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Understanding 6 Virtues Needed in Christian Leadership
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Less is More with Dr. Les Loftquist
Dr. Les Loftquist, professor of practical theology, teaches courses in seminary with particular emphasis in Christian leadership. His classes focus on pastoral leadership, living in a godly way, preaching—what's called practical theology. It's where the rubber meets the road with pastors.
Today we're talking about virtue, which comes from the Latin word "vertus" meaning valor. It's a good, desirable quality or trait with all kinds of implications in morality. There are more than six virtues, but we've narrowed it down to six broad virtues that all Christians should be very concerned about and wanting to adopt. Leadership principles important for pastors are also important for people out in the congregation.
Virtue #1: Honesty - The Foundation
People aren't going to follow you, they're not going to want to listen to you if they can't trust you. Leadership is built on trust and trust can't exist without honesty. All the foundation of what we do in leadership or even as believers is honesty.
We're all so tired of people who spin everything. You look at them and say, "Are you real? Are you genuine? Are you really giving me the truth here?" If leaders lose this sense of credibility, honesty, you're not able then to even have any kind of relationship that matters.
The first task of a leader is to define reality. Sometimes all of us have been in situations where people aren't even accepting reality. They're not talking about it. It's like the old "emperor has no clothes." Everyone's saying, "Oh yeah, this is great. Everything's fine. Everything's wonderful." Sometimes even a pastor has to say things aren't so good around here.
When we talk about honesty, usually we think of are they going to always tell the truth. Sometimes it's just honesty is the willingness to speak something uncomfortable. My biggest problem with the alphabet mafia and the rainbow people is how dishonest they are at their core. There are tens of thousands of people who give testimony to the fact that Jesus Christ took them out of their bondage—the bondage word is their word, not mine—took them out of their bondage and set them free. Yet they get no seat at the table, no credibility. Their voice means nothing. That is dishonest at its core.
Another subtle nuance we might not think of is a willingness to admit mistakes. Just yesterday, I had to look a couple guys in the eye after a meeting and say, "I made a mistake. I apologize." And when I realized pretty quickly that I had misspoken and was wrong in an assessment I had given about something, they said, "You need to be careful what you say." As I was listening, I said, "You're right. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I apologize. I don't want to do that."
Virtue #2: Humility - The Posture
Self-confrontation—looking in a mirror and just agreeing with what you see or what you regretfully are observing, just saying I have to make some changes or this was wrong or I have to go make this right. Why do we not pursue that? Because of our lack of humility.
You can see how honesty and humility work together. Often times in our pride, we're not going to admit that we're wrong or we're not going to allow others to tell us things. I remember one man telling me as a leader, "You shouldn't apologize like that," meaning that I was in front of a board of directors and I said, "Hey, I didn't get this done, so this is what I want to do to correct it." He thought that was projecting weakness. But the reality is people appreciate when you admit your mistakes, and they appreciate especially if you say, "I don't want to do this again. Help me."
We as men struggle with admitting our need for help. We were "I got it figured out. I know what we're doing" or "Don't worry, I've got it all taken care of." And we really don't. Our wife loves it when we say, "I was wrong" or "This was a mistake" or "Hey, I'm really sorry."
You can be fake humble too. You see these people that fake their humbleness. My humility is part of my greatness. It still comes out of the foundation of honesty. When you're honestly humble, you know, I said something to one of my elders and he called me the next day and said that I hurt his feelings and I felt horrible because I knew he was right. It doesn't matter my intentions. It doesn't matter what I was trying to say and misspoke. It just landed wrong with him. He gave me an opportunity to apologize and humble myself and ask for forgiveness. That's what honest Christian people do.
Virtue #3: Dependability - The Habit
Dependability becomes a habit. I've heard coaches say the greatest ability is dependability or you can't make the club in the tub. If you're always in the injury room, you're not dependable. You're not going to make the club.
People will admire talent and even brilliant people, but they want to follow and they really appreciate reliability, dependability. The people who meet deadlines, they show up on time, they keep their appointments, you can depend on them.
When no one's around watching, especially for pastors—you can schedule yourself out to where you're just running ragged, but I still have this margin time built in to write my sermon. Instead of cutting short my sermon, I got to be dependable. I believe it's important to bake fresh bread every Sunday. Sometimes a pastor has to take the lump out of the freezer, defrost it, and bake it. Other times you work from scratch.
It's being dependable in your prayer time. It's being dependable in your independent study time that the church is compensating you so that you have the time to do that and not just squander it away. Those little habits that you form that seem to be like little spider webs become steel cables and you cannot allow even those subtle little surrenders to things that are not good or laziness.
