The Role of Talents and Gifts in Spiritual Leadership

1. “Spirit leadership is a blending of natural and spiritual qualities. Even the natural qualities are not self produced, but God-given, and therefore reach their highest effectiveness when employed in the service of God  and for His glory.”(32)
2. “Leadership that can be fully explained in terms of the natural, although ever so attractive and competent, will result only in sterility and moral and spiritual bankruptcy”(19)
3. Natural endowments and traits of personality and scholastic attainments greatly enhance leadership, but they’re not the factors of paramount importance.(20)
4. “Each of us from birth possesses skills that either qualify or disqualify us from certain tasks.  Those skills often lie dormant until some crisis calls forth their exercise.  They can and should be developed.” (34)
5. “Because qualities of natural leadership are by no means unimportant in
   spiritual leadership, there is value in seeking to discover leadership potential both in oneself and in others.  Most people have latent and undeveloped traits that, through lack of self analysis and consequent lack of self knowledge, may long remain undiscovered” (43)
6. “It is the perogative of the Spirit to bestow spiritual gifts that greatly enhance the leadership potential of the recipient.” (35)
7. Some important differences between natural and spiritual leaders:

Natural Leader................................Spiritual Leader
Self-confident.......................................Confident in God
Knows men..........................................Also knows God
Makes own decisions.............................Seeks to find God’s will
Ambitious.............................................Self-effacing
Originates own methods.........................Finds and follows God’s methods
Enjoys commanding others.....................Delights to obey God
Motivated by personal considerations......Motivated by love for God & man
Independent........................................God-dependent

Source: J. Oswald Sanders "Spiritual Leadership"