Love Well #leadership 01
I’ve come to believe that there is one thing that’s most important as a leader...
...especially a pastoral leader. When I think about who’s in charge, I have one most important attribute.
It’s not their education or expert authority.
It’s not their Emotional Intelligence score.
It’s not their ability to handle conflict, their cultural relevance, their strategic or visionary gifting, or their incredible faithfulness to Scripture.
I have one leadership attribute that matters most to me:
Do they love well?
That’s it. That’s the leadership trait I care the most about. At the end of the day, when all of their words, big events, ministries, audacious goals, big visions, capital campaigns, board meetings, sermon series, their leadership walk and talk, their trials and tribulations, their triumphs and successes: when they’re all said and done I have one question. "Was this leader known as someone who loved others well?"
Another way to ask the same question is, "Did they love others with the love Jesus has shown us?"
If I have ten minutes with the lead pastor of a church, I’ll spend that time trying to get a feel for their capacity for demonstrating God’s love: to their staff, their congregation, the people who don’t agree with them, their community and city, those who don’t know Jesus, and their detractors.
For me, this is the most important trait of any pastoral leader: how well they love like Jesus loves.
That’s a big ask, so let me clarify: No human being is able to always love like Jesus loves. We’re finite human beings. I’m not asking for a perfect leader - they don’t exist. What I’m looking for is a pastoral leader who, when you look over the arc of their ministry, they did their best to love well.
They took time to mourn with the grieving, celebrate with the joyous, and lovingly walk with the rebellious.
When they made mistakes, they noticed the people they hurt and they owned it.
When they invariably got over-zealous with their grand vision, they came down to earth and apologized to those who got run over or left behind.
They served others - their congregation, their staff, their volunteers, and the community - without expecting acknowledgment or accolades. They served others in secret, where no one knew what they were doing.
A friend of mine is one of the IT employees for a very large church, and he told me this story about the lead pastor:
One night the network team was doing an install or upgrade and had stayed late at the church building after most of the staff had gone home. This is normal for IT people, who have to perform maintenance on IT stuff when the staff isn’t using the IT stuff - which is usually after-hours. The lead pastor was on his way out of the building, when he stopped in and asked if there was anything he could do to help. The IT guys said, “no” and thanked him, and he went on his way.
When the IT team was done with their work, they headed home. It was winter and it’d been snowing all day, and they were not looking forward to digging their cars out from under the snow. But when they got to the parking lot, they saw that someone had scraped the windows clear on every one of their cars. For those of you who live in warmer climates, ice and snow collect on your car windows and has to be scraped off the glass by hand. It’s unpleasant hard work that you often have to do with a freezing wind cutting through you the entire time. So believe me, to have someone scrape your windows in the winter is a genuine kindness in the Midwest.
They wondered who did and, and being the IT guys, they went back into the building and pulled up the parking lot surveillance footage. And what they see? They saw the lead pastor of an enormous megachurch scraping their windshields before he headed home. He didn’t expect to be seen. It wasn’t a publicity stunt. It wasn’t done so he could leverage it for the upcoming sermon series. It was a secret kindness that briefly revealed a servant’s heart of love. And not just any love - a love motivated by the sacrificial grace of Jesus Christ.
THAT’s the kind of story I want people to be telling me about the lead pastor of the church I’m attending. I want to know that THIS is his or her reputation. I want to know that they’re doing their best to love well.
When I say, “This is the most important thing to me,” I mean it. I’m willing to put up with a lot of things if I know the leader loves well.
I’m willing to tolerate haphazard and distracted leadership.
I’m wiling to sit under a leader who struggles to cast vision.
I’m willing to endure less-than-stellar sermons, below average worship, and terrible coffee if I know the leader loves well.
I’m even willing to attend a church that is theologically divergent from my beliefs so that I might have the honor to serve under a lead pastor who loves well.
It’s that important to me.
“If I have all of these incredible gifts - I’m an amazing prophetic teacher and leader - but I don’t have love, then I’m just noise.”
That’s what the Apostle Paul says so well in 1 Corinthians 13. That’s the love I’m talking about: the same sacrificial, servant-minded, unearned love that Paul is describing.
“If I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have faith that can move mountains - but I don’t have love - then I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:2
I have loved poorly in leadership at times in my life. Out of a desire to please someone else, or to achieve some objective that seemed really important at the time, or just out of fear of being wrong, I've hurt people with the way I led. I know there are people who roll their eyes, or scowl, or who’s hearts are quietly darkened when my name is mentioned. There's no avoiding the leadership reality that some people who follow you will never like you or your leadership. But I desire for those people to dislike me despite the fact that I loved well.
Because, at the end of the day, as the Apostle Peter says so well,
“Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8
I’m praying that my efforts to love well over the past decade or so are what I’ll be remembered for. That for every person who I’ve hurt, there are 50 or 100 that I've loved well. Because love covers over a multitude of sins - even the reconciliation that never happened, the rash word spoken in frustration, and the wounds that were never mended.
I want the people at my funeral to talk about how I loved well. I want them to tell the stories of how I loved them like Jesus loved them - or at least did my best.
If I’m going to sit under a spiritual leader and willingly subject myself to their teaching, theology, and worldview, I want to know that they’re doing their best to love others well. It’s the most important thing.
What experience have you had with a pastor who loved well? What was that like?
What experience have you had with a pastor who struggled to love others well? What was that like?
What would it look like for you to love others well in your life situation right now?
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