Journeys to Significance E-Book

Neil Cole

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: J-B Leadership Network Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 378

Beschreibung

A powerful, biblically based model of leadership development basedon the life of the Apostle Paul All churches, denominations, and parachurch organizations areeager for new models of leadership development. Cole uses the lifeand leadership lessons of the Apostle Paul to show how to developleaders who are skilled, dedicated, and always open to learningfrom experience. * Cole, a trusted, innovative authority, uses the four journeysof Paul to shows how leaders can grow to be more influential. * A publication from the acclaimed Leadership Network * Paul, the original "church planter," was veryinstrumental in the growth of Christianity--and a perfectmodel for today's leaders. Shows how Paul's leadership developed over the course ofhis life to get better and better with time and maturity--andhow they can do the same.

Leseprobe

Contents

About Leadership Network

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: Life Is a Series of Adventurous Journeys

Part One: Beginnings

Chapter 1: Born to a Destiny

Paul’s Birth and Early Life

Paul’s Mentors

My Destiny

Chapter 2: New Life

Saul’s Conversion and New Life

Paul Begins

Lessons of Inner-Life Development

Part Two: Maturing in Ministry and Life

Chapter 3: The First Journey

Paul’s Story: The First Journey

Lessons of the First Journey

Chapter 4: The Second Journey

Paul’s Story: The Second Journey

Lessons of the Second Journey

Part Three: Convergence and Afterglow

Chapter 5: The Third Journey

Paul’s Third Journey

Chapter 6: The Fourth Journey

Paul’s Story: The Fourth Journey

Lessons of the Fourth Journey

Onesimus, Lasting Fruit of the Fourth Journey

Conclusion: The Final Journey

Appendix 1: An Estimated Chronology for the Journeys of Paul

Appendix 2: What Went Wrong with the Jerusalem Church?

Notes

The Author

Scripture Index

Subject Index

Ancient Philippi, where Paul first reached Europeans with the Gospel on his second journey.

Copyright © 2011 by Neil Cole. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cole, Neil, date

Journeys to significance: charting a leadership course from the life of Paul / Neil Cole.

p. cm.—(Jossey-Bass leadership network series; 48)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-470-52944-7 (hardback); 978-1-118-00543-9 (ebk); 978-1-118-00544-6 (ebk); 978-1-118-00545-3 (ebk)

1. Paul, the Apostle, Saint. 2. Christian leadership. I. Title.

BS2506.3.C64 2011

225.9'2—dc22

2010046806

Leadership Network Titles

The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church Through Blogs, Brian Bailey and Terry Storch

Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners, Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr

Leading from the Second Chair: Serving Your Church, Fulfilling Your Role, and Realizing Your Dreams, Mike Bonem and Roger Patterson

Hybrid Church: The Fusion of Intimacy and Impact, Dave Browning

The Way of Jesus: A Journey of Freedom for Pilgrims and Wanderers, Jonathan S. Campbell with Jennifer Campbell

Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision and Inspiration, Samuel R. Chand

Leading the Team-Based Church: How Pastors and Church Staffs Can Grow Together into a Powerful Fellowship of Leaders, George Cladis

Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens, Neil Cole

Church 3.0: Upgrades for the Future of the Church, Neil Cole

Journeys to Significance: Charting a Leadership Course from the Life of Paul, Neil Cole

Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders, Earl Creps

Reverse Mentoring: How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and Why We Should Let Them, Earl Creps

Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments, and Practices of a Diverse Congregation, Mark DeYmaz

Leading Congregational Change Workbook, James H. Furr, Mike Bonem, and Jim Herrington

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay

Baby Boomers and Beyond: Tapping the Ministry Talents and Passions of Adults over Fifty, Amy Hanson

Leading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey, Jim Herrington, Mike Bonem, and James H. Furr

The Leader’s Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation, Jim Herrington, Robert Creech, and Trisha Taylor

Whole Church: Leading from Fragmentation to Engagement, Mel Lawrenz

Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out, Robert Lewis and Wayne Cordeiro, with Warren Bird

Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement, Will Mancini

A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey, Brian D. McLaren

The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian, Brian D. McLaren

Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church, Reggie McNeal

Practicing Greatness: 7 Disciplines of Extraordinary Spiritual Leaders, Reggie McNeal

The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church, Reggie McNeal

A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders, Reggie McNeal

The Millennium Matrix: Reclaiming the Past, Reframing the Future of the Church, M. Rex Miller

Your Church in Rhythm: The Forgotten Dimensions of Seasons and Cycles, Bruce Miller

Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches, Milfred Minatrea

The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World, Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk

Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition, Alan J. Roxburgh

Relational Intelligence: How Leaders Can Expand Their Influence Through a New Way of Being Smart, Steve Saccone

Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers, Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird

The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community, Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw

The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence, Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and Ken McElrath

Beyond Megachurch Myths: What We Can Learn from America’s Largest Churches, Scott Thumma and Dave Travis

The Other Eighty Percent: Turning Your Church’s Spectators into Active Disciples, Scott Thumma and Warren Bird

The Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken About Pastoral Transitions, Carolyn Weese and J. Russell Crabtree

To Dana, my love. As I pause and look back over the course of all my own journeys, one thing stands out: Dana, you are, without a doubt, the second best decision of my life. I constantly thank the very best decision for giving me the wisdom to say, “I do” on that June morning, and for the greater miracle of persuading you to do the same. There have been many times you have had to wait for me to catch up on our journeys, but I am grateful for your willingness to walk through them all with me.

About Leadership Network

Leadership Network’s mission is to accelerate the impact of OneHundredX leaders. These high-capacity leaders are like the hundredfold crop that comes from seed planted in good soil as Jesus described in Matthew 13:8.

Leadership Network . . .

– explores the “what’s next?” of what could be.

– creates “aha!” environments for collaborative discovery.

– works with exceptional “positive deviants.”

– invests in the success of others through generous relationships.

– pursues big impact through measurable kingdom results.

– strives to model Jesus through all we do.

Believing that meaningful conversations and strategic connections can change the world, we seek to help leaders navigate the future by exploring new ideas and finding application for each unique context. Through collaborative meetings and processes, leaders map future possibilities and challenge one another to action that accelerates fruitfulness and effectiveness. Leadership Network shares the learnings and inspiration with others through our books, concept papers, research reports, e-newsletters, podcasts, videos, and online experiences. This in turn generates a ripple effect of new conversations and further influence.

In 1996 Leadership Network established a partnership with Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, to develop a series of creative books that provide thought leadership to innovators in church ministry. Leadership Network Publications present thoroughly researched and innovative concepts from leading thinkers, practitioners, and pioneering churches.

Leadership Network is a division of OneHundredX, a global ministry with initiatives around the world.

To learn more about Leadership Network, go to www.leadnet.org

To learn more about OneHundredX, go to www.100x.org

A well said to have belonged to Paul’s family in Tarsus.

Preface and Acknowledgments

In little more than ten years St. Paul established the church in four provinces of the Empire: Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia. Before a.d. 47 there were no churches in these provinces; in a.d. 57 St. Paul could speak as if his work there was done, and could plan extensive tours into the far west without anxiety lest the churches which he had founded might perish in his absence for want of his guidance and support.

—Roland Allen

One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

—the apostle Paul (Philippians 3:13–14)

Finding My Way on a Road Without Signs

After finishing some meetings in Indiana, I had rushed to the Fort Wayne airport only to find that my flight to Chicago had been canceled. In Chicago I was supposed to conduct a seminar on leadership formation, but the airline had canceled the forty-minute shuttle because of weather conditions.

In Fort Wayne the night sky was beautifully clear, and it wasn’t even cold. Chicago was less then two hundred miles distant, so how could there be that sort of extreme weather only a short jump away from such a calm night sky?

I was angry. I suspected that airline officials were lying about why they had canceled the flight. My nastier self was convinced that they just didn’t have enough passengers to warrant the expense of the flight and had used the weather as an excuse to cancel it. I can be such a cynic! I had no other option but to rent a car and launch into the four-hour drive. It was already close to eight o’clock in the evening, and my seminar started at nine the next morning.

