Jesus’ Radical Approach to Leadership: It’s Not About Power or Position - Jason Jensen

We're double downing this week on the topic of leadership. Last week we heard from four leaders on fire for Christ giving us godly wisdom on how to be mighty men and women of God during this critical time in history. Because this topic is so important for all of us to glean from, we are doing a double header series this week. Oh yeah! Let's listen, learn, and apply what God is telling us to do to be used mightily by Him. Do you want to grow in your leadership calling through the example of Jesus? In the book Formed to Lead by Jason Jensen, you'll uncover the nature of Christian leadership by examining Jesus's leadership in Luke 3 and 4. Formed to Lead shows leaders how to examine how a combination of tender humility and bold faith enhance faithful Christian leadership. Explore the connection between spiritual discipline and strong leadership qualities. Learn strategies to overcome common leadership challenges by drawing from Jesus's example. Discern the Holy Spirit's movement in your own growth and in your leadership calling. And last but not least, reflect on personal leadership journeys through guided discussion questions. Formed to Lead is a guide for aspiring leaders committed to following Jesus's example. And that should be all of us. Let's do this. This is the CounterCulture Mom Show. I'm your host, Tina Griffin. We are talking about leadership for week number two. I'm with Vice President of Spiritual Foundations for Inner Varsity Christian Fellowship, Jason Jensen. Jason, I love your name. Super easy. Will not forget. Thank you for jumping on the show today. How are you doing from Madison, Wisconsin? Really grateful to be talking with you and grateful for the subject. Yes. Well, you might not know, but I grew up on a dairy farm in Pulaski, Wisconsin. So I know you just moved into the area a couple of years ago from California. Are you okay with nine month winters up there? You're staying warm? The winters are long and my wife, especially, who lived her whole life up till now in California, experiences the winters as long. But they're beautiful. We get outside every day, walking our dog, even in the 30 degrees below zero days, and it's beautiful. Amazing. We went to Bible school at New Tribes Bible Institute right there in Waukesha, Wisconsin. We had our first son, Jake, and he came during a blizzard. And I told my husband for a week or two before, do not drive past our hospital exit. What did he do? Drove past our hospital exit. I'm like, no, I do miss Wisconsin. I love the people up there and love cheese curds. But thank you for jumping on the show today. Leadership is so important to God. I mean, if we're not great leaders, we're not being used mightily by him. And we are living the opposite life of what he wants us to live and experience. We can't do what he's calling us to do. So it's so important. Why do leaders need a faith-driven approach to leadership? Well, those who are trying to follow Jesus and interested in being leaders, I think really need a reframing, especially in our time. We assume a lot about leadership and control and performance. And yet part of why I wrote this book is I've experienced leadership for 37 years of full-time Christian work. And yet formation is really what God does within people. And I began to discover, especially in the Gospel of Luke, a surprising vision of leadership. And I think Luke does this intentionally. He casts this vision in the first chapters of Luke. If you think about it or remember it or go back and look at it, chapter 1 mentions Herod, chapter 2, Caesar Augustus, and then chapter 3, there's this long list of leaders, starting with another Caesar, Tiberius, and then Pilate and Lysanias and two high priests. There are these names, litanies of people who were presumably the leaders of history at the time. And yet then, the story that Luke tells is about some surprising people who are not the headliners, but actually are involved in what God is doing in history. So, I think Luke, of course, he's setting his Gospel in a careful historical context, but I think he's also doing this juxtaposition of apparent powerful leaders with the actual people cooperating with what God is doing in the world, and we ought to take notice about that. I completely agree. I think why I'm so excited to talk to you today and then again tomorrow, we're with you for Doubleheader. Thank you for saying yes to two episodes. I'm going to want four. What is so intriguing is a lot of church messages today, they'll go through Scripture, but sometimes it's hard to, for example, I don't hear many pastors talking about leadership from the pulpit, using Scripture and people in Scripture that God wants us to glean from and learn from. Why I love this program is because we bring people like you on that dissect Scripture in a way where we can apply it, understand it, and live it out, because who doesn't want to I mean, seriously, all of us have that innate desire that we want to do something great for God on the earth. And if we don't know God, we still have that longing of, I was made for more. Why am I here? What is my purpose? So just for you to say that in the opening chapters of Luke, I have chills and I'm excited to dig in deeper, because if we take what the Word of God says and hear about leadership, for example, and not just what someone did thousands of years ago, but how does it apply to today? That's when Scripture comes to life. Can you explain some of the people behind the scenes that you just talked about on the commonalities that they had that God wants us to learn from that we should apply to become great leaders? Absolutely. So I do think we have to look at leadership in a wide view and understand leadership is not getting a corporate position or having a particular appointment or power, but rather the way that we, with our lives, create culture and influence others. And so it's really important to reframe that way. Otherwise, we think some people are leaders and others are not, or we're measuring in these short periods of time. But I think Luke looks at that and he tells this story where the apparent protagonists of history, Caesars of all people, are in the story and yet God is doing something that's