Spiritual leadership focuses on moving people towards God's agenda rather than organizational goals. Spiritual leaders face challenges like lack of focus on their own spirituality and depression from spiritual warfare. Ezra exemplified spiritual leadership as a scribe who studied God's word and taught it to the people, encouraging repentance. He recognized God's hand at work. Blackaby outlines steps to experiencing God, including recognizing His work, speaking through circumstances, and requiring faith and obedience to join what God is doing. Spiritual leaders lead people to encounters with God, help them find purpose and identity, and impact their environment through transformation rather than just production.

1. Case Studies in Biblical Leaders

2. Spiritual Leadership:
Moving people onto
God’s agenda.

3. J. Oswald Sanders wrote
a popular book entitled
Spiritual Leadership in
which he states, “A
God-appointed spiritual
leader is perfectly safe
when, and only when,
he walks humbly with
his God . . .”

4.  Spiritual leaders have been largely
neglected in American business in
recent decades.
 Spiritual leaders face unique problems
as they attempt to exert their influence
which often results in these leaders
ignoring the importance of the
spiritual dynamic of leadership.

5.  The pressures and responsibilities of
ministry make it easy for leaders to be
sidetracked and fail to nurture their
own walk with God.
 This is even more pronounced with
success.
 Prosperity tends to discourage interest
in spiritual things.

6.  Spiritual leaders are constantly
engaged in spiritual warfare.
 Spiritual leaders tend to have the
‘melancholy’ temperament (S in the
DISC model).
 Often such leaders deal with deeper
times of communion with God,
followed by periods of depression.

7.  People often fall at their strongest
point. Therefore people with a great
passion for God may be tempted to
wander after other passions that
hinder their relationship with God.
 Spiritual leaders seeking to be like
Christ will often face the same kind of
resistance Christ faced.

8. Spiritual leaders
need to walk with
God before they can
lead others into a
deeper experience
with God.

9.  He prepared himself for ministry before
ministry opportunities became apparent.
 He learned how to work with those in
authority to get what he needed for effective
spiritual ministry.

10. Ezra 7:9
This Ezra came up from Babylon; and he was a
skilled scribe in the Law of Moses, which the
Lord God of Israel had given. The king
granted him all his request, according to the
hand of the Lord his God upon Him.

11.  Ezra made walking with God and teaching
biblical principles to others the priority of
his life:
For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the
Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach
statutes and ordinances in Israel (Ezra 7:10)
Do “spiritual” people need to study?

12. Ezra was able to recognize the hand of God at
work. In response to the resources made
available, by the king, Ezra responded:
Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, who
has put such a thing as this in the king’s heart,
to beautify the house of the Lord which is in
Jerusalem, and has extended mercy to me
before the king and his counselors, and before
all the king’s mighty princes (Ezra 7:27-28)

13.  Ezra practiced the spiritual discipline of
fasting and prayer as a means of humbling
himself before the Lord when faced with
challenges.
 In addition, Ezra practiced “identificational
repentance” in his personal prayer life:

14. Ezra 9:5-6
5 At the evening sacrifice I arose from my
fasting; and having torn my garment and my
robe, I fell on my knees and spread out my
hands to the LORD my God. 6 And I said: “O
my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to
lift up my face to You, my God; for our
iniquities have risen higher than our heads,
and our guilt has grown up to the heavens.

15.  Ezra’s leadership is further recorded in the
book of Nehemiah, depicting Ezra as
reading and explaining the Law of God to
bring the people to repentance.
 Ezra’s purpose was to lead the people to
make personal commitments to God so they
could continually live by the principles of
Scripture.

16. A book that really
resonated with
people a few years
ago was written by
Henry Blackaby,
entitled,
Experiencing God:
Knowing and Doing
the Will of God.

17. Blackaby outlines
several steps
involved in
experiencing God
through knowing
and doing His will.

18. Step One: Recognize
that God is always at
work around you.
Example: Israelites
crying out under
Egyptian oppression
did not know that
God was already on
the case.

19. Step Two:
Understand that
God pursues a
loving relationship
that is real and
personal.
Example: The Lord
meeting with Moses
on the mountain.

20. Step Three: Know that
God speaks by the
Holy Spirit, through
the Bible, prayer
circumstances, and
the church to reveal
Himself, His
purposes, and His
ways

21. Step Four: Know that
God’s invitation for
you work with Him
always results in a
crisis of belief that
requires faith and
obedience.
Example: The call of
Moses to speak to
Pharaoh.

22. Step Five: Be
prepared, because
joining what God is
doing involves making
major adjustments in
your life.
Example: God told
Moses to return to
Egypt.

23. Step Six:
Understand that you
come to know God
by experience as you
obey Him and He
accomplishes His
work through you.

26. As believers, we recognize the value of imitating
Jesus and His leadership style. But if we really
think about it, it’s strange that we try to emulate
a leader who never developed an organization,
regularly encouraged people to stop following
Him, and ultimately saw His death as the
pinnacle of His accomplishments.
Jesus was not a manager. His primary role was to
function as a spiritual leader.
http://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders.html

27. Here are six characteristics that identify most
spiritual leaders:
1) They lead others into their own
encounters with God. One of the most
effective things about Jesus’ lifestyle was that
He didn’t switch into another mode to
introduce His disciples to the reality of God.
http://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders.html

28. 2) They lead others to discover their own
purpose and identity. Spiritual leadership is
characterized by great generosity. A spiritual
leader genuinely wants others to fully discover
who they were made to be.
http://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders.html

29. 3) They lead others into transformation—
not just production. When the goal is
spiritual growth and health, production will
always be a natural outcome. People function
at their peak when they function out of
identity.
http://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders.html

30. 4) They impact their atmosphere. While
we may not stop a tempest with our words,
spiritual leaders recognize that they can
change the “temperature” of a room,
interaction, or relationship. When there is
tension, fear, or apathy, a spiritual leader can
transform the immediate power of these
storms and restore vision, vitality and hope.
http://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders.html

31. 5) They help people see old things in new
ways. Many people are stuck not in their
circumstances, but in their perspectives and
paradigms. The word “repent” means “to
think differently, or to think in a different
way.” Jesus called people to look again at old
realities through new eyes. Changing ways of
thinking always precedes meaningful change.
http://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders.html

32. 6) They gain a following because of who
they are—not because of a position they
hold. Spiritual leaders can be found in
secular organizations, in the same way
managers and organizational leaders can be
found in religious ones.
http://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders.html