The drive on the toll road from Fort Wayne to Chicago was easy and uneventful, confirming my suspicions all the way. Around midnight, as I was approaching the Chicago city limits, I was talking on the phone with my wife when it started to snow. I told my wife the snow was pretty but certainly not heavy enough for flights to be canceled. But as I drove on and entered the city, the snow was really filling the air, and the wind off Lake Michigan was blowing so hard that the snow, heavy now, was blowing horizontally rather than falling vertically. The temperature had dropped, too, and it was extremely cold. It was so cold, in fact, that the snow blowing in off the lake was sticking to all the road signs, which had frozen. I couldn’t even tell where I was, or where I was going. I began to question my initial skepticism, and soon I had to repent of my earlier anger and cynicism. Because of my judgmental attitude, I had some business to do with the Lord!

Meanwhile, I was effectively snow blind. Imagine trying to find a specific address in a large, unfamiliar city without the aid of highway or street signs! Although I could talk on the phone from my car, this was still before GPS became a feature of rental cars, and so my clear written-out directions to my hotel might as well have been Grandma’s recipe for chocolate peanut butter cookies. I was alone, seemingly the only traveler lost on this four-lane highway in this snow-covered world. I felt as if I were trapped in an episode of The Twilight Zone—but without the signpost up ahead to tell me so! The only other person I came across was the lonely and cold tollbooth attendant, who either could not or would not help me out. Apparently all he could do was grunt.

I pulled off the road and into a parking lot, just to think and pray—and scream as I hit the roof of the rental car. It was now after one in the morning, and I was not feeling good about calling anyone in town that late. Besides, how could I even tell anyone where I was?

I might not have had a human guide, but I did have access to God, who always knows the right path. After some lengthy complaints, I finally asked Him to help me figure this situation out.

And an idea came to me. I drove on and pulled into a twenty-four-hour convenience store and requested a map. What good was a map, you may wonder, if I still couldn’t read the highway signs? But the first step in finding your way is to recognize where you are. It is significantly helpful to find out how lost you really are! So first I had the clerk show me on the map just where I was.

Next I located where on the map I was supposed to be. It is important to know what your destination is. Where is it you really want to be? That tired adage is still true—he who aims at nothing hits it.

Then I looked carefully at the map and actually counted the number of highway off-ramps and the number of streets before each of the turns I would have to make in order to get to my destination. I took note of significant landmarks that would confirm that I was heading in the right direction. It was a desperate but feasible plan that I was determined to make work unless and until God provided another important piece of the solution.

As I walked out to my car with this plan, I noticed that a limo driver was finishing pumping gas into his car. As ingenious and creative as my own plan was, my Father gave me a better one. I asked this veteran of the streets of Chicago if he would be willing to guide me to my hotel, figuring that since he knew the path, he didn’t need the street signs. He agreed. I drove in the dark, without signs, following someone who had been down the path before—all along checking my progress with the landmarks I had memorized from the map. I had already spent four and a half hours driving through rural Indiana, and now it took me another two hours to find my destination in Chicago. Never had a Holiday Inn looked so inviting!

Road signs are something we see every day, and yet we all take them for granted until we don’t have any. Life doesn’t usually come with lit-up street signs telling you when and where to turn next and what landmark is ahead. That’s why you need a good map of the landmarks you can expect—and, hopefully, an experienced guide.

Think of this book as a guide to the road, with landmarks you can follow. Think of the apostle Paul as a seasoned vet who has followed the path before you and can now show you the way to your finish. Like Paul, we are called to find our own place in the unfolding journeys of our lives and to decide that nothing less than finishing well will do. In this book, I hope to point out some of the more obvious landmarks and paths of leadership formation that can guide you toward a strong finish to your life.

