Transcript
A spiritually healthy leadership community must be willing to hear hard things. There are two character qualities that are vital for a spiritually healthy leadership community that produces fruit because it's had some longevity. The first is the humility of approachability. I have to be approachable. I have to carry around a humble sense of my own need. I can't be defensive in the face of somebody pointing out something that I haven't seen in myself.
A Leader Willing to Listen
That is so vital for a leader -- a leader who's willing to listen, willing to consider, a leader who doesn't always feel the need for arguing for his righteousness or turning the tables on somebody else, debating who is the biggest sinner in the room. It's very important.
But there's a second character quality. It's the courage of loving honesty. Now, that phrase is put together carefully. Love takes courage because love means I am willing to step into tense, awkward, and uncomfortable moments with you because I love you and I want to be God's tool in your life.
The courage of loving honesty, that truth-speaking must be loving because truth not spoken in love ceases to be truth because it gets bent and twisted by other emotions and other agenda. And so, you have to have these two corollary community values present all the time.
We're committing ourselves to humble approachability. We're committing ourselves to the courage of loving honesty and so, we can protect one another and we can ward off so many of those things that we've seen happen to leaders in our Christian community.