The dirty little secret among pastors is that some of them are very lazy. One pastor friend told me, "Yeah, I was watching Netflix in my office. I was just taking a break." If you're watching a Netflix movie in your pastor's office, to me, that's immediate red flag.
All Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and he's working in us and working out these virtues, these godly character qualities. Galatians 5 calls them the fruit of the spirit. One of them is self-control. Self-control is self-discipline. Self-discipline is not watching Netflix, not scrolling social media for an hour and a half in your study when you're a pastor.
I don't have a job. If I have a job, I want to do it completely different. I have a vocational calling. They compensate me basically for two things: number one, on Sunday to be prepared to serve good bread to the congregation. Be prepared. Show up prepared. Number two is to always be available.
Virtue #4: Courage - The Strength
First thing that comes to mind when people talk about courage is our heroes who are involved in combat, military and our first responders that have a great deal of courage. But I used to pray every day for our kids to be brave because life is no friend of grace.
I was reading yesterday morning in John chapter 15—Jesus talks about the world hating him. I distinctly remember counting seven and then there was several more hates. The world hates Christ and they don't want holiness. Those who love Christ and want to be holy, they're going to need courage.
Bravery, courage has to do with standing for what's right and speaking up when you need to speak up and taking a stand. When you take a hit for doing that, you stay at it. I used to tell my kids, "You need to be tough. Not mean—mean people push others down. When you're tough, people push you down and you get back up."
It's a virtue that involves moral standing. In the Bible we see Daniel in Babylon taking a tremendous moral stand in leadership as a young man and all the way through the book of Daniel. We pick up Daniel when he's a young teenager and then into his 80s—seven decades of a man who was courageous. But I don't see Daniel as running around with a sword and fighting people that we usually attribute to courage.
There's nothing more intimidating than watching someone who's very good at their job just quietly stand on the opposing sideline and wait to come out and just do their job because you can see they're focused, they're confident, they're not trash talking, they're not saber rattling, they're not engaged in all that stuff, but it's just this quiet assuredness from the other side of the field that's very intimidating.
When I played high school football for a Christian little school my junior year, the coach would make us put our hands out to lift up other players after the play was over from the other team. Every now and then you'd get a player who would knock your hand away. We were taught to just say "That's all right. Good hustle" to the other team. It was amazing how that would just bring the tone of the aggression down and we could dominate the football game. We killed them with kindness.
A lot of times it's the courage just to be kind, to have good sportsmanship, to be in the game and to try to encourage others. There's also the courage to love what other people get that you don't get. It's like, "Yes, I'm so happy for him." I don't know why people get so worked up about other people's success.
Outstanding examples of this courage include Daniel, who is amazing and a great hero. I'd like to bring up Noah—he stayed at it for 120 years. A long solitary obedience. No one went with him other than his wife and his daughters and their husbands. Daniel very quietly was strong and the people around him loved him and respected him so much when he was in his 80s, they pull him out of retirement.
I'll add in the Apostle Peter because he didn't have any courage and he failed so miserably, but then when he saw the risen Christ he had more courage coming down the pike than anybody, even going to his death not being willing to be crucified like his Lord. That's courage for those of us who've had many failures who want to get back up again and want to be strong.
When I look at Mary the mother of God and I see the task that was laid on her and in the scriptures it's really portrayed that she did this with grace and dignity and servanthood. For me that's a really good tangible example of someone with tremendous courage to just do what she had to do.
Virtue #5: Determination - Daily Tenacity
We're getting knocked down all the time. It seems like every other day I've got great things and then I have great challenges the next day. When I celebrate some great moments or great victories, just shortly thereafter there are things that are great challenges. Just to stay at it—when we say faithfulness, we often will attribute that correctly to obedience. But sometimes it's just while you're obeying, you just hang in there. You don't give up. You don't quit.
Perseverance is also a biblical word in the New Testament. You're able to stay under—that's the meaning of this one Greek word—to stay under the circumstances that have you pushed down. You stay there. You don't quit. You don't run away. You just stay.
Tom Landry, the old coach for the Cowboys, said 75% of the tackles in the NFL are made by men originally thought to be out of the play. But they stayed at it. They didn't quit. They kept at it. The play moved on. They made the tackle.
Defensive pursuit in the NFL has gotten extreme. The way the defense can pursue is why reverses and things used to work, they don't work as much anymore because even the stay at home, check the play, read and react, they can still pursue at such a high level. I call that tenacity. I call that coming through the tunnel. Game seven, this is why we play the game—you're just laser focused.
Let me read Hebrews 12:2-3 about ultimate perseverance: "Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls."
