One in a series of "President's Perspectives" in which Dr. Richard J. Mouw discusses Fuller's core values.

For several years a group of us met—twice a year, usually, for several days at a time—to discuss what it means to give intellectual leadership to the Christian community. I convened the gatherings, with a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment. Several of us were presidents of academic institutions, others came from the world of Christian journalism and publishing. Our group included both Protestants and Catholics.

We started by reading Max De Pree’s Leadership Is an Art, and, for our first session, met with Max himself. Then, over the next few years, we talked about how we could apply his lessons on leadership in our own attempts to provide intellectual leadership to our various constituencies.

When it was all over, a good friend who has a senior position in a major Christian publishing company made an observation. He had been in his job for over three decades, he said, but he had never thought of himself as a leader. “A publisher, yes,” he said. “And I have always thought of that as making an important contribution to the Christian community. But I have not seen it as leadership. This gives me a new perspective on my work!”

I have thought a lot about that comment. And it rings true for me. Thinking about leadership does add a new dimension to various areas of Christian service.

When I became a senior administrator at Fuller, after two decades as a professor devoted primarily to teaching and scholarship, people often talked about my now “becoming a leader,” as if I had not been giving leadership in my faculty role. At the time, I did not question this way of viewing what was happening to me. But I now have the kind of perspective that my publisher friend described. Those two decades that I spent primarily teaching classes, and writing articles and books—in all of that I was also exercising leadership.

And to see those activities as exercising leadership is not simply to adopt a new label for such things as teaching classes and publishing books. To think about leadership is to focus in a certain way on these activities. For a Christian, it is never enough simply to do such things just because they are fulfilling or intrinsically interesting. We must also think about what they mean for the Kingdom.

Of course, not everything we do has to have some direct link to service in the Kingdom. Playing a round of golf, taking your kids to the playground, watching a situation comedy on TV—some of these things we do simply because they are a part of the rhythms of a healthy Christian life. Not that they are religiously “neutral” activities: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). But some things that we do in Jesus’s name are necessary for refreshing ourselves as we back off a bit from the active “doing” of Kingdom service. To recognize the need for play and rest is itself important for being effective leaders.

But there is a clear link between Kingdom service and leadership. Our leadership is a dimension of our service. It’s not that we teach, or administer, or serve as elders and deacons, or manage a household—and then we also lead. Activities of this sort are the ways God’s people exercise leadership for the cause of Christ’s Kingdom.

The Bible is a book about leadership. In fact, it both begins and ends with human beings exercising leadership in God’s creation. In the very first speech that God delivers to human beings, in the first chapter of the Bible, he gives the man and the woman the assignment that they must “have dominion” in the Garden (Genesis 1:28). We were created as human beings to exercise leadership in God’s good creation. And in the final chapter of the Bible, at the end of John’s description of the Holy City, he says that the redeemed people of God will “reign for ever and ever” in the New Creation (Revelation 22:5). God intends, in both creating us and redeeming us, that we should actively lead, by managing the affairs of the creation.

Those are the leadership “bookends” in the Bible—in the beginning we were created for “dominion,” and at the end we are redeemed for “reigning.” In between those bookends, of course, everything gets messed up. Human beings who were created to be co-leaders under the rule of God—“covenant partners” is the term I like—become rebels against God. In our sinfulness we distort the leadership to which God calls us. And time after time in the pages of Scripture we see what a mess we get ourselves into when we fail to engage in the kind of leadership that God intends for us.

A seminary is an important school for leadership. At Fuller we study in great detail the Scriptures and the Christian tradition, so that we can provide the Christian community, and the larger world, the resources for the kind of leadership that is much needed today.

Our Fuller mission statement says that we “equip men and women for the manifold ministries of Christ and his Church,” and that “manifold” image applies nicely to our education for leadership. Fuller has never been a “one fold” seminary. Charles E. Fuller, Harold Ockenga, and others who were involved in the founding of the school cared deeply about pastoral leadership, but they also envisioned a school that would equip evangelists, youth workers, church planters, Bible translators, and teacher-scholars. And that vision has expanded over the years, so that we now range broadly, as a three-school seminary, focusing on theology, psychology, and intercultural studies, as well as sponsoring several centers that zero in on specific areas of leadership.

When we take seriously the idea of leadership in theological education, our vision necessarily expands. It is not enough simply to preach or to counsel or to evangelize. We must also develop skills like dealing effectively with conflict, working with an awareness of cultural context, nurturing healthy staff relations, and knowing the basics of budget management.

Underlying all of that, however, is a concern for the character of the leader. And at the heart of that concern is the realization that nurturing a proper relationship to God is of utmost importance. At the heart of our sinful rebellion is a refusal to acknowledge the need to submit to the will of our Creator. The Serpent’s challenge to our first parents in Genesis 3 focused directly on the leadership question. Eat of the forbidden fruit, he said, and “you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5).

Sinful leadership attempts to manage the affairs of life while ignoring the guidance of a loving Creator. We want to run the show on our own, making up our own rules. As believers we know that this can only lead to horrible consequences for the human community.

A seminary is literally a “seed bed.” At Fuller we are planting the seeds of Christian leadership. We have already seen those seeds take root and grow in marvelous ways in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Our graduates are exercising leadership all over the world. An exciting endeavor!