– Video blog number 142, take five, I don’t know. I think you’ll forgive me for doing a little reminiscing as I look back on 12 years in this role. And I hope that you’ll accept a challenge to consider your own leadership journey.

We’re just a couple weeks out on Council 2025, and to state the obvious, it’s the last one I get to lead. What a privilege it has been. I look forward to seeing you there. It’s caused me to do some reminiscing. Taking me back to August 1st, 2013, when I found myself in England, the very first day of the presidency.

I was there because previously I had accepted an invitation to speak to one of our field forums for a gathering of our international workers. And I thought, well, if I said yes to come before I was elected, I probably should keep that commitment now that I’m your president. So my first week in this role, I had the privilege of speaking to them. And while there in England, we taped the very first video blog. I had this idea, corny though it was, of the 12th president having a 12-minute message that we would distribute on the 12th of the month, and it caught hold and we’ve done it ever since then.

I did open with the naive idea that I could invite feedback and make a conversation out of it. I had no idea how much feedback that I’d get. We’ve got a lot of opinions on a lot of things, Alliance family, and those were immediately shared in that feedback loop. And I soon realized I not only can’t respond to all of these interactions, I don’t even have capacity to read them all if they keep coming like this every month. And so, quickly, we shut down that mechanism. And I found other ways to really listen to the Alliance family. So thank you, sincerely, for joining me on this 12-year journey.

In my first term, I began to realize that my role was primarily two words: inviting the Alliance family into ownership and engagement of this great mission, which God has given to us. What a privilege to be part of this Alliance family, what an assignment from God that we have. And I hit the road asking the family to more fully own and engage this calling. Believing that a desk was a poor place from which to lead a denomination, I was in as many settings as possible, listening as much as I could, and taking the microphone every time it was offered to me, casting vision, preaching over 150 times a year in those opening years.

Toward the close of that first term, I found myself in Tim Crouch’s office, who oversees Alliance Missions, and I asked the question, “Tim, is there anything in your current leadership that you inherited from somebody else that you wouldn’t feel good about passing on to the next generation of leaders? It’s our turn, and while it’s our turn, is there something you want to do about it?” I thought I was asking a question he would think about and get back to me, but on the spot, he had a ready answer. And from that, we began to dream of what a restructuring of Alliance Missions would look like, bringing CAMA back into the team and putting together what is now the four structures of aXcess, Envision, marketplace, and CAMA.

I went back to my office and realized I better ask myself the same question. Is there anything that I inherited that I don’t feel good about passing off to the next generation? And then I realized what I had been hearing was lots of concern about the Great Commission Fund, how it was structured, and about how our consecration and ordination process was structured. So I had two issues that I heard from the family, and I had two more that I brought from the angst of my own soul: the condition of our Statement of Faith, while very well written, had become somewhat outdated in its language, and the location of our National Office. So term two became characterized by these five big rocks of change. I went from being Mr. Vision-Cast, Ownership and Engagement guy to having to be the change-agent president. A task I didn’t love, but felt very clearly called to do. To ask the Alliance family to consider changes about the structure of Alliance Missions, the structure of the Great Commission Fund, our ordination/consecration practice, our Statement of Faith, and the location of our office. Had I known that a global pandemic was coming in the middle of that, there’s no way that I would’ve had the courage to engage in all those. But we entered in, we carried on, and we hit the road with an even greater intensity of these national conversations, a listening tour, trying to focus in on these issues that I have mentioned to us with a listening ear. How do we better frame this movement so that we mobilize more people for Kingdom advance and become more missional in all that we do?

When term three came, 2021, it was very clear to me that The Alliance had hit a change threshold. We couldn’t receive more changes, appropriately so, but it was time for me as president now to shift to two more words: implementation and stabilization. How do we implement these changes and stabilize in such a way that results in mission maximization? Interestingly for me, in that season came some challenges for my own soul. Driving home from work one day, three words clearly landed on my soul: assignment, alignment, refinement. I knew immediately what they meant. “John, you’re still on assignment. You can’t quit. You’ve got a job to do.” Two, “This is in alignment with everything you’ve been doing the last eight years. This implementation and stabilization season is necessary to bring to completion that which you are called to do.” And three, the refinement word was, “There’s going to be something for your own soul in this process of things that need to be dealt with by Me in this season.”