I do not in any way want to imply that I have lived out all the journeys that are described in this book. I hope not—I am too young to die! But, in reality, the only people qualified to write with that kind of authority about finishing well have already left this planet, leaving the rest of us to venture some ideas. Like Paul, I can say that I am still pressing on toward the goal; and, like Paul, I do know what the goal is—to finish well and become more like Christ with each step of the journey. I am not Paul, but I have lived enough, watched enough, and read enough that I can put down these thoughts even if some of the final chapters are still only a pursuit for my own life.

What makes this book different from the many similar books already available is that it does not just analyze Paul’s life historically and present missional insights and theological implications. This book offers strategic missional lessons that can help you be more fruitful; but, even more, it focuses on the leadership formation that Paul went through. He is not just an example to missionaries, theologians, and church planters. He is an example, first of all, of a follower of Christ who demonstrates for us the paths we all must take to finish well. We can all follow him as he follows Christ.

For every leader there will be seasons when clear direction is sadly lacking and normal ways of operating are no longer useful. Lost in snow blindness, what will you do? Giving up, making excuses, shifting blame, shouting expletives, continuing to press the accelerator in false hope while heading in the wrong direction—all these paths are ill advised. We need to be able to depend on God for creative solutions that get us to our longed-for destinations.

If you are in a holding pattern and seem unable to make any of the progress you once hoped for, here are some important steps I learned in a freak snowstorm; they can apply to your own journey in leadership formation:

1. Pause and take a breath.

2. Get your bearings.

3. Take an inventory of your progress (or lack thereof).

4. Determine how it is God wants you to finish, and ask God to lead you forward from wherever you are now, step by step.

5. Courageously follow His lead, no matter what it costs you.

Finishing well is not something that you do at the end of your life—it is what you determine to do every day of your life. You do not finish well accidentally. Determine now that you will finish well or die trying—which, in the end, is really what it means to finish well.

Acknowledgments

During the summer months of 1994, I read two incredible books. And while I was reading them, I was also reading the book of Acts in its entirety.

The first of those two books was Missionary Methods: Saint Paul’s or Ours, first published in 1912 and written by the late Anglican missionary Roland Allen.1 I am in his debt, and I tread with much humility and caution as I set out to add anything to a subject so well treated by a scholar of his caliber. His work is profound. I want to say that his book was ahead of its time, but its wisdom is timeless, and its application is universal. If missional work is in your heart, read Roland Allen’s books; you will not be disappointed.

The second book was The Making of a Leader, by J. Robert Clinton.2 Dr. Clinton has devoted his life and his career to discovering the paths and processes of leadership formation, and his discoveries form much of the framework of this book. Though I regret that I have never met Dr. Clinton or taken any of his classes, he has been my instructor through his writing, especially the book I read in 1994. I am indebted to him for the years of hard work he invested in studying more than a thousand Christian leaders who have finished well.3 He is a pioneer cartographer who went before us, marking and measuring the landscape and identifying the landmarks. Eventually he sketched out the first drafts of the maps that would later become the standard that guides us all. Any of us can turn to the back of our Bible and find maps of Paul’s journeys, but the road map of this book follows the lines carefully drawn out by this able scholar and cannot be found in any copy of the Bible.

Thus I stood on very tall and broad shoulders in order to write this book, and the catalytic insights from my readings during the summer of 1994 took root in my mind and wouldn’t let me go. It was during this period that I discovered the simple framework for this book. But it could not be written until I had actually walked some of the well-worn paths that were laid before me. As a result, this book has been sixteen years in the making, years in which I have been studying even more books, observing people, poring over Acts and the Pauline epistles, and, most of all, encountering many of their truths at first hand. The number of books written about the apostle Paul is apparently endless, and I have benefited greatly from all the outstanding scholarship that preceded me.

I also owe a debt of thanks to Bob Logan, who helped me to first publish and refine these thoughts. Bob is a key person whom I encountered on my own journey, and my life took a detour I have never regretted. In many ways, as Barnabas did for Paul, Bob took me off the bench and put me in the game.

My senior editor at Jossey Bass, Sheryl Fullerton, has helped me with three books so far, but none has demanded more of her skill and devotion than this one. It is not lost on me how much work she contributed to this book, and I owe her a debt of gratitude as well.

