The Leadership Formula

Develop the Next Generation of Leaders in the Church

Juan Sanchez

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781535979818
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

We have a leadership problem, and we all know it. When we look at our churches, we see two glaring problems: a lack of qualified leaders, and a general mistrust of leadership as a response to sinful leadership. But churches need leaders. What do we do? The answer is in The Leadership Formula. In the New Testament, qualified leaders are identified by character, conviction, care, and competency. When these four qualities are observed over time, the result is credibility. Pastor and author Juan Sanchez helps readers know what to look for in leaders, how to identify them, and how to commission them in the church, for the sake of the world.

Chapter 1

The Leadership Pattern

Leadership is all around us. Whether it’s your parents telling you to clean your room or a police officer telling you to slow down while driving, a teacher giving you an assignment or your boss giving you a new position, we all live in relationships of authority and submission. As we’ve all experienced, though, leadership is either exercised well or poorly, courageously or passively, lovingly or abusively, humbly or arrogantly.

Still, regardless of how it’s exercised, we can’t escape it. Even in contexts where there are no clear relationships of authority and submission, someone will influence others toward action. Think about how this pattern works with your friends or coworkers, a sibling group or a mom’s group, a band or a sports team. Someone will arise as the leader. We were made to lead and to be led. The account of human creation in Genesis 1 and 2 explains the ubiquitous presence of leadership and reveals the pattern by which God cares for his world and rules over his people. When we understand this pattern, we can lay a biblical foundation for Christian leadership. As God’s image, we were created to reflect God’s sovereign rule over the creation, represent God’s loving care over those under us, and reproduce godly offspring until the whole earth would be filled with the glory and image of God.

The Leadership Pattern: The Image of God

As with everything else related to humanity, the concept of leadership begins in Genesis, where God declares, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness” (1:26). In Psalm 8, the psalmist offers a poetic reflection of human creation:

What is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him? You made him little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet. (vv. 4–6)

Clearly, humanity is unique. While God made everything else “according to their kinds” (Gen. 1:11–12, 21, 24–25), only human beings are created after God’s “kind”—his image and likeness. But what does that mean?

The word likeness is simple enough to understand. It means to be “like” something or someone. We use this word in this sense often. When we compare pictures of our four-year-old granddaughter with her mother’s pictures at the same age, it is striking how much she looks like her mother. She is her mother’s likeness. Likeness communicates a physical resemblance, a reflection of someone or something.

As God’s image, we were created to reflect God’s sovereign rule over the creation, represent God’s loving care over those under us, and reproduce godly offspring until the whole earth would be filled with the glory and image of God.

But in the Old Testament, image and likeness are normally used in relation to idols. In the ancient world, people worshiped images or likenesses of their gods. That is, they worshiped physical representations of their gods: for example, an image carved out of wood, overlaid with gold. These gods were believed to rule or have dominion over a certain land, territory, or nation. Hence, they were territorial. The god(s) of the Egyptians, for example, ruled over Egypt.

Consequently, since each nation had its own deities with their own images, God addressed the issue of idolatry at the beginning of his covenant relationship with Israel. In the first commandment, God prohibited Israel from worshiping other gods (Exod. 20:3), and in the second commandment, he prohibited them from making a “carved image, or any likeness [different Hebrew word for likeness] of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod. 20:4 esv, emphasis added). With all the images of the nations Israel would come in contact with when they entered the promised land, God not only wanted to protect Israel from worshipping other gods; he also wanted to protect them from the temptation to worship a man-made image meant to represent him. God had already created a physical image to represent him—humankind. We are God’s image, created to represent him on the earth.

Now, the idea of the image of God having some sort of physical implications makes people nervous, so, before you misunderstand what I am saying, let me explain. In the ancient world, only the king was considered to be the image of the deity. In Egypt, Pharoah was believed to be the son of the gods, their image. As the image of the god(s), Pharaoh was their physical, human representative on the earth. He exercised the deities’ rule over Egypt, representing the god(s) to the people and the people to the god(s).

What is unique about the Bible’s account of the human creation is that all human beings are made to image God. Genesis 1:26 declares that both Adam and Eve are the image and likeness of God. That is, they both represent God on the earth. Even after the fall, though now distorted as a result of sin, Adam and Eve’s children continue to bear the image of God (Gen. 5:1–3). The image of God, then, is not limited to one special individual; all mankind are to image God.

Today, when we read that God made the man and the woman in his image, after his likeness, we are to understand this ancient background as informing both terms. Adam and Eve were created to be sons and daughters of God who would represent his rule over creation as kings and queens. That is, humans were created as God’s representatives on the earth to display his sovereign rule and loving care over his creation. But, as we will see, the man and the woman fulfill this God-give task in complementary ways.

The Leadership Roles: Authority and Submission

Adam and Eve were created to be sons and daughters of God who would represent his rule over creation as kings and queens.

We can and should celebrate the fact that God created both the man and the woman as his image, equal as human beings. Still, while both are called to reflect God’s dominion over the creation, each is given a distinct role in fulfilling that call.