That's when we don't have tenacity, when we don't have determination or perseverance, we become weary, discouraged, and we just quit. The honest truth—and this isn't a secret—all of us, pastors, people in the pew, all of us, moms, dads, kids, there are times where we just want to quit. We do. We just want to quit. It's just too much.
I'm so thankful for my wonderful wife. She's only five feet tall. I'm 6'3". We look very odd standing next to each other and she is so strong, such determination. She doesn't come at me like my old football coach saying, "Come on, get going. When the going gets tough, the tough get going." She just kind of rubs the back of my neck and will say, "We've been here before" or "This isn't a surprise" or "God understands"—just her gentleness and that courage that she has, quiet strength leads to determination and tenacity to keep going.
We're talking about things that are common to all of us—wanting to just get on the couch and never get off and lie on the couch and sleep and let it all go. "I can't keep going." Part of that daily tenacity has to come from God. We have to ask him for strength and he has to strengthen us.
Virtue #6: Humor - The Connection
That's why I love Chris and Emilee. They make me laugh. What is humor actually? For some people they say, "Oh, he's just a joker or he's just silly." Actually, I'm known to be pretty funny in meetings. I use it strategically because there are meetings where I sense when I'm conducting the meeting and there's like 12 guys, I'll say, "This is getting a little heavy and we're starting to get irritated and I'm going to break the tension now and say something funny."
It's not a joke. I don't say, "Hey, this reminds me of..." I'll say a quip or someone will say something and I will make a quick little response and everyone laughs and the laughs just brings into the room a freshness—a breath. "We're going to make it."
I added humor because I definitely believe in it as a virtue for leaders, but because the two of you have such joy and you love to laugh and it's not laughter with no purpose. It's purposeful.
One of the things about humor is knowing—there's so many times I will have a quick-witted response in my head, but I know now is not the time to say that. But then on the same token, it really is one of the things that has really been a part of our success and our ability to withstand the things that the world throws at you—the ability to laugh, the ability to bring some levity into the situation. It helps you cope.
This is a skill that I encourage my students to develop because you will have people who either don't like you outright in the congregation or the community or they're not sure about you. When you can tease in a sweet way, joke with people, it disarms the critics. They'll say, "Oh, I don't know. I like this guy. I don't think I should. Oh, I like him even more."
To be able to at times just kind of gently poke—I'll tap a guy in the bicep and I'll say, "Hey." And then I'll say something funny and even someone who maybe doesn't have a great sense of humor, but I go ahead and tease them. After a while, they realize humor actually is a great way to project love because people say, "You know what? He's not scowling at me. He's not saying harsh words to me. I'm not getting yelled at. Actually, he's joking with me." And what does that say? "Hey, I like you. I love you. I like to be with you. I enjoy being around you. I'm enjoying this moment with you."
There are people who are just naturally very stoic, but when you're engaged with them and all a sudden they crack a smile and that's a rarity for them, that gives me a lot of joy too, just to see the emotion from the mostly not too emotional person.
Some of the great leaders who've had they're renowned for humor—Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan. There are great leaders who used humor as a way of disarming the critics and kind of teasing a little bit. It's a wonderful way to spread joy.
The reason I like humor being last on the list of the six is because I think it's more of a natural byproduct. It's hard to just try to be funny. When you're really honest, when you're really at the core honesty, which launched the six virtues, you can be self-depreciating because you just don't care.
One of the things I used to do in my comedy show—I'm 5'7", I'm a little bit heavy, I'm heavier than what I should be, and I got this full head of hair. I would say, "Look, the loser trifecta in America is short, fat, and bald. God looked down and said, 'Ah, we'll give him hair.'" Everybody laughs. Do you think people don't realize that I'm a few pounds overweight? You think people think I'm the tallest guy in the room? Just own it.
It reminds everyone we're human. For pastors, sometimes they don't want that. They want to project, "I'm not human. I'm super pious. I'm better than you and you have to see me as an example of Jesus. So, I'm not going to let you see me as human." When we can joke about running out of gas when driving or different things about ourselves, it shows we're human and relatable. In the end, that's what we're trying to do as pastors. We're trying to draw close to people so they can hear from us the word of God. They can see in our lives obedience. They can see love for Christ, love for people, love for the word. They'll say, "You know what? I want to kind of do what he's doing. I want to follow that guy. I want to come to this church. I want to come to this Bible study. I want to be like that guy. And I want to have a happy home like Chris and Emilee, laughing and enjoying each other."