I am grateful to Chris Grant, and to my dear friends at Leadership Network as well, for their valuable assistance in getting this project and several others to publication.

Also deserving of thanks are two of my friends, Dr. Traver Dougherty and Dr. Randall Smith, who scrutinized the manuscript and gave me lots of helpful corrections and pointers. I was helped as well by the comments of Dr. Ian Scott.

It was very unusual, and not a coincidence in the least, that in the three years before I wrote this book my ministry brought me to visit almost all the places where Paul traveled over his life. I want to thank those who walked with me over the very rocks that Paul himself traveled. You have been the Barnabas (Carol Davis), Silas (Dezi Baker and Wolf Simson), and Timothy (Heather and Erin Cole) of my own life, and I love you all.

I also wish to express thanks to the people at Forest Home Christian Conference Center for providing me a secluded place where I could get this project done. In 1978, as a young student at that very campground, I was walking alone in the dark along a different kind of “road to Damascus.” Snow was crunching under the weight of my every step. I was without a flashlight to guide me but could see the path well enough. Looking up through the dark silhouettes of tall pine trees, and beyond them, I saw an endless sky lit up by a canopy of unending stars. Occasionally a falling star whisked by, as if Heaven were winking at me. For the first time, I heard God’s voice call out to me from the heavens above. I understood that there is a God to whom I will be accountable for my life, that He loves me, and that He came to us as the Son of Man—Jesus. And a year later, I surrendered to His call. It seems fitting that thirty years later I was drawn back to the place where my spiritual journey began, and where I could reflect on how it is that God leads us all on such journeys.

Laodicea, where a church was started during Paul’s third journey by Epaphras.

Introduction

Life Is a Series of Adventurous Journeys

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

—Hebrews 13:7–8

Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.

—the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 11:1)

My brother and I were born less than a year apart, and when were were in middle school we went on a safari to East Africa with our mother. This was an adventure most young boys only dream about. Anything but tame, the trip featured close encounters with wild animals of every kind.

Our journey took us first to a hotel on stilts, called Treetops, overlooking a water hole. Wild animals would come from miles around to drink at the water hole, and tourists like us could observe them from above in their natural habitat. Of course we were not the first ones to have had this view—the monkeys and baboons had been living in the treetops since long before tourists had ever stayed in that hotel. The afternoon when we checked in, we were warned to keep our windows closed so that these curious forest dwellers didn’t steal our possessions while we were asleep. The primates were so at home at the Treetops that they would actually mingle with the guests, sometimes reaching right into their bags to take shiny objects such as cameras or glasses. I learned, however, not to think that these animals were tame simply because they were comfortable being close to people.

The morning after we arrived, I was on the top platform and saw a gray baboon reach into a woman’s purse to steal her camera. He was close enough for me to reach out and touch him, and I was foolish enough to do it. I actually grabbed his tail, just for an instant, and in a flash the animal spun around, screaming with his mouth wide open. I saw teeth that were longer than my second-period math class and sharper than my classmate Rachel Cohen (who always skewed the grading curve higher). I quickly let go of the baboon’s tail and froze with fear. The baboon took the camera and left. I’m surprised he didn’t take a picture of the dumb look on my face, to give the rest of his troop a good laugh.

From Treetops, we traveled to the Amboselli game reserve. Our tour guide, hearing about my close encounter of the primate kind, decided to play a joke on me. He told me that the rhesus monkeys at our next stop were friendly toward tourists. When I found a monkey and tried to approach, it shrieked at me. I stepped back, and, seeing my timidity, the monkey stepped forward with new courage. Before I knew it, monkeys were dropping out of the sky to surround me, all of them screaming. Apparently they had all been in the tree over my head, and my trepidation had made them more brazen, too. And I, chased by a local gang of simian hoodlums defending their territory, took off running for my life. That evening I was not very hungry, so I decided to stay in our bungalow while my mother and my brother went up to the lodge for dinner. About dessert time, I had a remarkable recovery and felt hungry, so I decided to walk up to the lodge from our bungalow after dark. On the way to the lodge, I noticed something unusual, but since everything I was seeing was unusual to me, I didn’t think much of it. Throughout the evening, there was usually one or another zebra or impala grazing on the lawn, but this time there were none to be found. The lights inside the dining area were glowing, and I could see all the people inside, but none were at their tables. They were all pressed up against the glass. looking—at me! They were also waving at me. Some seemed to be urging me to return to my bungalow, and others appeared to want me to hurry up and get inside. I had no clue why, but I sped up. Once inside, I was told that a leopard was out on the grass and had been stalking me. Fortunately, the sharpshooters had their rifles trained on her in case she wanted a little dessert herself. I remember wondering how many kids at my school could boast that a leopard had stalked them during summer vacation.

