Leadership or leader-slip?
Paraklesis
[‘encouragement’, ‘exhortation’, for life and ministry]
June 2025
Peter Adam
Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus,
Here is a vital ingredient of leadership!
‘Who we are’ is fundamental to ‘what we do’! All that we do flows out of who we are.
Some of our biggest mistakes in life and ministry come from forgetting who we are as persons and as believers. When we move into the role, tasks, and responsibilities of ministry and leadership we do not leave ourselves behind! Who we are as a person and as a believer, shapes all we do and say, our assumptions, desires, fears, hopes, plans, and achievements. What we do comes from who we are. As we are, so we do. Who we are as a person and as a believer enriches our ministry and leadership, and hinders our ministry and leadership.
[Have you ever noticed how much Paul’s and Peter’s emphasis is on who people are, when writing on about suitability for gospel ministry of overseers/elders. They place more emphasis on this, than on orthodoxy or ability!!! Tit 1:5-9, and 1 Tim 3: 1-7 [the qualifications are solely about character!], and 1 Pet 5:1-7.[1]
So who are we?
We are created!
Everything we are is a gift of God. We are who God made us to be. We depend absolutely on God for everything. [‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ 1 Cor 4:7]. There is no room for pride or despair, arrogance or unhealthy self-doubt. God made us to serve him, empowers us to serve him, and calls us to do all we do through him, through him and for him. We must live to please and serve him, not ourselves. While we must serve others, it is God to whom we must give account, God whom we must please. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and our creation gifts include abilities, energy, gifts, strengths and potential. We are also limited by our creation: there are some gifts we do not have. We may be able to do these tasks, but are not able to excel at them. Being created means welcoming our gifts, recognising our weaknesses, and also knowing that God can work through both, and that if God does not work though us, we cannot achieve anything!
We are sinful!
We are sinners by nature, instinct and habit. We are not sinners because we sin: we sin because we are sinners. Our sinful nature includes our aims, ambitions, emotions, fears, imaginations, instincts, habits, hopes, memories, our attitudes to ourselves, others, and God. Our sinful nature influences our lives, our relationships, and all our ministry. Our usefulness to God in our ministry is not hindered by our lack of energy, gifts, opportunity or time, but by our sinfulness and our sins, and our lack of progress in sanctification. Our sinfulness and our sins include doing what is wrong, and, even more significantly, failing to do what is right. We are sinners as people, and so we are sinners in our ministry. [See https://peteradam.org/sins-of-ministry/].
In the words of Jesus the Christ,
“Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them … Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body … What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” [Mark 7:15,18-23, NIV11].
Note the different sorts of kings in the Old Testament as examples of leadership. Sinful strong kings often became arrogant, imperious, and oppressive. Sinful weak kings were indecisive, wimpish, and engaged in self-pity. Other sinful kings led their people away from God, and into contemporary idolatry! Good kings who lived godly lives were rare, and called their people to covenant obedience to the words of God in their Bible.
We are saved!
Yet God has set his love on us in and through Christ. Christ’s powerful death removes our judgement, our condemnation, our guilt, and our shame. Christ’s powerful death and his mighty resurrection provides the power for us to die to sin, and to live in righteousness. God does not hold our sins against us, does not forget or regret the fulness of Christ’s atonement, and so forgives and forgets our sins. We must not live haunted by our past, because of Christ’s atoning death. But we also constantly depend on Christ’s atoning death for our forgiveness and cleansing every day, not only for many personal sins, but also for our many sins of ministry, sins in ministry.
Christ’s death not only saved us from the wrath and judgement of God, but also delivered us from the power of the devil, and the futile ways of the world [Ephes 2:1-10, 1 Peter 1: 18-22]. Our salvation in Christ not only qualifies us to live for Christ, but also to serve in ministry.
For we read of:
… our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good [Tit 2:13,14].
We are saints!
We are saints, being continually sanctified.
I remember writing a chapter for a book on Wesley and Whitfield, and observing that if you asked John Wesley who he was, he would have said, ‘a saint’. If you asked George Whitfield who he was, he would have said ‘a sinner’.[2] Actually, we are described as ‘saints’ in the New Testament! Although Wesley’s doctrine of sinless perfectionism was wrong, he was right to describe believers as saints!
I naturally identify as a sinner, not a saint. But the danger of identifying as a sinner is that it can limit your expectation of transforming sanctification, which God is of course working within us. According to Paul in Romans 6, because of the power of Christ’s death and resurrection, we can ‘reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God’, we can offer ourselves to God, trusting in his transforming power. Again, in 2 Corinthians, Paul tells us that we ‘are being transformed into [the Lord Jesus’] image, with ever-increasing glory … renewed day by day’ [2 Cor 3:18, 4:16].
Oddly enough, if we assume that we are already sufficiently sanctified, that we have not progress to make, then we will not be aware of our continued sins. But if we strongly identify ourselves as sinners, then we will be aware of our sins, but not expect to make any progress! But we should aim for progress. Paul writes, ‘I press on toward to the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus’ [Phil 3:14].
What sins are you currently putting to death? To what righteousness are you currently offering your body? What sins of ministry do you habitually commit? What do you do, or not do?
It is an ironic feature of contemporary Christianity that we sing so often of Christ’s atoning death, and focus on it in our preaching, and yet reflect on our own sinfulness so infrequently. We still need a Saviour every day!
I often ask preachers at Preaching Conferences, ‘How long is it since you changed the way you live because of something you read in the Bible? Two days, two months, two years, or two decades?’ How bizarre to preach the Bible to others to change them, and not read it to change ourselves!
Have you ever reflected on the transformation of the human body as a theme in Romans?
Romans 3 | Romans 6 | Romans 12 |
What a massive transformation!
To repeat: the most significant ingredient in your life, your ministry, and so your leadership is who you are as a person. We are not disembodied machines: we are embodied persons.
You will discover more of ‘who you are as a person’, if you reflect on yourself under the following four perspectives
We are created! | We are sinful! |
We are saved! | We are saints! |
We need all four to understand who we are.[4]
Please note the following:
[From a secular book on leadership.] ‘Leaders are appointed for their gifts, and sacked for their character’. [!!!]
[From an experienced pastor in Sydney.] ‘Middle-class churches choose ministers for their gifts, working-class churches choose ministers for their character.’ [!!!]
And I remember reading that late in his life Martyn Lloyd-Jones regretted that he had encouraged people into gospel ministry solely on the basis of their sound Reformed theology. [!!!].
I had completed planning this Paraklesis, when I read an advance copy of a new book by Richard and Jeanette Chin, The Sinning Saint: Holiness, Sin, and Christ’s Transforming Gospel, Matthias Media. Highly recommended, if you want to follow up these ideas.
With warmest greetings in Christ,
Yours,
And, with broader application, 1 Corinthians 13. ↑
‘Whitefield and Wesley on Sin and Atonement’, in Ian Maddock, ed, Wesley and Whitefield? Wesley versus Whitefield? Eugene, Pickwick, 2018, 124-143. ↑
The first imperatives in Romans! ↑
More fully, we are also those who our looking forward to our final transformation at the return of Christ, when our lowly bodies will become like his glorious body by his power [Phil 3:20,21]. ↑