Right On Way Off
Mike Shaw joins us live from Texas where he's hanging out with family, doing silly videos for the city, and being a recovering weatherman. Today's Right On Way Off features three statements where we determine whether they're right on or way off.
Statement #1: Tolerance
"Tolerance is a virtue of people who do not believe in anything."
Verdict: RIGHT ON
Tolerance comes down to nothing matters. You got to be tolerant of everything. That means you lean towards not believing in anything. You might have inclinations towards something, but to be tolerant to something else, you got to put your beliefs on the shelf.
If you have an open mind, you don't want your mind so open that your brains fall out. You have to stand for something or you're going to fall for anything. We stand on God's truth. There are biblical principles that are true because they're from God and they don't change. You got to make a stand sometimes and that is often not seen as tolerant. But you got to let the chips fall where they may once in a while.
This quote comes from GK Chesterton, who was way before his time. When those statements were made in 1905, 1908, 1910, 1911—over a hundred years ago—dude knew what was coming. There's nothing new under the sun.
Here's the thing about Chesterton: he's the one who said that soon you're going to watch people hijack the word humility and hijack the word arrogance and flip-flop them. A humble man used to stand on his conviction. Now that man is arrogant. A humble man is just open-minded and tolerant of everything.
Statement #2: Experience
"Once you've experienced God for yourself, no one will be able to change your mind about him."
Verdict: WAY OFF
When you experience God and you have that salvation and you get a new heart and a new life, you're never the same again. You know what you know because you know it. But that has to line up with scripture. The more you get into scripture, the more you realize you're not significant. Jesus is. It's his righteousness that you claim.
People sometimes judge God based on their experience. God is sovereign over our life and he says that only faith will please him. So we have faith in God, the biblical creator who came to earth in the form of Jesus Christ, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, was raised again from the dead. We accept that by faith and then our experiences could wobble.
My experiences when I was 18 is not when I was 38 is not when I was 58. There are different experiences. When you base your relationship with God on your experiences, you have hundreds of ways to be wrong and only a handful of ways to possibly be right. When you base your relationship with God on a saved sinner met where you're at, accepting the substitute of Jesus Christ on the cross, and then you live out your life out of good old-fashioned gratitude with that changed life experience being something you hold on to, that's the authentic.
Here's the clincher: when you turn to the scriptures, there were lots of people when God himself showed up as Jesus and he walked among the people. He talked, he performed miracles. There were many people who heard what he said, saw what he did, and maybe even followed him for a while until they didn't. They experienced him on a much more tangible level than we were even able to, and yet they did change. They left. They fell away. They were there for the fish sandwiches.
Once God has saved you, you are his. He is not going to change his mind. He's not going to whoops fumble you and let you fall out of your salvation. But our experiences are just that—experiences. Our faith in Christ Jesus when he has saved us is totally different.
Statement #3: Repentance
"If I hate sin because of the punishment, I have not repented of sin. I merely regret that God is just."
Verdict: RIGHT ON
It's the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow—one definition is you're sad because you got caught. Another definition of worldly sorrow that I believe is biblical is that you don't give your sorrow to God and you don't truly repent. You condemn yourself and you let the devil condemn yourself to the point where you're Judas and you hang yourself in a field.
Godly sorrow is you're truly sorry and repentant because you got out of alignment with God. Not because you're going to be punished for it, although you might suffer consequences. Sometimes God is gracious and doesn't make you go through consequences. Sometimes God will not be mocked and you will reap what you sow. But the reason why you have godly sorrow is because you're sorry that you got out of alignment with God. That hurts your heart and you want to be back in alignment with God because the Holy Spirit draws you.
This quote comes from Charles Spurgeon. If you're following Jesus like the whole "get out of jail free card because I don't want to go to hell," there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but that's not where you want to stay. Justification comes with a pure heart seeking God by faith through the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ. After the justification, the sanctification process has to be real.
Sometimes there's a lot of our sins that nobody really knows about. God knows those too. Those sins that we have, sometimes God will work them out in a way where there's no heavy consequences to pay. But eventually, you'll get to the point where when you get those twinges of jealousy, you just hate it. You give them back to God because your will has been set to not sin against God.
Final Thoughts
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Don't forget the virtues we talked about today—this is not exhaustive at all: honesty, humility, dependability, courage, determination, and humor. If you're lacking in any of those things, as probably all of us somewhere have been, we can take it to the Lord in prayer.
When you have that honesty, that humility, and you're a dependable person and you get that spine of steel, you can stand up for things. These six virtues that really matter go beyond pastorship. They're also for every man and woman that wants to walk with God. The Holy Spirit works to develop these qualities in us as fruit of the spirit, transforming our character to reflect Christ himself.