Within a couple of weeks, I had seen cheetahs, lions, giraffes, elephants, and hordes of wildebeest. I had ridden in a Land Rover chased by a rhinoceros, and I had been grunted at in a very threatening way by a bull. I had tried to catch foot-long lizards that lived in a palace (Proverbs 30:28) and had been bitten by more flies than Steven King could use in a horror movie.

At our last stop, I watched my brother feed a large multicolored bird, which looked as if it had a mohawk haircut made of feathers. The bird was a crested crane, and it lived in the hotel lobby, where tourists could buy seeds for a few coins and feed it. I figured I could handle this, but by now my reputation had spread throughout the animal kingdom. As I approached that beautiful bird, it squawked at me in a threatening way and advanced with its long neck and sharp beak. Startled, I stepped back, and it came after me. My mother watched me being chased through the lobby by a large brightly colored bird with long legs and a long neck.

I tell you this lengthy story of my journey in Africa because it has a lesson about life and significance. My brother and I were about the same age and of the same upbringing. But whereas I came home from that trip lucky to have all my fingers and lots of stories, my brother had spent most of the trip reading a novel about adventures in Africa! We both had a great time, but only one of us came home with stories to tell (and, obviously, I still do). There are two kinds of people in the world—those who live the adventure, and those who read about others’ adventures. I determined a long time ago that I wasn’t going to be someone who only read about the adventures of others. I would live the kind of life others would want to read about. I want a life of full-gusto, go-for-it faith that risks everything on the belief that God is indeed real and will carry me through. I want to live a life of increasing significance or die trying.

On Leadership

I believe that we need leaders who will live adventurous lives and grow in significance with each new journey. Simply put, we really need people willing to surrender everything for Jesus, every day. That’s it. People who are willing to take a risk because Jesus first gave everything for them are the raw material that God can fashion into world changers. Leadership doesn’t start with an education, an obvious spiritual gift, or a charming and electric personality. The journey to significance starts with the mere willingness to surrender the status quo and take the first step of faith into the adventure. That same willingness will take you each step of the way forward; it is the most important foundation of a leader’s formation.

There are many books available on leadership today. A search for the word leader on the Amazon site returns almost 650,000 results, and the number seems to increase daily. One more published thought on the subject seems almost ridiculous. I myself have written three earlier resources addressing this subject.1 Is leadership really that hard?

In its basic essence, leadership is not hard to define. In fact, you can literally sum it up in one word: influence. It is not hard to find books about good leadership, but finding someone who leads well is not as easy.

Many have defined leadership as getting other people to do what you want them to. That is influence, so I guess it is a form of leadership, albeit one that is selfish and manipulative. Even when we convince ourselves that we are really only doing what we know to be for the good of those we are manipulating, it is still an insult at best and deceptive at worst. It tends to treat everyone as a child incapable of making a good decision. It also leaves the people being influenced unprepared to eventually grow on their own and lead others.

The best leaders are not those who have the most followers but those who develop and deploy other leaders. The true test of a leader’s influence is to look at what is left behind once the leader is gone. This lesson, however, is not something that one learns in an introductory course on leadership. It comes with the maturity that develops over the course of many struggles, setbacks and seeming failures. Perhaps this is why so few leaders today actually empower and release others but rather corral them in ministry contexts with the promise of services and entertaining productions. I wonder if our leaders have not fought through the lessons necessary to their becoming leaders who finish well and, as a result, have ended up simply casting their own vision and peddling their own influence. Instead of new leaders, the product of such influence peddlers is a growing congregation of consumers who beg to know “What have you done for me lately?” Or, as my friend Bob Logan says, “They’re all tuned in to the same radio station—W-I-I FM, What’s In It For Me?”