The man was created first, placed in the garden as the lone human, and called to lovingly lead, protect, and provide for all under his care (Gen. 2:4–15). The key to understanding the man’s role is found in Genesis 2:15 (esv): “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” The word translated work in Genesis 2:15 may also be translated serve or minister. And keep means to guard or to protect. Both words occur together in relation to the Levitical priesthood (Num. 3:7–8). In the tabernacle, God’s earthly dwelling place, the priests were called to serve (work) in God’s presence and protect (keep) its entrance so nothing unclean or unholy entered in. Since the garden was the original earthly dwelling place of God with man (Gen. 3:8), and since Adam served in God’s presence, it is appropriate to consider Adam as humanity’s first priest. He had the same roles: to serve (work) in the dwelling place of God and to protect (keep) the entrance to that earthly dwelling place (the garden) from intruders. As an image-bearer of God, then, Adam was created to represent God’s loving rule over those under his care. To fulfill the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28, though, Adam would need help.

God created the woman as the man’s suitable and complementary helper (Gen. 2:18–25). With the woman’s help, Adam would be able to carry out the mandate to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). That is, together, the man and the woman, as God’s representative rulers over creation, would reproduce godly offspring, children who also bore God’s image. So, it becomes clear that while Adam and Eve are equals as God’s image, their roles are different. In the husband/wife relationship established in the garden, the man was created to lead; the woman was created to follow. He was oriented toward the task; she was oriented toward the man. He was created to protect; she was created in need of protection. He was tasked to provide; she was tasked to help.

This male/female relationship of authority and submission is clarified in Genesis 2:18–25. As the narrative unfolds, it is as if God is showing Adam that his helper is not found in the animal kingdom; it’s not found in another man; and it’s not found in women in general. His suitable and complementary helper is one woman, and they are bound to each other in a life-long covenant relationship we call marriage (Gen. 2:22–25).

The leadership pattern, then, is first established in the marital relationship, the home. The husband is called to lovingly lead, protect, and provide for those under his care, while the wife comes alongside her husband to help him, both affirming and following his leadership. As it is established in the first chapters of Genesis, this leadership pattern is one of male and female equality, as God’s image, but with distinction in roles. In the marriage relationship, the man exercises authority and the woman voluntarily places herself under his God-ordained authority, following the man’s leadership. But, to what end?

Ultimately, God desires that his glory fill the whole earth, and, initially, his glory was to spread over the earth as Adam and Eve reproduced the divine image by having godly offspring. Sometimes we forget that the garden was a specific place marked out by natural boundaries, namely four rivers (Gen. 2:10–14). When you take into account the command to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28), with the understanding that the garden was a limited space on the face of the earth, it becomes clear that as Adam and Eve fulfilled their God-given task, they would need to expand the boundaries of the garden to accommodate the increased population. The point of God’s command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth was to reproduce image-bearers and continue expanding the boundaries of the garden until the garden covered the whole world, and the earth was filled with the glory and image of God.

The unfolding story of the Bible points forward to one who will faithfully and truly image God.

As God’s image, then, we were created to reflect God’s sovereign rule over creation, represent God’s loving care over those under us, and reproduce godly offspring until the whole earth was filled with the glory of God. Though sin entered the world through Adam’s rebellion (Genesis 3), and the image of God in humankind is now distorted due to sin, God’s plan has not changed. The unfolding story of the Bible points forward to one who will faithfully and truly image God. Through the preaching of the gospel and the power of the Spirit, Jesus, the true image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15), is now reproducing a people whom he is progressively restoring to the divine image (2 Cor. 3:18).

The Leadership Pattern Today

Even after the fall, the image of God in humanity was not eradicated—distorted, yes, but not destroyed (Gen. 5:1–3). We see evidence of this fact when we experience kind and loving leadership even from unbelievers. Because of God’s common grace, non-Christians too can have good marriages, be good bosses, and care for those under their supervision. Still, because God is at work in Christians on the basis of Christ’s work and in the power of the Spirit to conform us to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:28–29), in Christ, we are called to represent God’s rule over the earth and reflect his loving care over creation as we reproduce the image of God on the earth in a new way—by fulfilling the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19–20). We no longer primarily fill the earth with God’s image by reproducing physically, but by reproducing spiritually, by making disciples. Thus, because God is restoring and renewing the divine image in those who have been made new by the power of his Spirit, we best display this leadership pattern as Christ’s ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20).

That the pattern of leadership continues today is affirmed throughout Scripture and clarified in the New Testament. Wives are commanded to submit to their own husbands, “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:23 esv). And the husband is commanded to exercise his authority in love, as Christ loved the church with sacrificial love (Eph. 5:25). Again, it’s important to emphasize that the husband and the wife are both equal as God’s image, but they relate to each other in roles of authority and submission. This is the pattern of leadership established at creation, but it’s not limited to the family.

The leader...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Leadership Foundation
• Part 2: The Leadership Formula
• Part 3: The Leadership Formula Applied
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Notes
• La formula del liderazgo