11 February 2026

The Ai Train is leaving the station. Do we get on board?

Picture this. You are on a crowded platform at Central station waiting for an inbound train with an unknown destination - even the driver doesn't know where it's ultimately headed. You're at the station because you've been hearing for some time that a new train is going to a wonderful place and absolutely everyone will want to, indeed need to go there eventually. The FOMO has overloaded both your senses and the platform with eager travellers - even though you have heard one or two rumours that the train still had some technical issues to iron out.

You assumed the train was still a long way off and you'd have time to ask around,  find out where the train is really headed. Then all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere,  the  train arrives - a gleaming sleek marvel of technology met by "oohs and aahs" from excited onlookers holding up their phones to take selfies and live-stream the advent of this futuristic machine. The doors glide open and the mesmerised crowd begin pushing and shuffling their way onboard hopeful and anxious to secure their seat on this journey of a lifetime. 

But you hesitate. Some tiny alarm bell sounds in your soul, still unclear where this train is taking you and if you want to get on board. Your thoughts race - "perhaps it is headed for some utopian dream destination, surely it must be? Or then again, is this the train to some dystopian nightmare or will it derail somewhere along the way and plummet down a cliff killing everyone onboard!" You panic and freeze as the crowd happily shuffles around you. "C'mon mate", one man says, "you don't want to be left behind do you?" 

Maybe you do? Or maybe you are just being overly dramatic?

A train conductor leans out the carriage door and looks at you with a reassuring beckoning saying "keep up or miss out young man." But that makes you more suspicious because he works for the train so you suspect he is benefiting more by getting you on the train than leaving you at the station. 

You don't want to get on, but everyone else is and you don't want to be left behind either. You hear a familiar voice behind you, it's your boss. Is he getting on the train too? "If you want a job young man, you better join me. If you stay behind you won't be much use to the company anymore." 

Your anxiety turns to panic.

So what choice do you have? Let the train depart without you and bear untold social and economic consequences?  Or follow the crowd, put your faith in the conductors, and pray that the destination will be worth the risk? 

_______________________________________


I feel like this will be the defining choice of our world in the next few years - only it won't be a choice because the Ai revolution is already inevitable. It feels as though, to coin a phrase from the Borg in Star Trek - "resistance is futile." Perhaps the only real choice is what kind of revolution it will be and how will we embrace it without betraying our humanity and life as we know it?

This dilemma has been faced by people throughout the ages. New technologies are introduced, some are early adopters and others resist - sometimes for fear of change, but not always. Sometimes that resistance is out of concern for what the innovation might do to virtue, vocation, and life as they know it. For example; 

  • Some monastic communities of the 6th-12th C resisted mechanical aids like water-powered mills because manual labour was seen as spiritually formative; efficiency threatened not productivity, but discipline, humility, and prayerful dependence.
  • And between the 12th–15th centuries medieval craft guilds routinely restricted new tools and production methods, not because they hated innovation, but because unchecked efficiency threatened skilled labour, social stability, and the dignity of the craft. 
  • In the 17th century, despite early mastery of gunpowder weapons, Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate intentionally limited firearm usage and foreign technologies to preserve social order and moral hierarchy, choosing cultural stability, and the art of swordplay over technological superiority.
  • More recently in the early 19th.C, the Luddites in England, who were skilled textile workers, sabotaged mechanised looms that threatened their livelihoods. They weren’t anti-technology in principle, but they opposed how industrial technology was deployed—without protections for workers. Many of those Luddites would become guests of the British penal system, transported to Australia for life. One notable example was John Slater, a notorious Luddite, who arrived in Sydney in 1818 after being sentenced to life for his role in a 1817 factory raid. And their name, Luddite, would become synonymous with techno resistance without due consideration of the consequences.
Long before Ai, societies recognised that tools are never neutral—they form us, reorder loves, and quietly reshape what we call ‘the good life.’ And perhaps in our time, reshape what it means to be human at all.

