Declining Churches Searching for the Silver Bullet Pastor

  The problem of declining churches in America was nothing new when the COVID-19 pandemic first struck in March 2020. I tend to ignore 2020 through 2022 when measuring whether a church has declined. But let’s be honest: if you look back to March 2020 and compare your attendance and financial giving back then to that of today, in March 2024, and both are lower, on average, by more than a few percent, your church has declined. If you had a children’s ministry before the pandemic, and you now struggle to wrangle up more than a few kids on a typical Sunday, you have declined. Your church needs revitalization. Sure, there are other, less tangible measures of health. How are you doing evangelistically? Are you reaching your neighborhood with the gospel? Are you making disciples? Maybe your church has already taken proactive steps in the direction of revitalization. Perhaps you’ve already decided to make some hard decisions rather than kicking the can down the road. If so, good on you! Sadl

A Biblical Theology of Leadership

This article attempts a succinct, yet comprehensive, biblical theology of leadership based on humanity’s creation in the imago Dei. This paper will proceed to show the most effective Christian leadership hinges on a thorough understanding the doctrine of the imago Dei and all its implications. To implement the doctrine of the imago Dei in practice, a leader must recognize how biblical leaders effectively applied the doctrine in their daily responsibilities. The leadership methods of Jesus Christ will feature centrally in this paper. It is in view of Christ as the perfect exemplar of the imago Dei, that this paper examines the leadership style and philosophy of Jesus Christ. A truly biblical theology of leadership is inherently theological, anthropological, and Christological at the same time.

Christian leaders, in both Christian institutions and secular settings, will see their leadership styles transformed when they fully actualize the doctrine of imago Dei in daily leadership practicum. While the author works under the foundational assumption that a strong Christology informs a proper theological anthropology, this paper will wrestle with precisely what it means for humanness. Indeed, the exact implications of the imago Dei upon the very idea of what it means to be human has been a matter of considerable debate amongst theologians, going back centuries. In fact, many theologians have questioned asked whether the imago Dei is all that central to a scriptural understanding of humanity, given the rarity and vagueness with which the term receives mention (Cortez, 2017, 105).

Yet, as this paper will show, leaders who recognize the imago Dei in both themselves and their followers, will have developed a foundational, if not the foundational, tenet of good leadership. As an individual created in the imago Dei, the leader will see his or her own self-understanding transformed. A Christian leader who applies the concept of imago Dei in daily practice will understand both the leadership style of Jesus Christ, and his or her own role as a follower of Jesus Christ. The leader will see followers as divine image bearers who matter to God and who deserve a sacred level of dignity and respect. Finally, the leader will understand that just as God desires relationship with His image bearers, it is vitally important that the leader cultivate true personal, but professional, relationships with followers.

The Imago Dei: A Doctrine Explained

The doctrine of the imago Dei presents some explanatory challenges. As Middleton (2005, p. 38) says, “To begin with, interpretation of the imago Dei covers two and a half millennia and crosses the boundaries of two religious traditions: Judaism and Christianity.” Moreover, the exact phrase, “the image of God,” occurs only twice in the Bible, both occurring in the primordial history of early Genesis.

A Theological Explanation of the Image of God

No Christian who takes the Bible at face value would question that God created humanity in His image. The Bible says as much right from its opening chapter. There is almost universal agreement that the imago Dei has significant implications for what it means to be human (Erickson, 2013, p. 457). However, there is a paucity of direct biblical references to humanity’s creation in the image of God beyond Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6. Despite the very prominent and early mention of the imago Dei, the Old Testament provides little if any elaboration on the doctrine. The New Testament, on the other hand, provides convincing evidence that we should understand the imago Dei, at least in its perfect or restored sense, in terms of a strong Christology. Given the relative scarcity of Scripture directly addressing and defining what it means to when Genesis declares God created humans in His image, many views regarding the doctrine’s implications for humanity have emerged.

Three views of the imago Dei

If we can define precisely what it means to say that humans bear the imago Dei, we will much better grasp the doctrine’s consequences for leaders. Because Scripture does not deal unequivocally or in depth with the Image, such a definition requires numerous inferences from the biblical data. There are three prevailing views of the imago Dei: the substantive, relational, and functional views (Erickson, 2013, p. 457). Despite the relative strengths of each of the views, none of them provides an entirely satisfactory explanation of the imago.

