipped to carry weight.
This means the ultimate measure of Kingdom leadership is not how many people come to hear you. It is how many people no longer need you in order to function. Not because you abandoned them, but because you formed them. You taught them to open the Word for themselves. You gave them opportunities to pray, to lead, to fail, and to grow. You poured yourself into them until they could pour into others.
That is what it means to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Not to do the ministry for them. To prepare them to do it themselves.
In the institutional model, this metric feels threatening. If the people don’t need the pastor, what happens to the pastor’s role? But in the Kingdom, this metric is the only faithful one. A leader who builds people that can stand without him has done the very thing Jesus commanded.
Jesus spent three years with twelve men. He ate with them. He walked with them. He corrected them. He sent them out and let them fail. And then He left. Not because He didn’t love them, but because His goal was never to make them permanent dependents. His goal was to form them into people who could carry the gospel to the ends of the earth without Him physically present.
That is the pattern. And it is the goal of every leader in the Kingdom.
A Word About Women in the Gathering
The participatory gathering described in this book assumes and depends on the active contribution of women.
Scripture is clear. Women teach (). Women prophesy (). Priscilla, alongside Aquila, explained the way of God more accurately to Apollos (). Nympha hosted the church in her home (). The body cannot function as a body if half its members are silenced.
What Paul reserves to qualified men is the formal elder role, the oversight and shepherding responsibility described in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. This distinction is not a limitation on women’s giftedness. It is a recognition of distinct roles within the same body. Roles that serve the family, not rank that divides it.
A gathering where women are expected to sit silently is not more biblical. It is less biblical. The Kingdom table has room for every voice the Spirit has gifted.
The Weight of the Call
I want to close this chapter with a passage that should make every leader slow down.
“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” ()
As those who will have to give an account.
If you lead people, you will answer for how you led them. Not to a denomination. Not to a board. To the King Himself.
Did you equip them or keep them dependent? Did you form them or perform for them? Did you point them to Christ or build them around yourself? Did you guard the pattern or drift from it because the drift was easier?
This is not meant to paralyze you. It is meant to sober you. Leadership in the Kingdom is not a promotion. It is a weight. And only the leader whose hidden life is real, whose household is in order, and whose ambition has been crucified can carry it faithfully.
The Kingdom does not need more platforms. It needs more towels.
It does not need more impressive leaders. It needs more faithful ones.
And the King is watching to see who will build His way.