Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

Book Description:

The church is experiencing a leadership crisis.

What can we do to prevent pastors from leaving the ministry?

For every celebrity pastor exiting the ministry in the spotlight, there are many more lesser-known pastors leaving in the shadows. Pastor and best-selling author Paul David Tripp argues that lurking behind every pastoral failure is the lack of a strong leadership community. Tripp draws on his decades of ministry experience to give churches twelve gospel principles necessary to combat this leadership crisis. Each of these principles, built upon characteristics such as humility, dependency, and accountability, will enable new and experienced leaders alike to focus their attention on the ultimate leadership model: the gospel.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Crisis
1. Achievement
  Principle 1: A ministry community, whose time is controlled by doing the business of the church tends to be spiritually unhealthy.
2. Gospel
  Principle 2: If your leaders are going to be tools of God's grace, they need to be committed to nurture that grace in one another's lives.
3. Limits
  Principle 3: Recognizing God-ordained limits of gift, time, energy and maturity is essential to leading a ministry community well.
4. Balance
  Principle 4: Teaching your leaders to recognize and balance the various callings in their life is a vital contribution to their success.
5. Character
  Principle 5: A spiritually healthy leadership community acknowledges that character is more important than structure or strategies.
6. War
  Principle 6: It is essential to understand that leadership in any gospel ministry is spiritual warfare.
7. Servants
  Principle 7: Being called to leadership in the church is a call to a life of willing sacrifice and service.
8. Candor
  Principle 8: A spiritually healthy leadership community is characterized by the humility of approachability and the courage of loving honesty.
9. Identity
  Principle 9: Where your leaders look for identity will always determine how they lead.
10. Restoration
  Principle 10: If a leadership community is formed by the gospel it will always be committed to a lifestyle of fresh starts and new beginnings.
11. Longevity
  Principle 11: For church leaders, ministry longevity is always the result of gospel community.
12. Presence
  Principle 12: You will only handle the inevitable weakness, failure, and sin of your leaders when you view them through the lens of the presence, power, promises, and grace of Jesus.

Author:

Paul David Tripp (DMin, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a pastor, award-winning author, and international conference speaker. He has written numerous books, including the best seller New Morning Mercies. His nonprofit ministry exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. Tripp lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Luella, and they have four grown children.

Endorsements:

"This book is the perfect complement to Tripp's Dangerous Calling. The warning of 'functional gospel amnesia' captures so well why this book is needed. Leaders do not need more gimmicks. Leaders need more grace. They need more gospel."
--Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

"The strength of this book lies in the way Tripp shapes his treatment of leadership by two things: his understanding of the gospel, and his grasp of the organic nature of the local church. At one level, this is an easy read; at another level, it is sometimes probing and painful."
--D. A. Carson, Theologian-at-Large, The Gospel Coalition

"While this book is written primarily for pastors and ministry leaders, it is appropriate for any Christ-following leaders who operate in the sacred or the secular. As a leader who spent thirty years in c-suite roles in business and now almost four years as a leader in a global ministry, I found the twelve gospel principles to be spot on. I encourage any leader, either in business or ministry, to pick this book up and digest it."
--Steve Shackelford, Chief Executive Officer, Redeemer City to City

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