Some excellent quotes on leadership and their primary work... from Leadership Journal via Dying Church:
Pastors need to redefine success. The popular model of success involves the ABCs - attendance, buildings, and cash. Instead of counting Christians, we need to weigh them. We weigh them by focusing on the most important kind of growth - love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, kindness, and so on - fruit in keeping with the Gospel and the kingdom. (Dallas Willard)
Soul cultivation goes before institution building...The forming of the soul that it might be a dwelling place for God is the primary work of the Christian leader. This is not an add-on, an option, or a third-level priority. Without this core activity, one almost guarantees that he/she will not last in leadership for a lifetime or what work is accomplished will become less and less reflective of God's honor and God's purposes. (Gordon MacDonald)
The way of a Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which the world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross...It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest. (Henri Nouwen)
