Many negatives can distract leaders daily. Consequently, they may fall prey to these external influences, lose their vision and become spiritually powerless. But leaders can regain power over their lives by focusing on their main goals and ordering everything else around those goals. Then they can succeed in their ministries or personal lives. But that is only the beginning. To truly be influential, leaders should duplicate their successes in church members’ lives by improving their “serve.” Serving may cause leaders to feel like slaves, not realizing how church members perceive them. But, often, church members perceive such leaders as heroes. It is the art of serving that makes leaders out of ordinary people. Spiritual leadership teaches the art of serving, which is really the art of helping others succeed and fulfill their dreams.

Servanthood begins with identifying customers and then attending to them. Leaders should see, not only church members, but also everyone within their spheres of influence as their customers. A customer is anyone with whom a leader comes into contact. This outlook facilitates these three things: expanding one’s sphere of influence for Christ, being charismatic, and developing a spiritual edge. These things attract new church members and opportunities to serve. The best customers are repeat customers. And the best church services are those that attract repeat customers. Spiritual leadership empowers church members to develop their own customer base through offering outstanding services to those within their own sphere of influence and expanding their sphere of influence in the body of Christ.

When I attended Southern California College from 1975-1979, Mario Murillo was our guest chapel speaker one morning. Afterward, as he greeted students outside the chapel doors, I asked him, “What is the greatest way one can glorify God—through witnessing, or other ways?” Mario replies, “The greatest way to glorify God is in your heart.” I took this to heart. I believed and received it, and have been acting on it to this day. That truth impacted my life and made a difference in me, my ministries, and all I do.

So, I would like to challenge spiritual leaders to deepen their walk with the Holy Spirit, and see what Christ will do for you and those you impact.

The Reverend Dr. Jørgensen’s Equipping for Service is a substantially revised version of two of his earlier teaching modules: his manual, Equipping for Service (1995) and his Norwegian book translated as Vision and Every Day Life: Leadership in Mission and Congregation (1991). Unlike the earlier two projects, this version marries scholarly research on leadership and management, as well as biblical and practical ministry studies, with an applied focus on developing leaders in church and society. Though written as a scholarly contribution and the ideas are expressed in a manner familiar to an academic readership, the book is clearly not written for scholars. His intended audience includes practicing and aspiring missional leaders, pastors, elders, deacons, and community leaders in civil society. Readers will find reflective experiences scattered throughout his rigorous treatment of theories and models on leadership, strategic planning, management, organizational structure, behavioral consideration and leadership training.

Jørgensen is no mere theorist. The project is backed by his varied experience as i) chair of the Edinburgh 2010 study process monitoring group, ii) directorship of Scandinavian mission foundation Areopagos and Radio Voice of the Gospel in Ethopia, iii) executive secretariat for communications with the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva, iv) deanship at Mekane Yesus Seminary in Addis Abaha, Tao Fong Shan in Hong Kong, and v) adjunct professorships in MF Norwegian School of Theology and Lutheran Theological Seminary, Hong Kong.

Upon analyzing the crisis of leadership in church and society, Jørgensen proposes that churches urgently need leadership, and sustainable leadership development for professionals and laypeople. While he agrees that administrators and managers hold important roles, Jørgensen also claims that “people with values, credibility, visions and perspectives, who walk in front and show the way, who are able to inspire our hearts” are the ones truly able to “hold back the forces of evil in cities and nations” (pp. 1-2). Jørgensen bemoans the churches are “training helpers… to relieve the pastors and leaders of some of ‘their’ tasks, like house visiting, evangelism, Sunday school” when they ought to be nurturing leaders in their own right” (pp. 2-3).

Studying the definitions of leadership and influence, he shows how these definitions reflect various leadership theories and models – such as trait theory, great events theory, abilities and qualifications theory, situation and transactional model, transformational leadership, and various theories of leadership and management behavior plotted on a grid – country-club management, team management, middle-of-the-road management, impoverished management, and authority-compliance management, and theories on leadership style and situations – of whether task and/or relational focus, of decision styles – delegating, participating, selling or telling (ch. 2). Key elements include, leadership role (e.g., proven through ability, education and experience?), leadership behavior (e.g., being task-oriented), and leadership style (e.g., showing vulnerability).