Those words have proven to be true. I have sought to stay on assignment, it’s been in alignment, but boy has there been some refinement to my own soul in this journey. As we had to let go of the first rendition of the dream for One Alliance Place. Some things have taken longer than I expected they would as some things have been reversed. And wow, I didn’t see that coming, but it’s really good. For example, the very building I’m sitting in right now. This is called the Alliance Ministry Center. It’s a section of the strip mall that we purchased years ago in the relocation process, thinking that it was going to be torn down by now, but now it’s actually been refurbished to be a wonderful ministry center for our office to work out of as kind of an overflow and a chapel area for us, for two church plants, for other outreach ministries. This has become a beautiful expression of our desire of that original vision to reenter a community, but I didn’t see it coming, and there was soul refinement for me that had to take place in the process.

That’s a synopsis of the last 12-year journey I’ve been on as president. Many more stories, much could be said, so many people to thank in the process. But for this moment of this video, it leads me to say a couple of things. First, thank you for joining me on this journey. I have felt teamed, partnered, supported, prayed for, encouraged. We have an incredible family in The Christian and Missionary Alliance, and I’ve been the recipient of your grace and kindness so many times. Second, thank you for entrusting me with this role in the first place. I realize that I was barely strong enough physically, and certainly didn’t have all the leadership capacity to enter into this role, but you gave me this privilege. I’ve joked many times that the Alliance family prayed me back to life, so they figured they better give me a job, and I’ve not taken that lightly. What an honor it has been. And third, thank you for accepting the call that has come to your life to lead. I’m more aware than ever that leadership is a challenging task.

A year and a half ago on Christmas Day, I had a little time before the family was arriving, and sometimes I write with no real purpose. I’ve just got something on my heart that has to get out. And I found myself writing these words that I had no purpose for and didn’t even know I wrote until this moment. Here’s what I wrote: I have a question. It’s sincere. I should have asked it 40 years ago or 10 years ago at least. Here it is. Why would anyone who has ever read the Bible want to be a leader?

The Bible is many things, all divine, and addresses many subjects, all relevant to humans. Among the many interwoven themes of the 66-book text is leadership, or more specifically, the story of the calling, ministry, and shaping of the one appointed to lead. The common plot is this—the brokenness of this world is seen by the God of heaven who raises up a leader to make something better. This often comes with a clear call and some form of empowerment or provision, which is soon accompanied by significant opposition and/or hardship en route to the transformative outcome. Hence my question. I see no clean, simple, trouble-free, unopposed, straight-line-to-victory leadership stories in the Bible.

Interestingly, the God who sees and the God who calls is also the God who multitasks. While He has a plan and a person to accomplish what only God can, His plan is also to reshape the person with His own hand. No leader in the Scripture is merely an “errand boy” carrying out someone else’s assignment in a manner that doesn’t have personal effect. Rather, God’s called are chosen representatives to not only lead a community of people to a better place, but to be led by God through a transformative process in his or her own soul and character. God uses leadership not only to take people a destination they couldn’t get on their own, but also to make His appointed leaders people they wouldn’t or couldn’t become on their own.

Opposition, hardship, detours, delays seemed to be some of His most common discipleship tools in the life of the leader. Hence my question. Why would anyone who has ever read the Bible want to be a leader? I suppose the answer is, because we want to serve our King in whatever capacity He’s assigned to us.

If you aren’t called to be a leader, don’t feel second class. You’re needed in the role in which He’s placed you. And I know He has a package of discipleship tools designed for your life. But for those of us who have received the leadership assignment, may we accept it for what it is—God’s call and God’s tool. We have a job to do and a person to become as we submit to His hand and as we’re open to His Spirit. Joyfully, that person we become will look more and more like Jesus. That’s what I pray will happen through and in all of us—an advancing of the Kingdom of God in this world and in our own souls. Jesus working through us. Jesus formed in us. This is leadership at its best. May it be so for all of us.