In my role as a pastor I am sometimes asked what, exactly, is spiritual leadership. Typically I will answer such a question with a question of my own (which is a common tactic I employ that greatly irritates my beautiful Christa). My question back will be something along the lines of, “Well, what would you say?”

And the answers that I get in return tend to reflect a profoundly simplistic view of spiritual leadership; a somewhat artificial construct wherein the spiritual leader is nothing more than a spiritual practitioner who does supposedly spiritual things so that spiritual people will have their spiritual needs met. As if deep needs of the soul are met by men. For some reason a clown comes to my mind, someone who does tricks to solicit some kind of emotional response. The guy with the round red nose, orange hair and big purple shoes pulls a balloon out of his pocket, blows into it, miraculously shapes it into a pink Dauchound puppy and suddenly everyone giggles and feels happy.

As if that is the goal: you know—everyone feeling happy. Spiritual leadership is the nice clown with the warm smile, the nice clown who knows their names, the nice clown with a firm handshake, the nice clown who only shops at Penny’s, the nice clown who always has the right word, et cetera.

Can I just say I hate clowns. They are scary and plastic and, well, not very sincere.

So if spiritual leadership is not about fulfilling a bunch of clergy-esque clichés so that people can feel happy, then what is it? Perhaps the following definition, crafted as it has been on the anvil of years of ministry experience, will help:

Spiritual leadership is the strategic conditioning of a given realm with the clear goal of empowering people to be utterly available to the person of Jesus Christ.

Now if this is indeed so then consider some of the ideas sown into the fabric of this statement. First, spiritual leadership is strategic. That means that there is an identifiable goal the accomplishment of which is so compelling that great thought and intentionality go into developing the means to achieve the goal. Nothing is particularly random or fuzzy.

Secondly, spiritual leadership is about conditioning. To reduce spiritual leadership to nothing more than pumping sunshine is to strip it of its power as a conditioning force for things substantive and enduring. Handing out pink Dauchound puppy balloons week after week is profoundly reductionistic and does nothing to stretch the soul. It sets into motion a routine that is artificial, and should such balloons not appear at a given moment then it is spiritual leadership gone awry. But spiritual leadership as a conditioning agent, something that seeks to speak into a given environment, directing the players within that environment to things far more substantive than giggles and happiness, is enduring and other-centered. It presumes that transformation of the soul and not amusement of the soul is the priority.

Thirdly, spiritual leadership focuses on a given realm. That realm of influence might by one’s family, one’s place of work, one’s apartment complex, or one’s church. Maybe its a village in Ghana or a city block in downtown Detroit. Spiritual leadership focuses on a very specific audience with the inherent goal of transforming that audience into something better than it thought it could or should be.

Fourthly, the clear goal of spiritual leadership is the empowerment of people to be who God intends them to be. One of the greatest points of crisis in the church today is spiritual leaders whose entire approach to ministry is to promote themselves. Characters like Kenneth Copeland and their ilk are obvious to us. What is not always so obvious is the generally unknown pastor of Lost Hope Community Church in Snow Drift, North Dakota whose insecurities are so intense that everything has to be about him for him to be thought of as successful. He has to have “yes men” around him, must play the clown for the crowd so that he can hear “good job Pastor” over and over, and attend every committee meeting so that he can not only have a hand in everything but so people will see him as a really good clown who must really care because he shows up at every committee meeting.

But this is not spiritual leadership. Rather it is the epitome of the insecure person in what should be a leadership role. Spiritual leadership is designed to empower people, to unleash them. It is inherently other-centered, about transformation rather than gamesmanship. It is about me helping you become the mature disciple of Jesus Christ that God intends and then me getting out of your way.

Which leads to the last item, at least for this discussion, and that is that spiritual leadership is ultimately about helping people be available to Jesus Christ. Not to the pastor. Not to the church. Not to the constituency. Not to the committee or the volunteer database.

But to Jesus Christ. It is, after all, all about Him! The Church belongs to Him. The purpose of our lives is about Him. The resources at our disposal are His. The soul of a man and a woman is created by, loved best by, and ultimately healed only by Him. The responsible spiritual leader knows this and shapes the culture of his or her realm so that others will too. Nothing less is acceptable; not clowning around so as to see happy-sparkles exploding in the air, and not manipulating things so that the leader is the center of attention.

Spiritual leadership is when I am strategically conditioning my realm of influence with those values, resources and biblical truths that empower those around me to be utterly available to the person of Jesus Christ.

Like a sputtering engine begging to get into high gear is the man or woman who must respond to another before giving that person a full hearing. In Proverbs 18:13, Solomon offers a rather straightforward word about this kind of person. It states,

If one gives an answer before he hears,
it is his folly and shame.

Indeed. And yet so many of us simply cannot sit still long enough to let those around us tell us what is on their hearts and minds. We must speak or we will die, even if we risk folly and shame.

