Christian Leadership Alliance
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Leading Like Christ
Campus Crusade's president shares why collaboration is key to the great commission.| Outcomes, Aug/Sep 2008
Christian Leadership Alliance president Frank Lofaro recently interviewed Stephen Douglass, president of Campus Crusade for Christ International. Douglass, who spoke at the CLA National Conference in Dallas this past April, shared his perspectives on issues affecting Christian nonprofit organizations.
How do you define Christian leadership?
Exerting influence in a biblical way.
What are some keys to discovering and deploying future leaders for Christian nonprofit organizations?
I believe there is a much-overlooked reservoir of future leaders of Christian organizations. That reservoir is Christians who are currently leaders in secular society. They have just never thought about, aspired to, or seen themselves as people who could lead in a Christian organization.
What I sought to address when I spoke at the CLA conference last April was how we can help people cross over from the secular world to lead a Christian organization. I emphasized three things that leaders need to do better in order to exert influence in a biblical way.
The number one thing is to live the Christian life—to live as God would have us live, in the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no room for compromise.
The second is to love. Often leaders deal with others in a way that doesn't reflect the love of Christ. To be a successful Christian leader in a Christian organization, you need to be a leader who follows what Christ said: Love God and your neighbor as yourself.
Sometimes leaders come into a Christian environment with too cut and dried of an attitude. They don't treat people as Christ treated people: with dignity and recognition of their commitment to serve the Lord. That attitude won't help leaders be successful. Leaders who exude the love of God, on the other hand, are trusted and followed.
The third point is that people need to learn how to lead toward nonprofit goals. The absence of a profit "bottom line" can be puzzling to a secular leader. But once they reorient, they can definitely experience how the richness of their giftedness applies in the endeavors of the body of Christ.
In summary, there are lots of people who know how to exert influence. But they don't necessarily know how to do that in a biblical way, which is necessary to be successful in a Christian organization.
In 1972 you wrote The Ministry of Management. What inspired you to write that book?
When I was at Harvard Business School, my roommates and I did a research study on Campus Crusade. We were mentored by the top professor at Harvard Business School in terms of student rankings, so we got advice far beyond our years of experience. We made recommendations to Bill Bright in several categories and staged out the implementation over three years. One of those recommendations concerned the need for leadership development.
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