Leadership Means Loving God With All Your Mind

The best pastors can’t get enough of people, concepts, ideas, theology. They want to know how things work, what makes things tick, how to take things apart, what happens inside, where things are going, and why things are the way they are.

Many times pastors wonder why their church or ministry is in a rut, and many times they fail to realize they themselves are facilitating it by getting into a rut themselves. They are not on the outer edges of the pasture, climbing the hills to scan the horizon, drinking from the streams, or frolicking in the field. Instead they just go about their regular business, a routine that has resulted in stagnation and a stuck flock. When a pastor gets mentally lethargic, that pastor’s congregation gets dull and ineffective.

It’s not too late to begin sharpening your ministry. Here are some ways leaders can begin loving God with all their minds by exercising them.

Keep asking questions

The best pastors don’t settle for competency or bare familiarity. The inquisitive mind is the mind that will communicate life-changing truth, because it’s always asking questions. The more questions you ask, the further you go in your curiosity, the better equipped you will be to captivate the spiritual imaginations of the people who come into your ministry. An ever-inquisitive mind results in an ever-interesting message.

Read, read, read. Books and magazines, journals and blog posts. Big heavy theological ones and short light applicational ones. Venture into new genres and listen to new voices.

The best pastors can’t get enough of people, concepts, ideas, theology. They stretch themselves. They test the boundaries of the “same old same old.” They want to know how things work, what makes things tick, how to take things apart, what happens inside, where things are going, and why things are the way they are. They don’t take information for granted but squeeze information for all the juice it can give.

This isn’t about getting puffed up with knowledge but rather keeping one’s mind sharp to better communicate and minister. The best leaders do the heavy lifting necessary to keep their brains from atrophying.

“Your job is more important than just gathering information. You lead people to know who God is and how to engage in his mission.”

Continue your education

If a leader has the opportunity to continue his/her academic education, they should. The reason is this: When a leader is on their own for a while, the leader tends to get into an intellectual rut. The leader reads what is found to be of interest. Even if his or her reading taste consists of the typically challenging writers, the ones pushing the envelope, that itself can become an educational rut.

But in educational course work, you are required to read things you might normally read. You have to read books and consider perspectives you either have never heard of or wouldn’t read or consider even if you had. You end up studying things you never would have studied. And in the classroom setting with a qualified instructor, you get to learn new things in the context of dialogue and oversight. Learning in community is the best way to learn.

Learn outside your comfort zone

Unfortunately many leaders don’t have access to continuing formal education, either because of lack of proximity, lack of funds, or lack of time. If you don’t have access to continuing education or seminary, how do you stay intellectually fresh?

You have to become more intentional about learning outside your comfort zone. We will drift into comfort, but schedule discomfort. Sign yourself up for a book club people wouldn’t expect you to join. The weekly or monthly obligation to attend will be your pre-determined reminder to get out of your rut. Subscribe to a magazine that stretches your thinking and exercises your mind. Ask Christians who aren’t exactly like you for book recommendations. Subscribe to intellectually stimulating blogs with your RSS reader so they automatically come to you.

Learn from life

It is important that you understand you can’t do what the experts do. It is their job to accumulate information. They have much more time than you do to just absorb and collect.

Your job is more important than just gathering information. You lead people to know who God is and how to engage in his mission. If you are deliberately and conscientiously and passionately doing that, you will be learning from the hard knocks of ministry itself. The frontlines of life in ministry are a school all unto themselves.

The great irony, actually, is that many leaders, in their zeal for testing boundaries and engaging innovation and leveraging technology and absorbing knowledge, actually become ineffective in the work of Spiritual wakefulness.  They become students of their books, podcasts, laptops, and PDAs to the neglect of their students of people, service, sacrifice, and mission.

Leaders, stretch your minds, but don’t become information addicts. It is less important to be up to date than to live in the calling of God on your life—and learn as you engage in faithful ministry.

Copyright Ed Stetzer 2012. Used by permisson.