much larger than any one or two Caesars. And someone like Mary, the mother of Jesus, a vulnerable, teenage, faithful Jew in a village, is so responsive to what the Spirit is doing in the world that she's a part of history more than any Caesar ever has been. So I think it just, Luke helps us think about, oh my gosh, maybe I ought to look at Mary and learn from her rather than necessarily looking at some famous Caesar's military campaigns and thinking about strategy. Well, strategy is great, and good strategy is better than bad strategy for a Christian leader. But what's much more important is cooperating with what the Spirit of God is doing in the world, and for that, we need discernment more than optimization. I love what you're sharing. And it's encouraging to all of us because sometimes we might think we didn't go to college, we don't have a ton of schooling, we didn't go to a prestigious school for the schooling, we were just a missionary kid, we don't have any money, we don't have power in the community. And if you look at Mary, she had humility, she was willing to absolutely do what the Holy Spirit was leading her to do, and a miraculous thing took place as a result. And so all of us can be encouraged by what you just said, that the Lord uses the people, according to our human aspect and eyes, are lowly, weak, but able, willing, and saying yes to God. And so we have to stop comparing ourselves to other people that we think are more mighty, and how can we ever catch up and be used mighty if we're not at that level, when in reality, the Lord's like, let me work through you, and the mightiness will be me speaking through you to the culture, changing it from the inside out, and I can use anyone, no matter what they've done in the past, no matter what has happened to them. And that is why I think so many people are fear-stricken, benchwarmers, because they think they're not good enough, and yet they're basing it on a human aspect instead of who they are in Christ. You're hitting so many things at a different angle than we had for the first four leadership series last week. Everybody out there, watch all four of those. You add such richness to what they said from last week, so thank you for that. We're gonna go to a short commercial break. When we come back, we're gonna talk to you about how do leaders learn from weakness and failure. Oh yeah, more with Jason right after this. We all know how critical sleep is, yet I've had major sleep issues for years. I just discovered WaveWatch, and I'm finally sleeping through the night. The WaveWatch is a wearable device that delivers hundreds of sound frequencies throughout your body, supporting your body's natural systems. Did you know that each living thing vibrates at a unique frequency? And modern research shows nerve impulses may actually be sound-based. The WaveWatch emits gentle sound waves through your wrist that can help reduce physical discomfort, boost circulation, improve focus, support immune function, and enhance sleep quality. 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So if you're looking for health care that fits your family and your values, I can't recommend MediShare enough. Call today at 1-866-88-BIBLE and be sure to mention counterculture mom when you enroll. That's 1-866-88-BIBLE and join the thousands of families like mine who found health care that truly cares about what matters most. Jason, when we talk about weakness and failure, a lot of people today, including sometimes myself, I'm afraid to try again. Who am I to think that I can do this? And we have this human perspective, instead of saying, you know what, I can learn from my failure and that's what we should be doing. At least we tried. Okay, we failed. What can we change to do better this next time around and learn from it? Can you give us some insight on that? How do leaders learn from weakness and failure and not let them be stopped by the failure? Yeah, I'll say a couple things about that. So the first is, I think it helps us to think about tender humility on one side as a key aspect or character aspect for a leader and bold faith on the other side. And we need both of those without their perversion or overexercise. The overemphasis on humility is fear. If humility is the only thing we have to aspire to as a leader, we're going to be fearful and refuse to take risks. And yet, faith on the other side, bold faith, the overuse of that would be arrogance. And if we go to arrogance, then we're presuming that what I think is right is the way God leads. But if we hold both of those in tension, then on the humility side, as we grow as disciples, we exercise humility but not fear, and the Spirit helps us in forming. We all need to form in our character to grow more into the image of Jesus, to grow more into integrity. And then on the other side around boldness of faith, if we refuse to presume in pride, then we can listen to the Spirit, and the Spirit will call us to some risks of leadership, and we can say yes to those. So, I think it's important to hold this tension of humility and faith and watching out for the pitfalls of fear and presumption on either side. So, that's one construct that I think maybe helps as we diagnose. It helps me then to ask, okay, Lord, what are the temptations for me today to either fall into fear or pump myself up into presumption or arrogance? And what's that vulnerable invitation in between? It's always vulnerable. It is. Just you saying that, it brings me back to when I was a teenager, what would Jesus do? What would he do? What would he say? How would he act? It's just to come back. And I'm telling you, all of your words today and everyone I've had for leadership, it's almost like I'm taking a personal counseling class myself because as you're saying things, I'm like, am I humble? What do I need to work on? Man, I did that with the wrong intention. I'm taking notes too. Here's who I got to apologize and I'm making a list. It's like a personal one-on-one counseling class here for CounterCulture Mom as you're sharing. Why is spiritual formation the key to enduring faithfulness and leadership? Yeah, I'll go to Luke for a moment on that and the example of Jesus because I think we should be shocked by a turn that happens between Luke 3 and 4. So, the baptism of Jesus