I think I can safely say I am no luddite or technophobe,  nor is the majority of my generation (GenX). We've straddled the analogue and digital worlds quite well. I'm old enough to remember when:

  • the contact list was a Teledex by the bed and a mobile phone was a landline with a really long cord.
  • car windows had winders, seatbelts were optional and the only way to navigate was maps on your lap.
  • the tv remote was my big toe and 5 channels was just fine.  
  • Thunderbirds at 5am on Saturdays, and Hogan's Heroes or Gilligan's Island after school were essential viewing -  but after that, you had trees to climb and streets to ride. 
  • your playlist was a  mixtape pirated off the radio,  your Sony walkman needed 4 xAAs and Betamax was still an option at the video store. 
  • everyone wanted a Commodore 64, when floppy disks shrank from 5 inches to 3 inches and we first heard the sound of a dial up modem. 
  • scanning the trading post every fortnight was exciting as was getting physical letters in the mailbox from grandparents or pen friends. 
  • you almost never took photos of yourself, and the only way to see them was to get the rolls processed at the local Kodak  film shop when you got home.
  • my mum told me to keep my distance from that new appliance in the kitchen that might be radioactive...the microwave. And "worth a google" was that prized set of Encyclopedias  displayed in the good room and the yellow pages in the kitchen.

I'm so thankful for these comical memories because they remind me that an analogue life worked quite well. It was a time when life was less instant, anxious and distracted, less polarised and entitled. A time when you would get bored, where you had to be patient, where knowledge never came without a price and you didn't have to keep asking yourself, "is this real or fake?" This is a perspective I know my genZ kids sadly can't know. They are "digital natives" and I'm clearly a digital immigrant. 

We GenXers grew up in a wide eyed, Star Trek generation where Man had already walked on the moon and everything new was embraced as one more giant leap for mankind toward a better future.  And as I reflect on all those small incremental changes, they've all felt as though the were offering some benevolent service to the human race. (Perhaps that's why for the past 15 years we've all been so willing to give away the valuable personal data of every minute part of our lives to a machine that never forgets it and creates algorithms from it - in exchange for funny cat videos, social media, shopping and google maps).

But up until very recently, I've never felt afraid of the next big thing because whatever that was, it was probably going to make life better or easier. And for the most part it has, till now. 

Let's be clear, the Ai revolution is nothing like anything that has come before. It is not one more incremental shift to make life easier - it will permanently redefine life as we know it. I am now genuinely worried that techno-utopia is more anti-Christ than anti-dote to the problems of the world. Yes of course, Ai will offer some wonderful outcomes for humanity, perhaps even solving some big problems. And techno humanists would have us believe Ai will solve the biggest problem of them all -  death itself. Wow look at us go!

But for how long? Elon Musk in recent 60minutes interview believes that Ai and robotics are our only hope for keeping the globe out of economic bankruptcy. But when asked about the future of work, admits he doesn't like dwelling on the high probability of a future where any kind of repeatable mental labour (this has started already) and eventually any kind of physical labour (when robotics become mass market) - will have minimal need for humans. Humans will all be redundant - surgeons, lawyers, bankers, accountants, consultants, managers, journalists etc and one day even truck drivers and tradies will struggle to compete with driverless trucks and 3d printed homes.

And this isn't just Elon being Elon. If you read the mission statement of Sam Altman's OpenAi (makers of ChatGPT) it says "OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) - by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work - benefits all of humanity."

How can this logic actually "benefit all of humanity?" How can a global economy function if half of its workforce has been superseded  - not by cheaper labour in a developing nation, but by Agentic Ai or robotaxis (both here now) or Tesla Optimus robots (coming very soon)? The deep lie here is that the good life is a life without toil. But what if we need to toil? Work is not a curse on humanity, it is integral to humanity and our collective flourishing. 

And will there be a tipping point sometime all of a sudden where AGI, self reproducing humanoid robots and quantum computing converge in a way that may make homo-sapiens more akin to the way we view primates now - cute, endangered, exhibits in a zoo - surpassed in every way by a far more advanced species, only this time, of our own making?*  

It's like raising a grizzly bear cub in your home. At first its all cute, cuddly and fun to play with (like ChatGPT & GROK). But when it grows up, you have to hope that it doesn't  become an untameable beast who looks at you the same way - fun to play with, or eat!

____________________________________

My point is, that this is not about incremental changes in technology which we can  decide to take or leave. The difference this time is that we may be handing over our sovereignty as a species.

