Healthy Leaders | Issue 19
A new focus.
Welcome to Issue 19 of Healthy Leaders. In this issue: an exciting new direction.
Hello friends,
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed sharing great writing on what it means to be a healthy leader in your current context. However, in 2024 we want to go even deeper, offering you biblical and practical help for you to grow in your own lives and leadership.
Part of how we will do this is through our brand-new LeaderSource website, which includes hundreds upon hundreds of resources to help you grow as a leader and build other leaders yourself.
The other part of it is this Substack, where we will be curating all of those resources, along with stories about how they have been transforming lives.
As practitioners of leader development around the world, we have found again and again that leaders are missing something fundamental in how they go about leading and building leaders. We believe that we need a return to the biblical standard: how Jesus Himself went about building twelve ordinary men, who then went on to turn the world upside down in His Name.
We’ve heard from leaders all over the world that this paradigm shift — from man-made to Christ-centered leader development — has totally transformed their lives and ministries.
In India, one director of a leading management institute testified:
“I was raised in a Christian family and came to Christ early, but never lived a Christ-centered life. I enjoyed my leadership position and was growing, and I had been assisting my church in various ways. Yet, when I went through this training, I noticed a vacuum in my own leadership – I didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing. The training opened my eyes and mind to Scripture, focusing my life around Christ and serving out of my union with Him. This change has brought about transformation in my life, from work to church to personal life. I thank God and LeaderSource for investing in me.”
Developing healthy leaders is not optional for the Church. We see it in the plea of Moses in the Old Testament:
Moses spoke to the Lord, saying, “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.” (Numbers 27:15-17)
And we see it in the perspective of Jesus on the crowds in the New Testament:
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:35-38)
We cannot leave the people of God shepherdless. And while we grow as healthy leaders, we need to know what “leadership” really is.
In this new initiative, we will be offering you fresh vision for what leadership can be through a series of teachings1 on what it means to be a healthy leader, and how that impacts building leaders ourselves. We’ll also offer resources, further trainings and articles, and stories from the frontlines of leaders taking hold of God’s highest. We hope you’ll engage us with your thoughts and questions along the way.
So without further ado, here’s Malcolm to introduce this series.
What do you think of when you hear the word “leadership”?
Until next time, we’re with you!
— Chris
Recommended Resources
Leadership, by Malcolm Webber
Thanks to our friends at Fifty-Four Collective for putting together a comprehensive set of video courses for growing healthy organizations, starting with a series of courses on leadership by Dr. Malcolm Webber. We’ll be using some of their videos and some of our own. Be sure to check out what they’re doing!
Leadership, healthy leaders, leading, building others. The way to go!!!