Leadership lessons Part 3

Spiritual Authority

Effective Leaders Value Spiritual Authority As A Primary Power Base.

Spiritual authority is the right to influence conferred by followers because of their perception of spirituality in a leader. It is that characteristic of a God-anointed leader which is developed upon an experiential power base that enables him/her to influence followers through: 1) Persuasion, 2) Force of modeling, and 3) Moral expertise.

Spiritual authority comes to a leader in three major ways.
First as leaders go through deep experiences with God they experience the sufficiency of God to meet them in those situations. They come to know God more intimately by experiencing Him. This experiential knowledge of God and the deep experiences with God are part of the experiential acquisition of spiritual authority.
A second way that spiritual authority comes is through a life which models godliness. When the Spirit of God is transforming a life into the image of Christ, those characteristics of love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance carry great weight in giving credibility. They show that the leader is consistent inwardly and outwardly.
A third way that spiritual authority comes is through gifted power. When a leader demonstrates gifted power in ministry —that is, a clear testimony to divine intervention in the ministry—there will be spiritual authority. While all three of these means of developing spiritual authority should be a part of a leader, it is frequently the case that one or more of the elements dominates.

Ideally spiritual authority is the major influence means used with mature followers. Other power bases such as coercion, inducement, positional, and competence may have to be used as well as spiritual authority because of lack of maturity in followers. Mature followers will recognize spiritual authority. Leaders who command and demand compliance are not using spiritual authority.

 Leaders should respond to God’s processing in their life so as to let spiritual authority develop as a by-product of the processing. Leaders ought to recognize and use spiritual authority whenever they can in their ministry.

Why Important: Leaders who rely on privilege and power associated with a position tend to abuse power in their ministry. Spiritual authority counters the abuse of power. Spiritual authority honors God’s maturity processes in followers.

Biblical Examples: Moses, Jesus, Paul