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Gary Bredfeldt’s book Great Leader, Great Teacher: Recovering the Biblical Vision for Leadership states a simple truth that has recently been buried under an avalanche of competing leadership strategies: great leaders are great teachers. The biblical vision for leadership concentrates on teaching as the main area in which the church leader should aspire if he is to lead effectively.

In a market full of books with dozens of differing strategies on leadership in the church, Bredfeldt’s simple thesis comes as a breath of fresh air. Leadership effectiveness is maximized by great teaching ability, which is why church leaders need to reclaim the biblical emphasis on teaching and preaching.

Bredfeldt surveys the landscape of leadership models currently popular in the church. The traditional models are hierarchical and heroic, focusing on the authority invested in a leader who has proven by his character his fitness to lead. Newer models trade authority for authenticity, focusing on relationships over structure (14).

Bredfeldt rightly argues that the biblical model does not force us into an “either-or” decision about these models. Instead, the Bible bases leadership in the teaching of God’s Word (15).

Bredfeldt’s emphasis on the importance of Bible teaching is refreshing, considering the number of books on Christian leadership that only give lip service to Bible teaching before diving into strategies culled from the top organizations in the business world. One only has to look at the greatest of biblical leaders to back up Bredfeldt’s point.

  • Moses may have been a good leader in many respects, but his teaching is what has been passed down to us thousands of years later.
  • David was a warrior, the greatest of Israel’s kings, and a skilled musician, but it was the teaching in his psalms that left the greatest mark on history.
  • Ezra was a leader who made teaching the top priority and received God’s blessing because of it (40-42).
  • Above all, Scripture tells us that “Jesus came, preaching…” (Matthew 4:17), inaugurating God’s Kingdom through signs, wonders, and his own death and resurrection, but also through his teaching ministry.

Bredfeldt correctly diagnoses one of the main problems in today’s church. Many churches so emphasize programs and activities that the pastor feels guilty for his time spent in study (32-34). The stressful demands of being the main leader of an organization like the church can eat away at the time needed to study and properly prepare for the spiritual feeding of the congregation.

Bredfeldt encourages pastors to do what they really want to do – teach and spend time studying the Word. Pastors are discouraged and unfulfilled because they are not able to accomplish their call: preaching and teaching (38-40)!

For biblical support, Bredfeldt points to Acts 6, the story of the apostles appointing deacons to help administer funds and services so that the apostles might continue teaching. This is just one of many passages that Bredfeldt could have chosen to show the biblical justification for his thesis.

Paul’s advice to Timothy contains many sayings that could be called “leadership advice,” but the command to always be preparing for preaching (2 Timothy 4:2) seems to trump the rest of his recommendations. Bredfeldt points out that Paul’s instructions to Timothy were not about devoting his time to developing mission statements, strategic planning, leading change, or managing conflicts (even though each of these is good and necessary). Timothy was challenged to give utmost importance to public preaching (1 Timothy 4:13) (38).

Bredfeldt has nothing against formulating a mission statement or discerning God’s vision for the church. But he criticizes a church atmosphere that downplays the significance of solid Bible teaching. Instead of including Bible teaching as just one item in a list of pastoral responsibilities, Bredfeldt claims that all pastoral responsibilities flow predominantly from the teaching ministry (59).

Bredfeldt also corrects a common misquoting of Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” While many leadership gurus use this verse as support for their emphasis on casting a vision for the church, Bredfelt correctly translates the verse, “Where there is no revelation (teaching), the people cast off restraint. (48)” The astute Bible reader can begin recounting biblical scenes of God’s people perishing even under “good” leadership when that leadership came at the expense of the prophetic word – the days of King Saul, the days of the judges, the Golden Calf escapade while Moses, the Teacher, was absent, etc.

One of the recurring themes in Great Leader, Great Teacher is Bredfeldt’s resistance to the Emerging Church emphasis on communally derived truth and its devaluing of propositional truth. Bredfeldt devotes an entire chapter to the twin dangers of cultural accommodation (manifested most clearly in the Emerging movement according to Bredfeldt) and cultural isolationism (a fundamentalism that loses all cultural relevance) (70).

Though Bredfeldt believes that cultural isolationism is also dangerous, he devotes only two pages to isolation, compared to the nine pages he gives to cultural accommodation. It is clear which ditch Bredfeldt believes is the more pressing threat – cultural accommodation.

But the readers most likely to resonate with Bredfeldt’s emphasis on Bible teaching are the ones who would probably tend toward an unhealthy isolationism. Surely this is a large enough group to warrant more than just two pages of warning. One thinks of the evangelical groups that continue to splinter and fracture over minor issues that have little bearing on the Christian mission in the world.

Great Leader, Great Teacher calls Christian leaders back to their God-given teaching roles. Bredfeldt’s book is a marvelous treatise on the need for solid, Bible teaching and a passionate plea for pastors to reclaim teaching authority as the burning desire of their hearts. Filled with powerful illustrations and sound Scriptural support, Great Leader, Great Teacher deserves to be on the shelf of every pastor’s library.

(This post was edited from a four-part series in June 2007.)

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