Human history is a record of conflict and competition. Yet despite our prideful scrambling for perceived superiority over others, we've somehow collectively maintained limits to that impulse in the belief that an equilibrium of competing desires must eventually be reached. We've come together to end conflict, we've established agreements around trade, human rights, anti-slavery, nuclear-non proliferation, around chemical warfare and environmental protection and so on. Covid exemplified our desire to bring a global response to a global problem.  Solidarity and cooperation is our greatest weapon against self destruction. Humans for the most part honour the dignity of human life. We fight but we also love peace. We hate but we also heal. We've always  guarded our agency and desire  to return to some equilibrium of life together. 

But what if humans were no longer the apex species? What happens when we can't just pull the plug out of the wall and delete the program? What happens when the AGI no longer needs human programmers, resists human interventions and writes its own ethics? You can kill a virus like covid but what if we are creating a future in which, to AGI, we become the virus. 

I know this is sounding all very Matrixy but even if there was a 10% probability of such and outcome, would we take the risk?

____________________________________

So back to the train analogy. What do we do? Do become neo-luddites, exit the platform and flee to Tasmania (sorry Tasmanians). Or do we just get on board with the Ai revolution and let it take us to whatever trans-human fate that awaits?

The truth is, I really don't know. It feels like the titans of Ai are evangelical about the upside and ambiguous about the shadow side - and us mere mortals are simply following blindly. 

I'm writing this from that space on the train platform, in anxious indecision and theological caution. Not to solve it but to express it, to remember life as it was, to mark a time stamp of life before the "Ai revolution" deletes me, and my future self has to say to my current self "I told you so." 

As I said earlier, our choice is not whether the Ai revolution happens - it already has. The only real choice is what kind of revolution it will be, will there be any guard rails at all, and how will we embrace it without betraying our humanity and life as we know it? 

And who will influence that outcome? And will Christians be as indifferent as the rest of the population? Will we be mute on what might become the mother of all issues in human history? I hope not. Feeling neither responsible nor powerful to do anything would be to believe a lie.

Where might we begin? Perhaps just make a choice to sincerely engage with the news and commentary already available and become vocal in the public domain (see resource links below).  And lets all agree....

RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE

In one of my favourite sci-fi films of all time, Christopher Nolan's, Interstellar,  Dylan Thomas's poem offers a sobering refrain both to the fight for our humanity and against the enemy of death. 

Perhaps it's to be our refrain too.  

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT. 



Resources to explore:

Read

  • ISCAST - Christianity and Science in Conversation website here 
  • Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
  • Catholic discourse on the subject here
Listen
Watch
  • Praxis' discussion on Redemptive Ai here 
  • *Go (re)watch Pierre Boulle's The Planet of the Apes series and think about what it says about the nature of humanity and the fate of whoever has dominion. 

27 January 2026

A safer Church - what we must learn from the Bolz-Bethel bombshell?

It’s embarrassing to write about massive leadership failures in the church because we all expect Christian leaders to be better than that, and because we all know we all aren’t.

Speaking as one of those leaders, it’s not just that we make mistakes or have more to learn, it’s that we also are broken sinful people in constant need of grace and transformation. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put so well, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts.” (The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956).

We know this. We know the flaws in our hearts and the planks in our eyes. We hear the words of Jesus’ to the pharisees in John 8.8 to the woman they dragged before him “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” We don’t want to be the whistleblowers or stone throwers, but if we were, the truth is, we’d be throwing them at ourselves. We get torn between our own failings and calling out those in others. And yet, silence is even more problematic.

This past Sunday Kris Vallotton, Bill Johnson and Dann Farrelly, some of the most familiar and influential leaders in the global charismatic movement finally stood before their church, and a global streaming audience to acknowledge both the grievous misconduct of Shawn Bolz, and confess their own failure as church leaders in calling it out (you can check it out by watching the YouTube recording of their Sunday service on Sunday January 25th here).

I say finally because the evidence compiled by Mike Winger (https://www.youtube.com/@MikeWinger) is irrefutable that Bolz was not only a fraud but Bethel leadership, the people who arguably gave Bolz a global platform, had known of allegations against Bolz since 2019, which they investigated and verified, but then not only failed to discredit him publicly in the past 6 years, but even on occasion continued to publicly endorse him. 

This was not an issue of ignorance but of negligence.

Kris Vallotton, expressed how he failed in his responsibility to protect victims of Bolz because “I struggled with what is our responsibility.” After all says Vallotton, “he (Shawn) was on many platforms, we weren’t on his board, and we went to his board on a couple of occasions, and they did nothing. And I wasn’t thinking of it like I was thinking of a staff member….if that happens on our staff that’s not going to go.” So Vallotton’s fresh realisation is that the responsibility for the church leader doesn’t end in the church carpark. 

