The Four Postures of the Spiritual Leader of the Future (Part 1)

These postures are taken from the original ebook, The Four Postures of the Spiritual Leader of the Future, which is available on our website.

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Much has been made about the actions, attitudes and thoughts of a leader,but I’ve found few books that talk about the importance of the posture of a leader. Our words and actions are crucial as leaders, but as posture has even greater potential. We often overlook posture and its power. Posture, of course, includes our non-verbal body language. But it’s more than that. If our content –our words and actions – communicate what we say and think, but it is our posture that communicates what we believe, value and prioritize. Our posture clearly communicates our motivations – why we are doing what we are doing.

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The Laborer - The Posture of Action Oriented Work

The Christian story is a belief that God rescued and redeemed humanity, saved us when we were unable to save ourselves. But taken too far, we can come to believe we have no role to play whatsoever. When we read the Scriptures accurately we come to see that we do have a role to play. It is not in the role of saving or rescuing or redeeming, but in participating with this saving, rescuing and redeeming God. We are called to work. God wants us to be laborers. In fact, we’re called to work hard.

We’re called to be co-laborers with Christ. Luke 10:2 reads: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send our workers into his harvest field.”

Jesus says to ask Him to send out even more workers into his field.

We seem to mix up work and grace. It was Dallas Willard who set it straight when he wrote that the gospel is not against work; the gospel is against earning. I’ve never met an effective spiritual leader who was lazy. Grace is not about doing nothing; it is about working hard, but with the proper gospel motivation. It is where we are motivated to work out of love, not out of insecurity or pride or self-serving motives or selfish ambition. This is not about legalism or working hard enough to be in right standing relationship with God.

We work not for the gospel, but because of it. Spiritual leadership is not a job; it’s a calling. We’re not punching clocks here. We are giving our lives as Christian leaders to the work of Christ. Selfless, demanding, life-giving work of the gospel. We serve others, we serve our communities.

We are co-laborers. We have to work together – work with; we do not work alone. So many leaders feel the weight and burden of loneliness in their work. But we’re called to work together— with God and with others. We are not to do it all ourselves.

We labor, not to earn favor from God, but because his grace has already been extended to us and our work flows out of that freeing reality. We don’t work for the gospel, but because of it. And like the apostle Paul, we work hard. We are to love God with all of our strength. It’s time to get to work.