in Luke 3 is my favorite. Absolutely a wonderful moment of the Trinity being revealed, of Jesus being anointed literally. Messiah means anointed one and it's where the Spirit comes upon him physically and the voice of the Father expresses affection and identity and pleasure in him. And we often think then, oh, it's a coronation. It's an inauguration of the Messiah. The Kingdom of God is going to get out there and win right away. And what happens next? The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness for testing immediately. Now, I think that ought to shock us and make us ask a question. Why would that be and what does that have to do with as soon as I'm appointed or inaugurated or something into a new leadership calling, what do I do? Well, listen to the Spirit first and expect that it might not be yet time for strategic planning. It might be time for a deep dive information. And what we find then, it's a reflection of Exodus as well. So, there is an anointing and a delivering and then faithfulness in the case of Jesus in the wilderness over temptation. So, I think that can be a model for us that when Jesus asks me to lead, when the Spirit anoints me for something, I should expect that character formation is the next main thing to focus on, who I'm becoming and what do I do with temptation. And it becomes a different lens for spiritual authority, correct? We sometimes assume that spiritual authority is some kind of a strange, magical thing of saying the right thing or praying the right way or having the right other person pray for me. All those are important. But I think that Luke is showing us that spiritual authority is actually mainly developed out of the testing we experience in the wilderness of our lives. The integrity that builds in us as we learn to resist temptation and say yes to the Lord's deeper call. So, we see right out of that in Luke 4, Jesus goes into Nazareth and he is then able to announce the Messiah's agenda out of Isaiah 61. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, etc. Once again, I literally have like three major points to make to this. I'm saying too many things. No, it is absolutely phenomenal. You know what? We live in a fast-paced society where everybody wants what they want, when they want it, in under 30 seconds. We eat like that, we live like that, we social media scroll like that. And so, the testing period, it takes time, it takes diligence, it takes us not complaining or being frustrated, all of which our fleshly desires is usually the opposite. But I am absolutely seeing that God wants to test me personally before the next leadership step up happens because he wants to make sure that I can endure the challenges that come with it, the attack that comes with it, but also live out and be who he wants me to be when that opportunity is given to me. The JACE case is a pack of five antibiotics. 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Remember what grandma said, garbage in equals garbage out. Let's keep the garbage out and put quality TV shows, movies, social media that is biblically based in our kids' brains. The CounterCulture Mom app is loaded with these godly options. We have many different easy-to-navigate sections on our app. However, the most popular is the pop culture alerts. Get timely pop culture alerts through our push notifications with the CounterCulture Mom app. These daily notifications keep you updated about cultural issues that are and many of which are dangerous for our kids to see. However, we pump out a ton of positive pop culture alerts so you have great entertainment options right at your fingertips. You can download the CounterCulture Mom app at the Google Play or iTunes store and get our notifications right on your phone. Read the short alerts, apply your advice, and in turn, your children will know how to make their own wise media choices and develop a healthy worldview as a result. Win-win, people. The app is five bucks a month or we're doing a deal now for the entire year for 50 bucks. That funding helps us push out more alerts each week with our team of six just on the app and produce this show every single week. Don't forget to say yes to receiving those push notifications when you download the app. Happy navigating, people. Jason, I need your book right now. I'm going to shove it underneath my pillow so it can soak up into my brain at night when I'm Get Jason's book right now, Formed to Lead, Humility, Character, Integrity, and Discernment. You can grab it right there on Amazon. Obviously, phenomenal ratings. Tell us what's in this fantastic read. Really, it is trying to trace those first four chapters of Luke and slowly discern some deep lessons about leadership that I hope are nourishing and grow the health of all kinds of leaders. I love that your ministry aims at moms in particular because I think moms are our most undervalued leaders and ought to be nourished and trained in Christian leadership because that's the deepest influence on the emerging generation and we need it. Thank you so much. I would say that a lot of men also tune in and I think it's so important for the men to lead and the families and the wives are wanting the leadership, wanting the guidance because then they have the more feminine side and not taking the place of the man. I'm just reading a lot about this lately. Then the women have to learn to let their men lead. Look at this. We should do a four-part series, man. Okay, your website. Everybody needs to go there immediately. Formed2Lead.com, that's F-O-R-M-E-D-T-O-L-E-A-D.com, Formed2Lead. Your site is loaded with the book. We have a lot of media on here. Tell us how we can bring you in to speak and do you have a newsletter? Fill us in. A variety of articles and interviews and those kind of things are in there, but feel free to reach out directly. It's just fantastic and a ton of resources right here as well for everybody because we were all called to lead. Formed2Lead.com, we've got you for part two next. Don't go anywhere. Everybody out there, watch all four episodes this week and four last week on the topic of leadership and watch them with your kids. We want to create counterculture warriors in the home. Let's do this, people. CountercultureMom.com. Jason, I'll see you in two seconds. Thanks a ton.