Why Another Book on Paul and Leadership?

What makes this book stand out from the 650,000 other books already available on leadership? There are many resources designed to teach you how to get others to help you get done what you want to accomplish. This is not that kind of book. There are also many books about how to develop other leaders. Some of those books say that leaders are made, and some of them say that leaders are born. This is not either kind of book. If anything, this book demonstrates that leadership is a both/and proposition. All are born to be made into influencers, whether that means bringing the Gospel to unreached groups of people, as Paul did, or raising children to be positive contributors to our society.

Another genre of leadership material looks at the kinds of character qualities necessary to being a good leader. Again, this book is not that sort of book. There are shelves of books that summarize the types of personalities and skills found in successful leaders. This book is not one of those. Some books look at the strategies and methods deployed by successful leaders, and this book is not strictly one of those, either, although there is some of that in here. There are also a lot of leadership biographies. But there are very few books that consider how God forms a leader over the course of a lifetime. This book is something of a blend of the last two kinds of book. I guess what makes this book unique is the way it treats its protagonist, the apostle Paul, and shows how his path to significance was actually quite a normal one that is available to us all.

The real trick is to be a successful leader in a context of difficult challenges. It is rare to lead throughout one’s lifetime and to increase in significance all along so that one finishes strong and leaves a legacy of strong leaders to carry on the work. This book aims to discover how God forms that type of leader. And it would be very difficult to find a better example of a world-changing leader who finished strong than the apostle Paul.

From two thousand years ago, Paul calls to us: “Follow me as I follow Christ.” This book takes that charge to heart, and it shows that you, too, can have increasing significance in life as you continue to follow the path toward Christ that Paul first laid down with his own steps. In this book we will examine the leadership trajectory of the apostle Paul and discover the ways he developed to become a man whom God used to change the world forever.

Some think that the church has emphasized Paul at the expense of Jesus. There may be truth in this accusation. I can understand why the church through the ages has been so enamored with Paul; he is, in a real sense, the father of the Gentile church. Two thousand years after his lifetime, he is still the apostle to the Gentiles. Whereas Jesus mentions the word church only twice, Paul clearly articulates what the church is to be about. When all is stripped away, however, the church is to be about Jesus. The church is focused on Paul, but he would say, “I have determined to know this: Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He always pointed us back to the true author and finisher of our faith—Jesus.

And so I believe that in order to understand Paul, one must first understand and love his Messiah, Jesus. My previous books, Organic Church and Organic Leadership, focus primarily on Jesus and His teachings that concern His kingdom.2 It is with that foundation that I am now going to dive into the book of Acts and the epistles of Paul to discover what it takes to make a leader who can turn the world upside down and withstand the onslaught of evil to finish strong. In a sense, this book follows my previous publications, fleshing them out in order to describe what following Christ can look like in a life that is willing to surrender everything for the Lord.

Some scholars have taken to studying Paul’s practices and compiling strategies built on his techniques. Several of these resources are exceptional and have had a great deal to do with my own understanding. Eckhard Schnabel’s Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies and Methods and his two-volume Early Christian Mission are valuable recent additions to the library on Paul’s strategies and the early church’s expansion. F. F. Bruce’s commentary on Acts and his Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free are outstanding and still set the bar for all subsequent works. The biographer John Pollock, in The Apostle: A Life of Paul, has done an outstanding job of synthesizing data from the New Testament as well as from geography, topography, and historical, cultural, and archaeological evidence. His narrative of Paul’s life is both compelling and insightful. I highly recommend this book as well as all these other resources.3

On Paul the Learner

I have made it a personal life pursuit to understand the explosive expansion of Christ followers described in the book of Acts. In reading the book at least a hundred times over the past twenty years, I have discovered some aspects of Paul’s developing leadership that I have not found in other books that cover his life. Most address Paul as a teacher of others, which of course he is. But I have come to see that the reason he is such a good teacher is that he is first a good learner.

