Alone at the Top: Is Our Idea of a Pastor Really Biblical?: Divine Design in the Leadership of the Church

God has designed the church to be “infinitely reproducible”—so virile and courageous that, swept along by the sovereign ministry of the Holy Spirit, it will reproduce itself infinitely. To build such a church, God has designed leadership to work interdependently to grow Christ’s people in spiritual vitality and empower them for ministry effectiveness. When leaders have cooperated with God’s design, the church has multiplied its numbers and had great impact on the world around it. When it hasn’t, the church has suffered and failed to reproduce. Jesus gave the pattern for church leadership in Matthew 20:20–28: “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you.” God is looking for leaders who will lay aside top-down structures and instead empower His people to be fully His and do the work He has designed them to do. The result will be the incarnated holiness of Jesus pulsating through Christ’s people and poured out in the world around them to convince and convict the more than 7.5 billion people on this planet of the resurrection message of Jesus.