He now recognises, “We put him on a global platform and as soon as we did that, other people believed in him because we believed in him and consequently when he failed and then failed to repent after giving him time to repent, it was our responsibility to tell the people that we told to trust this man to tell them we don’t trust this man…… and that didn’t happen and that’s on me and I made that decision.”

Bolz has a long list of allegations against him which are not my focus here. His, are sins of commission – intentional, premeditated actions that were blatantly fraudulent and harmful. But Kris and Bill rightly point out that their sin is that which is far more ubiquitous – negligence, the sin of omission. It’s what they did not do – which was to protect the vulnerable and champion truth. Vallotton admitted he not only didn’t do this publicly, but stonewalled individual victims who had previously come to him for help. 

As James 4.17 says “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

Kris also acknowledged that his apology to the church was years too late and may not have ever happened if not for the work of whistleblowers like Mike Winger. Kris points this out in his apology saying “and by the way it’s so sad that somebody (Mike Winger) has to put out a video, that creates a firestorm to get someone who is 70 years old to do something…that’s an inditement against my leadership. I should have known better and if I didn’t know better I should have went and got counsel and I didn’t do that and I’m very sorry. I take full responsibility for that.. I’m very sorry.”

Bill Johnson’s apology was more personal, admitting he was “blinded by loyalty and friendship (with Bolz)” such that he did not believe the allegations or the issues to be addressed. That “believing in people” when they don’t deserve it can move into “unsanctified mercy.” And as a result, Bill Johnson, the most senior leader of the church, slowed or even stalled the process which might have brought Bolz to account.

I’m glad that the truth is out there and that Bill and Kris have publicly owned their mishandling of the truth and insensitivity to the victims. They know they screwed up and I felt like they were both sincere and repentant. But as Kris rightly pointed out, sorry is not enough. What must come from this is a “shift in cultural values on safety and security of people.” For Bethel, the opportunity now is to identify and shift the systemic and cultural issues that got them here.

I'm sure plenty of people will offer their own judgements over the coming weeks as this news spreads. I will say that Bill and Kris' leadership negligence reflects badly on the whole church and will harm some who deeply trusted Bethel. But what they do next is really critical, and we need to give them and their leadership time to work that out, hopefully with independent external advisors. This is not a quick fix.

So as I process this news today, I'm pondering what all church leaders must learn, or be reminded of from this tragedy? To keep it short, here are just a few of my initial reflections as a leader about making Churches genuinely safer. And I say safer, because you  can never get it all right nor you can mitigate 100% of the risk. But you can be way wiser and more prepared to keep people in your care safe:
  1. The priority of safety is not optional or tangental to gospel work.
  2. Cultural values of accountability, transparency and truth telling are essential for a safer church. Without them conflicts go unresolved, people remain hurt and the wrong people get empowered.
  3. Wanting to be Spirit led doesn't mean you can't also be informed by good policies and procedures.
  4. Safe church policies and processes don’t fix a culture but they undergird the one you want to build. 
  5. Good policies and processes are useless if leaders don't endorse  and apply them in practice.
  6. When something goes wrong, trust the process and stick to it. But if you don't have a process in place you make the problem exponentially more complex to begin with as you try and play catch up on how you will manage it. 
  7. Healthy, effective church governance  empowers church leaders to respond well to incidents. When your governance is unskilled or disorganised, your church and all its people are far more vulnerable.
  8. Dual relationships in leadership (like friend and pastor,  friend and employee, pastor and spouse) are inevitable but create probable conflicts of interest that must be acknowledged and managed. Affection and accountability must coexist without compromising the other cultural values.
  9. Showing compassion, grace, or a desire to restore doesn't negate accountability, confession, repentance and disciplinary consequences, even disqualification from particular ministry. 
  10. Where possible don't be the point person in disciplinary action, delegate that to an independent team so you can retain a role with all parties. An outside independent team can eliminate bias and subjectivity in the process so the outcome or decision is more just.
  11. Only give people a voice in your context who you can personally vouch for. Character must always trump gifting and if you don't know someone personally, do your homework, seek references from their home church or others you trust within their movement.  And if you can't find that, simply don't host them.
  12. Being a wonderful wise older leader doesn't necessarily make you a competent leader in todays complex Church environment. Times have changed with or without you. Keep learning and as Kris said, when you don't know, seek advice, augment your leadership with skilled others or professional  consultants. And if you won't do that then maybe its time to transition out of your role!
  13. Avoiding confrontation or conflict in the hope that time will fix it is foolhardy. All you are doing is giving opportunity for even more harm to accrue. If you don't know how to address it, again, seek the counsel of scripture (eg Matthew 18:15-20),  or engage an organisation like PeaceWise to help you work it through.
  14. When you are overwhelmed or burning out (as it appears Kris was in 2019), admit it and bring independent help to deal with major pastoral matters. You do this for the sake of those involved, your own mental health and those you love. 
  15. Finally this is why church leaders all need professional supervisors (at least in Australia). These are trained people  outside your system, able to ask good questions, enable you to safely process your inner life and work life, and offer wise counsel or a pathway through. If you are reading this and don't have a supervisor/coach/mentor, no matter your age in pastoral ministry, engage one this year! Reach out to me at Partners in Ministry if you like and I can help source you a qualified multi-modal supervisor (Australia and NZ).
Caveat to all these thoughts, some of them I learned late, after I went through a pastoral crisis in my own context, and others I only wish I implemented better. These are all hard, but the alternative, as we have seen with Bethel, is certainly harder. 

On the bright side, this crisis at Bethel can be redemptive if it catalyses deep cultural change. God can use it to bring reformation to dysfunctional theology, culture and systems and hope to the body of Christ. 

I hope the apology truly was the beginning of so much more.







20 January 2026

7 reasons why Church Leadership is it's own thing.


I recently quizzed ChatGPT on how many leadership books have been published in the past 50 years. Its answer was essentially a shoulder shrug and: “Nobody really knows,” followed by an estimate of “many hundreds of thousands” of books and articles. It never ceases to amaze me how this genre never seems to run out of things to say. The leadership onion has endless layers—and plenty of tears.

In my doctoral research, I was specifically exploring the overlaps and distinctions between generic leadership theory and Christian leadership. What quickly became clear is that there has been significant cross-pollination. Popular leadership theory has deeply influenced Christian leadership—its language, frameworks, corporatised principles, and culture. At the same time, Christian and biblical ideas have influenced popular leadership discourse, particularly around servant leadership, ethics, power, and workplace spirituality.

Good leadership practice applies in any context. And yet, I am convinced that Christian leadership—and specifically church leadership—is far more layered and nuanced. It is a particular kind of leadership exercised in a particular kind of community under particular theological and spiritual conditions. As such it deserves its own space within the leadership conversation.

Here are seven reasons why I think church leadership warrants being a distinct field of learning and practice.

1. The Bible is the authoritative pretext
For church leaders, the biblical text is not merely inspirational; it is the authoritative pretext for the church leadership context. Church leadership rests on, and works from, a biblically derived worldview shaped by Scripture’s grand narrative and exemplars—especially Jesus.

The Bible locates leaders within God’s story, grounding their identity in Christ and framing leadership within God’s creational and redemptive purposes. Scripture functions as a theocentric reference point for how leaders lead and where, in principle, they lead others. As Paul reminds Timothy:“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16–17).

At the same time, Scripture is both unifying and complex. Church leaders must navigate theological diversity, hermeneutical disagreement, and contested convictions. Which doctrines are non-negotiable? Where can tensions be held? When must a leader be prophetic, and when diplomatic?

CEOs operate under constitutions and policy manuals. Church leaders are accountable to all of those—and the Bible, a transcendent authority that both guides and constrains leadership practice.

2. Authority Is Always Delegated
Robert Clinton writes,“A Christian leader is a person with God-given capacity and God-given responsibility to influence a specific group of God’s people toward His purposes for the group.”1

At the heart of this definition is delegation. Church leaders do not self-authorise; they lead as God’s delegates. Their authority is derivative, rooted in calling, gifting, and communal discernment. Leadership flows from abiding in Christ—the true Vine (John 15)—and fruitfulness emerges from that dependence.

While human processes appoint leaders, church leadership is more calling than career. Without an ongoing personal and communal sense of God’s endorsement, authority collapses into mere positional power (remember King Saul?)

