Serving in God’s Kingdom can be both challenging and a blessing. To be used by God as a leader in His Church is not simply a job for which you apply, but rather a calling to which you submit. With experience, reflection, and God’s help, you can grow in this calling. In this week’s blog, I’m sharing a baker’s dozen of little lessons about how to be better in the work of God.

This topic has been a subject of personal study for over half of my life, so I doubt these thoughts are original to me. Like most speakers and writers, the books, blogs, and sermons I have read in my life are baked through my mind. Since I’m not claiming originality, feel free to have a few bites, and cite the source baker if you recognize their works.

1. A married leader should improve their spouse’s life. A wife should like herself, have confidence, and a sense of destiny, because of her husband’s loving leadership. A husband should believe in his ability to provide, protect, and parent because of his wife’s respectful and life-giving leadership.
2. A parent who fails to provide godly discipline becomes an accessory to their children’s destruction. Pastoral parents need to prioritize their home leadership above other responsibilities.
3. Be ready to be told what to do and be taught by others all your life. You will never outgrow the need for submission and teachability.
4. If you desire to serve in leadership, learn to follow written and verbal directions at your current post. God loves to use leaders that have learned to follow.
5. Leaders should never assume that followers know, what they know. Write the vision and make it plain because they cannot see what you see unless you clearly communicate it with them.
6. Good leaders speak clearly with the right volume at the right time. You need to learn how to enunciate with the right tone in order to be understood.
7. Practice hospitality by making others feel welcome. Receive others and treat them as you’d like to be treated. Good leaders make you feel welcome in their presence (home, office, and church services).
8. In times of suffering, people don’t need your cliché Christian sayings. They look good on t-shirts and bumper stickers but they can seem patronizing and are not always theologically sound. Instead, lend a hand to help, a shoulder to cry on, and by all means, pray for those who are suffering.
9. If you resent being a servant, you will not become the leader you were meant to be. Servanthood is your calling.
10. Competency without character is useless. Regardless of how gifted you are, without the godly character of a servant you can’t be trusted.
11. Tame your tongue or be left behind. If you stay in trouble with your tongue you will not go far in leadership.
12. Jesus followers are to be known by their love for each other and not for how they judge one another. Do your best to reflect His love for others in your daily behavior.
13. Truly great leaders do not seek after power. They have power thrust upon them as a result of destiny. You should cooperate with God’s plans but do not insist upon power.

To be honest, this baker’s dozen has kept me busy most of my life. Rest assured, there’s never been a day when I really had it all together with no need to work on at least one of these. Some days my leadership appears to be half-baked.

What about your leadership? Did one or two of these stand out for you as something you need to work toward doing better? Comment below these cookies, and let’s help bear each other’s burdens.