In showing the lessons that Paul himself had to learn in order to become a better leader, this book seeks to show how we can all become better learners. Most books on Paul’s missional strategies tend to summarize a strategy based on a comprehensive look at all he did, but this book observes how Paul adapted, and how he grew more effective with each journey. In some cases, Paul abandoned some strategies as he matured and embraced others that were more effective. To take all that he did and boil it down to a single strategy is almost an insult to Paul the learner and to his Lord the Teacher.

I fear that many of us have viewed the historical passages of Scripture concerning leaders like Paul (and Peter or Mary, if you are Catholic) through lenses that do not allow for such heroes to make mistakes. We view their practices with an almost superstitious regard for their infallibility. I do not believe that the apostle himself would want this sort of blind devotion. In fact, it is not fair to him. When we adulate him in this way, we steal his humanity from him, and he loses one of his most important qualities—his ability to adapt, learn, and mature. And if we forfeit those aspects of Paul, he ceases to be an example for us to follow.

When it comes to examining the lives of heroic leaders in the Bible, we have two choices: we can view these characters as exceptional, one-of-a-kind people or we can see them as ordinary people with an exceptional Savior. I suppose that the former option is preferable to those who wish to excuse their own lack of significance, but I always choose the latter. I truly believe that the stories found between the table of contents and the concordance of the Bible are there to inspire us to live better lives. If the people in those stories are too far removed from our ordinary lives, we will never even try to follow their examples. So I have sought to understand the humanity and frailty of Paul and tried to avoid making him out to be a superhero of unattainable skills and character.

We can all learn the same lessons that Paul did and grow in our own significance as leaders. In the end, none of us will be Paul. Hopefully, we will be the people Jesus desires us to be, just as Paul was the person Jesus desired him to be, and we will be people of expanding significance. We can all walk through journeys of increasing significance in whatever field God leads us into. What we will find is that Paul’s formation as a leader was not at all exceptional, although the speed of his maturation and the intensity of his lessons are indeed exceptional and, as a result, his influence is unparalleled. Nevertheless, Paul’s paths and processes are quite familiar to all leaders.

I’ve never been a great mathematician, but I learned a couple of profound equations a few years back. (Don’t worry, they’re not complicated.) The first is 0 + 0 = 0. (Nothing remarkable there—pardon the pun.) The first equation becomes more revealing when it’s followed by the second: 0 + ∞ = ∞. It is not the zero in the second equation that amounts to much. It is the ∞—the infinite—that matters. Only when the infinite is added to the zero does the sum become significant—in fact, immeasurable. Left to ourselves, we all amount to zero. This is true even for Paul, and he says as much (Philippians 3:7–8).

In the thirteenth chapter of the book of Hebrews, we are challenged to consider the lives of the leaders who have walked before us and to imitate their faith. It is in this context that the author writes the following words, which, unfortunately, we so often hear in a different context: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” The word forever means “infinite.” It is not the people whose stories are told in the Old Testament who are so exceptional. It is Jesus, the Infinite One, working through them Who causes the sum of their lives to be remarkable and worthy of storytelling. In all the eons of time, Jesus has not changed. The world is in as dire a state as ever. All that is needed in this equation is a willing zero to become the next hero. That is what Paul was—a zero willing to join with the infinite. Are you willing?

The Journeys of Life

It is common for people to view life as a journey, and in many ways it is. I am coming to see, however, that life is not just a single journey but is made up of several journeys, each full of new territory, exciting adventures, and life lessons to be learned. In this book, I break down how life’s journeys build toward greater meaning and significance if one chooses to continue pressing forward.

Pressing forward means not remaining stuck in a single journey that continues to loop through the same lessons over and over again, unlearned each time. Leaders stuck in such a pattern will encounter all the different names and faces that come along, but they will have to learn the same remedial lesson over and over with increasing ferocity until they finally accept the lesson God intended. We simply cannot advance in our significance without learning what God is teaching us about us.