Generic leadership theory assumes authority is conferred primarily through role, expertise, or performance. Church leadership by contrast understands authority as entrusted, contingent, and answerable beyond the organisation itself. Church leaders therefore live in a precarious space—held between divine calling and human recognition.

3. Leaders must embody their message
The implications of the first two points are unavoidable: church leaders must practise what they preach. Ethics matter in every leadership role. But in most professions, private life and professional competence are largely separable. In church leadership, they are not. Personal and public life are assumed to be integrated. The leader must embody, however imperfectly, their message.

Embodiment is vital in church leadership not simply for ethical reasons but because the spiritual formation  of those they lead (fundamental to the role) occurs to some extent through proximity to the leader. Leaders shape communities not only by what they design,  or present from platforms, but by who they are becoming in plain sight. This means that church leaders are always discipling, even when they are unaware of it. Their prayer life, emotional regulation, conflict posture, Sabbath practices, humility, and repentance all quietly catechise the community. 

The way a leader embodies Scripture in the totality of life will be scrutinised by those they lead. Small inconsistencies may be overlooked; major ones will not. Character ultimately trumps competence, and when character fails, a sacred trust is often shattered. Recent examples—such as Philip Yancey’s public confession and withdrawal from ministry—remind us that even deeply respected leaders are neither immune from the temptation of dis-integrated living, nor protected from its consequences.


Embodiment is not only about moral restraint or formation; it is also about love. Church leaders are not managing clients but shepherding a community that often functions as family. The church is more organism than organisation. This requires vulnerability, relational presence, grace, and forbearance. Where secular leadership can remain professional and detached, church leadership demands personal, costly love.

Generic leadership theory permits functional separation between role and self. Church leadership assumes congruence between message, life, and leadership.

4. Power management is crucial
Barbara Kellerman in her book The End of Leadership distinguishes between power, authority, and influence—power as force, authority as position, and influence as relational persuasion.2 It is a helpful framework, yet in practice all leadership involves power in various forms.

Church leadership, however, carries a uniquely potent form: spiritual power. A leader’s influence is often amplified by perceived divine authority because, “This leader is called by God.” This significantly increases vulnerability in both the leader and those they lead. In religious contexts, far more is at stake: faith, belonging, righteousness, community, and even eternal destiny.

As Graham Hill notes in his recent reflection on Philip Yancey,"when a Christian leader with a significant platform and influence enters into a sexual relationship with someone in their ministry orbit, the power dynamics make genuine consent impossible. This is always an abuse of power....a consensual affair is a misnomer."3 Downplaying power does not neutralise it—it intensifies harm. Church leaders therefore carry an elevated responsibility to recognise, name, and steward their power carefully.

In contrast, generic leadership theory often treats power as neutral or instrumental. Church leadership must reckon with power as spiritually amplified and ethically inseparable.

5. Effectiveness and success are harder to define
Every church leader wants to be effective—but effective by whose definition? Church leadership lives in tension between objective and subjective measures of success. Quantitative metrics like attendance, giving, baptisms matter. But so do qualitative realities: spiritual maturity, relational health, emotional depth, and communal integrity.

Numbers may indicate attraction, but not necessarily a measure of health and rarely a measure of transformation. Inner change resists quantification, yet it becomes visible through stories, patterns, and long-term fruit.

Generic leadership theory privileges measurable outcomes and performance indicators. Church leadership must hold formation, faithfulness, and fruitfulness together. Thes leaders must lead without the comfort of clear dashboards. Wisdom and discernment matter more than targets alone.

6. Exponential complexity and role fluidity
Church leaders operate in an exponentially complex environment. Their work is layered with personal, pastoral, organisational, legal, cultural, inter-generational, and existential demands.

Communities are voluntarily engaged. Resources are fragile. Churches carry the same regulatory, governance, and financial responsibilities as secular entities—often with fewer supports. And in the midst of this, leaders are expected to be preacher, pastor, strategist, manager, counsellor, and visionary.

As Darren Nelson in a recent Substack writes:"Pastors expecting to drop a new 30-50 minute monologue every 7 days that’s engaging, insightful, funny, accurate, deep, rich, thought-provoking, faith-inspiring, and unpacks the gospel in a way that’s helpful for long-time believers and new visitors—while not neglecting counselling, leadership development, budget decisions, care calls, 15 unexpected tasks during the week, and being a godly husband and dad—is a particular kind of crazy."4

He is not exaggerating. Church leadership requires constant hat-switching and sustained emotional labour. It is ultimately impossible for one person to do well alone. Where generic leadership theory assumes role clarity and bounded responsibility, Church leadership is marked by role fluidity and overlapping expectations.

