Drawing from Luke’s Gospel, Currie shows that Christ’s mission of inaugurating his kingdom was carried out by preaching. That same mission continues in the church today. A pastor has been set apart “to extend the rule of God for God’s glory, by proclaiming Christ in his death and resurrection from all of Scripture.”

This past summer marked the beginning of my thirteenth year in pastoral ministry. I know I’m not the most seasoned pastor, but I’m also no longer a novice. A dozen years in ministry brings with it a good deal of reflection. You begin to examine and rethink many things: whether you’re being effective and useful; where you’ve yielded—here and there—to internal or external pressures; and how your own understanding of pastoral ministry may have shifted over time. You start to ask whether your idealistic and well-crafted convictions about the pastorate can truly withstand the realities of ministry life.

As I entered a new year of ministry those were some of the questions that kept me up at night. Providentially, I came across John Currie’s recently published book The Pastor as Leader: Principles and Practices for Connecting Preaching and Leadership.

Ordinarily, this isn’t the kind of book I would pick up and read. I tend to view “leadership” books—Christian or otherwise—as a notch above self-help titles. Easy enough to skim, but largely forgettable. The Pastor as Leader is not one of those. It proved both reorienting and reinvigorating to me and my ministry.

The main goal of the book is to connect leadership with preaching. As Currie summarizes:

Pastoral leadership is the process where, for the glory of God, a man of God, appointed by the Son of God and empowered by the Spirit of God, proclaims the word of God so that the people of God are equipped to move forward into the purposes of God together (p. 31).

This reflects a basic Presbyterian view of the ministry—rooted in the ordinary means of grace, and especially in preaching. The Westminster Larger Catechism teaches:

The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners; of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ; of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation” (Q&A 155).

Yet, daily routines, expectations, and even unbiblical theories of organization can lead to an unhealthy disconnect between leadership and preaching. It happens all the time! “There is a better way,” Currie writes, “to lead Christ’s church on its mission than atheological, pragmatic adoption of corporate culture; self-preserving complacency regarding the status quo; or self-serving, unloving lording over God’s people” (p. 5). He writes not only to convince the unconvinced, but also—to my experience—to again convince the convinced.

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