Are you one of these kinds of people? A helpful test might answer that question for you. Reflect on your ability to sit quietly—I mean, really quietly—while your parent, spouse, friend or child expresses something—anything—to you. Do you get anxious to interrupt? Do you find yourself having to practically sit on your hands and swallow your breath just to keep from barging into the person’s story? Friend, if this is you stop it! Calm down and let the other speak. Ask the Lord to help you listen.

But there are other questions with which we can test ourselves. For example, after someone has shared with you, can you honestly restate back to that person that which he or she just shared? Do you find yourself only mildly hearing the one you are with? Too often people just stare at one another’s flapping jaws, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to verbally unload. Listening to another’s tale is supplanted by watching another’s mouth move. If this describes you, then ask the Lord to help you listen. And then listen!

Of course, James presents the most captivating lesson on how to hold the tongue. He writes in chapter 3:7 of his epistle that “every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind.” But in verse 8 he adds that “no human being can tame the tongue.”

What then to do with a tongue willing to wax eloquently, while ears seem only to remain plugged with wax? Take ownership today of these three thoughts: First, consider every individual with whom you interact a divine appointment from a Holy God. Because you cast it (rightly) in that light, then listening becomes an act of service and obedience to the Lord. Secondly, choose from the start to know that you do not have all the answers to life’s probing questions. Furthermore, while your stories may be terrific, so are those of another. Thus, your silence truly is golden.

Lastly, do the thing mentioned a couple of times above. Ask the Lord to help you listen. After all, there may be volumes of things you are to learn from every one you meet.

Do you hear that?

I must confess that my entire approach to preaching is unorthodox and, perhaps, inadequate, at least in the eyes of those who so faithfully equipped me throughout my educational years. This great revelation came to me a bit ago while I was out shoveling the snow off of my driveway. For whatever it is worth, shoveling snow is a terrific venue for thinking.

And meditating. Which is why this matter of my preaching preparation is on my mind.

When I preach I don’t use any notes. I never have really; though for a couple of years while as a pastor in Dallas I utilized an outline-concept that was found in the worship folder each week. Eventually I did away with that because, frankly, it just wasn’t me. But when I say I don’t use notes while preaching that is not at all said with some pride, as if I were saying, “Gee, look at me . . . I don’t use notes.” Much better preachers than I exist, and they use notes of some kind, or read straight from a manuscript. The issue with the notes is just that for me to use them is like a ball and chain.

It has its drawbacks. The fact is I have never since my seminary days manuscripted a sermon. And for about five years now I have rarely written down any outlines or in-depth notes, aside from cryptic things I might place in the margin of my Bible. Honestly, I a bit ashamed of this. Think of the volume of material that could be available if over these past couple of decades I’d been writing things down. When I think of it I can get quite aggravated.

People ask me all the time about this—wanting to know how I can preach a 45 minute sermon without any notes. “Do you memorize your sermons?” is the most common question. And the answer is, “No, I’m not that smart.”

“No. That’s not true. You must be smart,” someone will kindly offer. “No,” I’ll say. “I’m really not. The fact is I just do what I do.”

Which begs the question: what do I do? I really only think about it when people ask me, and then beyond that I really don’t think about it. As I say, I just kind of do whatever it is I do. But then, if I were to give it some honest reflection, what exactly is it that I would discover? Well, this takes me back to the driveway and the snow-shovel.

You see, early this morning I was reading over the passage I am to preach this coming Sunday. It was early, I was drinking my coffee, sitting in front of a fire, quietly praying over and reading through the text. Occasionally I marked something with my pencil in my Bible, penned some cryptic item in the margin on the page, and then closed my Bible knowing that I needed to simply do some spiritual chewing on the morsels that were being gleaned.

Later in the morning I ventured out with snow-shovel in hand, ready to conquer the glistening drifts in the driveway. Somewhere in the middle of the battle against the still-falling snow my mind and heart drifted back to the text I was working on earlier in the morning. I was praying, was chewing, was wording this thing or that thing a certain way, preaching to the falling flakes, seemingly to the rhythm of the shovel scraping the driveway. And then, as if someone whispered in my ear, a whole dimension of the sermon came roaring into my mind, something critical, the missing elements, those things that would allow me to take the substance of the text and translate those things into the transformational points that every worthwhile sermon should have. And as soon as I returned to the warmth of my study I opened my Bible, read through the passage again, and it all added up, my heart finally at ease, as if the thing intuitively sought after had been found, making me that much more ready to, well, preach.

Manuscripting I do not do, though I sure wish I did. Putting down on paper myriad outlines and sentence structures is something I let go of years ago, something that mentally happens now. Studying my Greek or Hebrew is still a priority, and I am forever thankful for the ability to do that. Hashing and rehashing the culture items, the literary or grammatical details, the historical references, and the present needs, are still pivotal to turning a good sermon.

All these I do, at least in my simple mind. But in the end it is the thing that happened in the driveway that works best for me, what the ancients called meditatio, and what I in Fargo, North Dakota, simply call meditation, a lost art to be sure, but one that defines me whether I realize it or not.