Lead: 12 gospel principles for leadership in the church, by Paul Tripp 

What can we do to prevent pastors from leaving the ministry? Tripp is insightful, thoughtful, and deeply caring. His moral lens is excellent, but is it sufficient?

Lead: 12 gospel principles for leadership in the church 
By Paul Tripp
Crossway Books
ISBN: 978-1433567636
Reviewed by Terry Young

Paul is a well-known pastor and has written a heartfelt response to the crisis of pastors who are found wanting and leave the ministry. Its central audience is pastors but if, like me, you aren’t a pastor, the moral insights still apply. 

I like the way Paul broadens the debate – don’t just blame the pastor, examine the team. I would go further: where leadership is a problem the whole church must be involved.

Back to the chase: bad things happen, and people do bad things. We need to stop it happening. It’s all true, but it’s not all the truth. Paul offers 12 principles – one a chapter – to meet the challenge. He is insightful, thoughtful, and deeply caring. His moral lens is excellent: is it sufficient?

I’m concerned that this diagnostic framework may be too narrow. If as a pastor I subscribed wholesale to this framework and found my heart fluttering mildly over a scratch card or a new burger joint, or the cute jogger on alternate Thursdays, I doubt if I would tick my checklist of pre-symptomatic sins for the elders. At worst I’d not realise my danger, unfortunately, until too late.  Fortunately, neither would they. Which seems to be just what is happening. Can this approach change things?

As an extreme example, when George Washington lay dying, the doctor bled him in line with the dogma of the day. A second doctor arrived and between them they emptied about half the blood from his body.  He passed soon after and although he was fading anyway their scalpels did not heal but traumatised. Similarly, focusing solely on sin does not crack every problem.  For instance, disheartened Elijah is not beaten around the ears for his failings: God has a much more subtle message for those ears.

As well as writing from the heart, Paul writes from experience and his topics are practical and relevant: drink, money, marriage breakdown, aggression, control, and self-aggrandisement. Encouragingly, he is also hot on restoring fallen pastors.  When he writes of those caught in drink or porn, I can see that rehabilitation is absolutely needed. When he pleads against dismissal, I’m with him all the way.

Moreover, he wants to address these issues within a leadership community (259 times on Kindle). I think I’m with him there, too, but could only find hints as to what this is or how it works. I guess the term is clear for him but given the centrality of the concept I’d like to know more, especially because I suspect that the right leadership community could enrich this leadership framework. For me, the other missing group is the rank and file of the church. We’ve got to be in this together.

Paul writes honestly. He tells stories of past hurts (with good grace) and shares lessons he learned the hard way. Even when recounting disasters that overtook others, he shares how profoundly he was affected. This gives his narrative a personal quality which is easy to relate to – a strength.

The source of this relatability is also a weakness since some scenarios are crying out for an interpretation beyond his experience or Bible reading. Others in his church will certainly have keys to these problems, keys of which he seems unaware.  So, when a pastor announces that he is packing in – a rocky marriage but no porn, embezzlement or entanglements – and has no aspirations other than to be free of the church, we need a deeper diagnosis of the pastor and the team surrounding him in startled surprise. There are lists of such factors, but little that is systematic.

Sometimes, when we ask with the disciples, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents…’ the answer really is, ‘Neither…’ (John 9:2&3). We need more sophisticated measures to understand all that is going on in these excellent illustrations. I accept, for instance, that gluttony is a sin of our day (pp 82-83) but not necessarily its relevance to overweight pastors. He recommends the gym: I swim regularly but remind myself there are limits to my gain, for: ‘physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.’ (1 Timothy 4:8)

The Bible offers rich models of leadership. Huge swathes explore why bad things happen to good people and how good people make poor decisions. There is lots about the multifaceted nature of gradual decline. The Bible pleads with people to get on without blaming either side. It nuances the difference between doing the right thing and the wisdom to do things right. Jesus tells perplexing parables, including one about a manager with dodgy morals who was commended for his cleverness around a ticklish sacking (Luke 16:1-9). The Bible is packed with stories of leadership, teamwork, groupthink and community action. Moreover, recent research into groups, management and leaders reveals how profound and relevant the Bible’s syllabus is.

The Bible’s leaders experience sickness, failure, impairment, physical weakness, even spells in the wilderness. Such setbacks are often integral to the final product, not simply tests or distractions on the way: they are not avoidable if the end goal is to be reached. That said, Paul has taken his essentially moral analysis as far as it can go and has done so with insight and sensitivity.

Paul’s sweat and tears are mixed with the ink he has poured into this book. As I read, I sense a good man worth listening to. I would trust him in person even where I don’t buy his framework. His book is well-written and relatively short, so if you can afford it, read it.  And while you are at it, please ask Christian friends who are bearing fruit in education, healthcare, industry, commerce, hospitality or research, about the Bible passages that light up for them when they think about leadership. That will be a blessing, too.
 

Terry Young is a missionary kid who read science and engineering. After a PhD in lasers, he worked in R&D before becoming a professor, when he taught project management, information systems and e-business, while leading research in healthcare.

He set up Datchet Consulting to have fun with both faith and work and worshipped at Baptist churches in Slough for 19 years before moving to the New Forest