I came across a question about leadership this week in a Facebook group. What does good leadership look like? Several options were suggested ranging from control to chaos. It was a Christian group so I assume that Christian leadership was the topic. My response went something like this.

I had a pastor that compared what he did to a supervisor in a mill. There’s a lot of textile industry where we live so that analogy was understood by everyone present. Even if you’ve never worked in a factory/mill/plant you probably have an immediate supervisor that is not the owner of the company nor the manager over the entire facility. A supervisor makes sure the labor force is showing up, doing the job, evaluating employees and reporting to his/her superiors. The supervisor makes sure the workers are doing their work.

That’s a terrible representation of what a pastor does, or rather what a pastor should be doing. Jesus did not hire some disciples, assign them a task, then retreat to a small office and pear out his window every now and then. When Jesus began his public ministry he went to work and recruited disciples to work with him. His leadership model was “Do what I am doing, and I will show you how to do it correctly.” That’s the model we see throughout the New Testament. The Apostle Paul worked himself to death and also was a mentor to young leaders like Timothy and Titus. He encouraged believers to imitate him as he was an imitator of Christ. At the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus told his disciples to continue doing the things they had been doing together. Good leadership leads by example. You can’t lead from the rear; you might supervise but it’s not the same thing.