Christian Leadership

"A Christian leader is not a leader because they announced a new idea and tries to convince others of its worth; he is a leader because he faces the world with eyes full of expectation, with expertise to take away the veil that covers it hidden potential.  Christian leadership is called ministry precisely to express that in the service of others new life can be brought about.  It is this service which gives eyes to see the flower breaking through the cracks in the street, ears to hear a word of forgiveness muted by hatred and hostility, and hands to feel new life under the cover of death and destruction."

"Leadership therefor is not called Christian because it is permeated with optimism against all the odds of life, but because it it grounded in the historic Christ-event which is understood as a definitive breach in the deterministic chain of human trial and error, and as a dramatic affirmation that there is light on the other side of darkness."

Taken and adapted from The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen