Christian Leadership

Understanding Christian leadership

Understanding Christian leadership

Introduction

Christianity is the religion which is meant to be followed, serving and leading every area of life. Following the preaching of Jesus Christ is duty of every believer. The manners that Jesus applied and equip His followers two thousand years ago are still applicable for the twenty first Century Christian Church. The challenges faced by Christian leaders today, are no more different than faced by Jesus in training his original twelve disciples (Copeland, 2001, pp. 1-10).

The followers of Christianity are the people, who are interested in exploring their spiritual side. This involves spending more and more time in offering long prayers, journaling prayers and thoughts and reading ancient mystics such as Theresa, Blasé, and Henri. Followers do their meditation through memorizing scripture. But they are sidelined in a group who dedicate their lives in achieving the spiritualism. The disciplines must be practiced by a common man to experience the transformation which is not associated to academy (Copeland, 2001, pp. 1-10).

In order to gain understanding of the leadership style of Jesus and the way he trained His disciples, there should be clear understanding of the term leadership.

There has been immense quality of literature that shows that Christian leadership is distinguished from other leadership style. There can be some resemblances, in sacred and secular leaders but prominent differences may exist.

The definition of leadership is defined as the traits, behaviour and influence over people, the way they interact, their role relationship, occupation of administrative position and perception by others regarding legitimacy (Copeland, 2001, pp. 1-10).

There have been extensive researches on the definition of leadership in Christianity. Engstrom and Dayton consider Christian leadership is unlike than no spiritual leadership in its inspiration. As it is judged on the parameters set by Christ, the influencing leaders are who serve as a role model of modesty, selflessness, dedication, courage, determination, kindness, and persuasiveness. These trait described, reflect Jesus as a servant, who has been bestowed the responsibly to create spiritual awareness in one soul.

According to George Barna all the leaders have the core competencies of Jesus Christ, which casting vision, directing dynamism and resources, creating teams, evolving strategy, and being responsible for results. According to his view leaders must have God's call; otherwise people will be merely following a person not acting upon the God path. Oswald Sanders has differentiated natural leadership with that of spiritual leadership; he compared the spiritual leadership with that of military and political leadership. Although there are many commonalities between the two, but spiritual leaders are blessed with gifts and miracles of Holy Spirit. (Claudia &Wintoch, 2003, pp. n.d)

Discussion

Leadership in Christianity is much more different from their non-religious counterpart. The main motivation behind spiritual leader is to making people believed that their own personal and materialistic plans are much more inferior and converting them towards God and His purposes by imposing positive impression on culture at large. Spiritual leaders serve their lives in seeking the will of God by molding their live, ...