Introduction

In Matthew 22:37 Jesus commanded all believers to love God with all of their heart, strength, and mind, and to love their neighbor as themselves, stating that the Law and the Prophets were predicated on these two commandments. Loving God will all of one’s mind can mean seeking to develop one’s intellectual capacities.¹ Four men in the Bible: Moses, Ezra, Daniel, and Paul, exemplified obedience to this principle, even though three of them lived and died before Jesus ever uttered those words. Using non-Western narrative methodology—in this case, biography—let us study what it means to serve God with our intellects. Rick Nañez’s repeated premise of the need for intellectual development along with spiritual passion is accepted as the basis for this paper.² One is compelled to agree with Donald Bowdle that “Jesus is Lord of learning …,” as well as every other area of life.³ Consequently, the greater weight in this paper will be given to the intellectual development, insofar as possible, of the lives of the biblical characters to be examined, and how that development impacted their service to God and man. These men serve as outstanding examples of combining powerful intellects with passionate piety.

Four Men Who Followed Jesus’ Command

There are two classes of education that are apparent in the lives of these four men. Moses and Daniel were classically educated in the liberal arts of their day while Ezra and Paul were theologically schooled in Judaism.

Moses

Moses with the tables of the Law, by Guido Reni, 17th century.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Moses was educated in the best tradition that ancient Egypt had to offer (Acts 7:22). Education fit for a prince would have likely included literacy, architecture, painting, astronomy, and mathematics as these were some of the strong aspects of Egyptian culture.⁴ It also seems reasonable to assume that a prince would have been instructed in statecraft and law. A. W. Morton suggests Moses may have learned the duties of a scribe as part of his education and would have become literate in both Hebrew and Egyptian.⁵ That he rejected the lifestyle of the palace does not suggest that he eschewed his education.

In defending the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Gleason Archer explains that there were actually two strands of Moses’ intellectual development:

He had the education and background for authorship, since he received from his ancestors that wealth of oral law which originated from the Mesopotamian cultures back in the time of Abraham (hence the remarkable resemblances to the eighteenth century [b.c.] Code of Hammurabi), and from his tutors in the Egyptian court he received training in those branches of learning in which eighteenth dynasty Egypt excelled the rest of the ancient world. From his forebears he would naturally have received an accurate oral tradition of the career of the patriarchs and those revelations which God had vouchsafed to them.⁶

The Hebrew strain could have been gained from his mother but as the biblical record does not mention conclusively that she cared for him beyond the period of his weaning (Exodus 2:10),it seems most likely that he learned the traditions of his forebears during the years in the desert.

Both strands are evident in the Pentateuch. Moses was an outstanding storyteller in the oral tradition of the Hebrews. The Pentateuch reveals Moses as an experienced leader in many areas: law, tabernacle building, dietary regulations, and many other things. Concerning law, for example, E.B. Smick draws several correlations between the Mosaic law and other legal systems known in the Middle East at the time, specifically the famous law code of Hammurabi, implying that Moses was familiar with them.⁷ One could argue that his knowledge of Hammurabi’s Code could have come from either strand of his tradition.

The Pentateuch also reveals more than one literary style. While most of it is written in compelling narrative, certain small sections are poetic (i.e. Genesis 3:14-19; 4:23-24; 9:25-27; 49:1-27).⁸ Also, the table of the nations in Genesis reveals that Moses had a grasp of history that went beyond that of the Egyptians and the Hebrews.

Moses’ passion for God is not only reflected in the man of God and great leader that he indeed became, but also in the fact that he wrote the Pentateuch. The document upon which Hebrew society would be built, it provided a solid history, statecraft, and numerous other things—God breathed into and through Moses.