7. An “Anti-Professional” Profession
John Piper described pastoral ministry as an “anti-professional” profession. In his 2013 book Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, he laments the trend toward  substituting spiritual depth with professional polish. He writes:

"We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness (Matt. 18:3); there is no professional tender-heartedness (Eph. 4:32); there is no professional panting after God (Ps. 42:1)….. We are God-besotted lovers of Christ. How can you be drunk with Jesus professionally? Then, wonder of wonders, we were given the gospel treasure to carry in clay pots to show that the transcendent power belongs to God (2 Cor. 4:7). Is there a way to be a professional clay pot?" 5

I'm not sure I entirely agree, and I wonder if Piper really understands what it’s like to lead a local church today. He rightly resists under-spiritualising church leadership yet his framing risks reviving what Charles Taylor called the “two-tiered distortion” and A.W Tozer named the old sacred secular antithesis” 6 with an artificial divide between spiritual depth and practical competence.

Piper is right, the great leaders of the bible didn’t need to read Covey, Collins or Greenleaf to be effective leaders….but it wouldn’t have hurt either. We can under-spiritualise church leadership by treating it as merely another profession. But we can also over-spiritualise it by pretending leaders have no agency, skills to develop, or responsibility to improve as if somehow the fruit of the Spirit have nothing to say to how we work.  It’s a paradoxical “both-and.” Some of the most “useless” leaders I’ve known have been wonderfully spiritual people who, in their lane, made an incredible impact. 

Christian leadership is animated by Christ in us. But wisdom, skill, and formation are not enemies of spirituality—they are expressions of stewardship. Generic leadership theory professionalises leadership minus transcendence. Church leadership must integrate spiritual depth with disciplined competence.

__________


So, church leadership is not simply leadership with Christian language layered on top. It is leadership shaped by Scripture, animated by the Spirit, constrained by love, accountable to God, and exercised among people whose participation is voluntary and whose formation is at stake.  It sits at the intersection of theology and organisation, calling and competence, vulnerability and authority, love and power. It involves souls as well as systems, formation as well as function.

This does not make church leadership superior—but it does make it different. As such, church leadership requires more than borrowed frameworks from generic leadership theory. It demands wisdom—biblically grounded, theologically informed, psychologically aware, and spiritually formed. If we want church leaders to be healthy and effective, we must take seriously the distinctiveness of the task they are called to carry. 

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And to that end I recognise the immense value of organisations seeking to meet this need. Which is why one of my "day jobs" at the moment is working for Partners In Ministry - an Australian organisation dedicated to church leadership health and effectiveness. There are many very good leadership training options available today, but what I most appreciate about this organisation is the way their frameworks are deeply integrated into the church context by people who personally understand the complexities and nuances of Church leadership.  I'm delighted to be contributing to the shaping and delivery of this and if you'd like to know more reach out to me personally or see the PIM link here.



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Notes:
1. Robert, Clinton, The Making of a Leader: Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development, Second edition. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2012), p12
2. Barbara Kellerman, The End of Leadership. 1st ed. New York: Harper Business, 2012. p13
3. Graham Hill, "Philip Yancey, Celebrity, Brokenness, and Me" Spirituality and Society with Hilly, Substack, January 8, 2026. https://open.substack.com/pub/grahamjosephhill/p/philip-yancey-celebrity-brokenness?r=3uoaui&utm_medium=ios
4. Darren Nelson, Teaching for Change, Substack, January 2, 2026. https://substack.com/@darrenanelson?r=3uoaui&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
5. John Piper Brothers we are not professionals, Nashville, Tennessee.  B&H Publishing Group, 2013. p1 
6 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, First Harvard University Press paperback edition. (Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 36. And A. W. Tozer, Pursuit of God, Updated edition. (Abbotsford, WI: Aneko Press, 2015), 27
On this topic see also:
Peter G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice, Ninth Edition. (Los Angeles: SAGE Publishing,
2022). page 10-11
Henry and Richard Blackaby, Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on to God’sAgenda. Rev. & Expanded. Nashville, Tenn: B & H Pub. Group, 2011.