Shepherds or CEO's: Rethinking Church Leadership

If you want to know the state of a church, look at its leaders. Are they shepherds, or are they CEOs?

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For decades, the Church has subtly embraced a leadership model that mirrors the corporate world more than the Kingdom of God. Instead of pastors tending the flock, we now have CEOs managing brands. Instead of elders working together in mutual submission, we see a single figure at the helm, wielding centralised power. Instead of making disciples, we are curating audiences. Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking, “Are we being faithful?” and started asking, “Are we being successful?” as though Christ ever measured His ministry by numbers, influence, or visibility.

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Who Leads the Church?

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Scripture is clear: Jesus Christ is the head of the Church (Colossians 1:18). He alone has ultimate authority. Yet today, many churches function as though the pastor is the CEO, operating an institution rather than shepherding a people. But the Church was never meant to be an empire, and the role of the pastor was never designed to replace the collective function of the Body of Christ.

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Ephesians 4:11-12 tells us that God has appointed different gifts in the Church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. No single individual was meant to carry the full burden of leadership. Yet modern church structures have consolidated power at the top, turning pastors into executives and congregations into passive consumers rather than active participants in God’s mission.

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The Danger of a Church Built Like a Business

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When the Church adopts the corporate model, several dangers emerge. Pastors experience burnout because they were never meant to shoulder the entire burden alone. Congregations, rather than being discipled into maturity, become consumers treating the Church as a product to be marketed rather than a body to belong to. The mission itself becomes distorted as growth, influence, and expansion replace faithfulness, holiness, and truth.

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The Lesson of the Foot Soldier

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During World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower overheard a senior officer dismissing an infantryman as just a soldier, nothing significant. Eisenhower rebuked him, saying, “If this war is won, it will be won by the foot soldiers, not by the generals.”

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The Church is no different. It is not sustained by a handful of high-profile leaders but by ordinary believers faithfully carrying the Gospel to the world. The strength of the Church does not rest on strategic planning and branding, but on the faithful obedience of every member of Christ’s Body. It flourishes not when a single leader builds a platform, but when every believer takes up their cross and follows Jesus.

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A Call to Biblical Leadership

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I say this not as an outsider, but as someone who has worked with churches across 125 nations - from grand cathedrals to underground fellowships, from small village congregations to sprawling megachurches. One of the greatest failings of the global church is this: we have elevated the role of the pastor beyond what Scripture intended, and in doing so, we have weakened the Body of Christ.

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So, to all pastors, elders, church leaders, and believers of every background and flavour: return to the biblical model of leadership. The world does not need a more successful church; it needs a more faithful one.

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Let us stop building empires and start making disciples.

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Let us stop managing audiences and start shepherding the flock.

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Let us stop leading like the world and start serving like Christ.

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Because in the end, the Church will not be won by celebrity pastors and visionary CEOs. It will be won by faithful foot soldiers of the Gospel- ordinary men and women who lay down their lives in service to the Servant King, Jesus Christ.

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