“Your talent and giftedness as a leader have the potential to take you farther than your character can sustain you. That ought to scare you.” -Andy Stanley
Character matters for leaders. The above quote alludes to the fact that many times what brings down Christian leaders is not so much that they could not do their jobs well or competently but rather that they did not have the requisite character to do their job with integrity. Right now you can probably name three or four prominent Evangelical leaders who have had their ministries crash and burn around them THIS YEAR. Character is crucial.
Jeff Iorg begins his book The Character of Leadership by saying “In my twenties, I was determined to change the world. In my thirties, I tried to reform the church. In my early forties, I discovered I was the problem” (p. 1). Dr. Iorg has all the right experience to write a book on this subject: he was a pastor for many years (including planting a successful church in the Pacific Northwest), a denominational leader for the Southern Baptist Convention, and currently is the president of Golden Gate Baptist Seminary [1]. But he has also learned many leadership and character issues the hard way and seeks to pass on what he has learned in these decades of experience.
This is not a book about how to DO leadership. It is about how to BE a leader. (p. 2)
Dr. Iorg shares that the main ways he has seen God shape himself and other leaders has been using 1) the Bible 2) the leader’s circumstances and 3) disciplined discernment. “God is committed to shaping you into the image of Jesus. He uses his Word to set the standard and allows circumstances to turn up the heat. Discernment, asking the right question and allowing enough time to pass for perspective to reveal God’s purpose, is essential to understanding what God is doing” (p. 17).
How then does Dr. Iorg approach the subject? And does he succeed in his approach?
misterjoshuaray 