The Steward Leader: Transforming People, Organizations and Communities

true Christian leadership is an ongoing, disciplined practice of becoming a person of no reputation and, thus, becoming more like Christ.

To nurture the things we possess is to always be reminded that we are temporary owners of them, never permanent or absolute owners.

When I have real intimacy with God, I also have a huge capacity to want the same for the people I lead.

Henri Nouwen refers to this way as resisting the temptation to be relevant. “I am deeply convinced,” he wrote, “that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”[2]

You fool! How quickly you devalue the gifts God gave you to envy after others.

Yet the Spirit calls us, beckons us and gently leads us out into deeper water than we have ever experienced. He calls us to trust, to cling even more tightly to him, to put our face in the water and breathe.

The goal is not the amount of the return, but the obedient heart that is willing to make the investment.

I have come to understand that the call of the steward leader is a call to a lifestyle of an ever-decreasing thirst for authority, power and influence, where our quest for reputation is replaced by confidence in the power of God’s anointing.

We steward this gift through the disciplines of worship, prayer, fasting, meditation on God’s Word, devotion, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession and celebration.[1]