The spiritual leader....

Spiritual leadership begins not with leading others, but with allowing God to lead us. Before we can point toward the Way, we must confront ourselves with the presence of God and choose, every day, to follow. We must keep the living God before us until our decisions, our relationships, and particularly our failures are measured against that Presence.

This takes time. The spiritual journey is a lifetime’s journey. Time changes us; experience humbles us; mistakes, honestly faced, can become instruments of growth. The essential discipline is to listen—to God, to life, to one another, and especially to those whose voices the world too easily ignores.

The spiritual leader must never teach or model anything that leads away from God. The standard is Christ: immersed in God, loving the marginalized, doing the Gospel rather than merely proclaiming it, challenging the comfortable, and becoming a beacon even to the strong. Spiritual leadership is the work of confronting the world with the presence of God.

Yet we cannot make another person’s journey. We can show them the Way; they must choose to walk it. We can help them see the world clearly and then invite them to follow Christ. We can create conditions in which they can see God active in their life—and in which they may discover that God has been seeking them all along.

Perhaps our greatest challenge is constructing a moral and spiritual frame of reference while living within a culture that constantly offers us another one. We bring to this work weak wills, incomplete understanding, and divided loyalties. Nevertheless, every day offers choices that give life depth and quality.

Spiritual leadership, then, is not mastery. It is faithful witness: allowing God to find us, choosing the Way again and again, and living so that others may glimpse through us the God who is calling all of us home.