The substantive view of the Image, which has been the dominant view throughout Christian history, sees the Image as entailing definite characteristics within the very nature of the human being, either physical, psychological, or spiritual (Erickson, 2013, p. 460). While a minority view, some sects such as Mormonism, hold a hyper-literal believe that Image means that humans look like God. Others see physical attributes of humans as having a metaphorical import; that the human being walks upright is a symbol of God’s moral uprightness. More commonly, the substantive view argues that, just as God is a moral, rational, thinking being, so too is the human He created in His image. Grudem is quick to reject anthropomorphic views of God but sees redeemed humanity as possessing (or being capable of imitating) the communicable attributes of God. These attributes include spirituality, knowledge, wisdom, truthfulness, free will, goodness, mercy, love, jealousy, wrath, peace, righteousness, and holiness (Grudem, 1994, pp. 185-186).

The relational view of the imago is a more recent development, championed in the twentieth century by such neo-orthodox theologians as Emil Brunner. This more dynamic view of the imago says that humans display the Image through particular relationships. Brunner saw two senses in the imago. First, he contended, there is the formal sense, or those things, such as rationality which differentiate the human from an animal. Second, Brunner saw a material sense of the imago which, he maintained, is not present in every human but those human beings who live in loving relationship both with God and with other human beings—the Great Commandment (Erikson, 2013, pp. 463-464).

Finally, there is the functional view of the imago, which is the notion that the image of God in humanity consists not in the makeup of the human or a person’s relationship with God or others, but in what the human does. This view, which pays close attention to the content of the image, most frequently focusing in on the human’s dominion over God’s creation. Humanity serves as God’s vice regent on the earth (Towner, 2005, p. 355). The human is not God but does carry the full authority to represent Him on earth.

The substantive, relational, and functional views of the imago Dei all recognize the imago remains in sinful humanity. However, theologians subscribing to each of the views differ over the extent to which sin mars, obscures, or causes the loss of any part of the imago. In fact, many proponents of the relational view contend that not only has sin not diminished the imago Dei in humanity, but that the human’s very volitional ability to sin presupposes its presence.

Biblical Foundations of the Imago Dei

The first mention of humankind as created in God’s image is in the very first chapter of the Bible. Genesis 1:26-27 states:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.[1]

From this first mention, the imago Dei does suggest a dominion over Creation. It further shows the independence of the imagofrom the sex of the image bearer. Middleton (2005) goes much further with the idea of humanity’s dominion, seeing in the imago Dei, humanity as direct representative of God, and Ancient Near Eastern cultures would not have missed the imagery that he believes Christianity’s systematic theologians have overlooked. As the ancient kings of the day erected statues of themselves to indicate their dominion, especially where they did not personally appear, so too does God place His living, sovereign emblem on the earth in the form of human beings (Middleton, 2005, p. 27).

Also intimated here is the idea that Image distinguishes humanity from animals (Walton, 2001, p. 129). Further, it seems altogether possible to infer from the broader Genesis 1-2 narrative that the imago is relational. That God uses the terms of plural majesty, “let us make man in our image,” has historically suggested either a heavenly council or an intra-Trinitarian discussion. Either way, the plural terms occur in view of God’s relationships, and it seems then that He desires humanity to be a species who craves relationship, both with each other, and with their creator (Doukhan, 2014, p. 33).

Doukhan (2014) also sees God as communicating (“God said…”), and so too is humanity a communicating being. Genesis describes God’s creation of humanity in far more detail than the remainder of Creation. Where God speaks the remainder of Creation into being, He seems far more active in forming Adam out of the dust of the ground, breathing life into him, and then drawing a rib from him to create. God is not only as creative, but seems desirous that His image bearers, too, would exercise creativity in reflecting His image (Doukhan 2014, p. 33-37).

The next mention of the imago is in Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” This reference to the imago Dei indicates the image survives in sinful humanity, occurring as it does long after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. While other Ancient Near Eastern cultures believed their king carried the image of their god(s), the Hebrew notion of every human as divine image bearer represents a radical democratization of the human-divine relationship (Hamilton, 1995, p. 134).

Moreover, the sanction of death by which God protects His image bearers, seems also to speak to the extreme worth of the individual human life. Human beings must accord each other the dignity and respect appropriate to God’s royal symbol (Kilner, 2015, p. 93). Further, if it was not clear in Gen. 1:26-27, then Gen. 9:6 makes it abundantly clear that the imago Dei was not exclusive to Adam, but rather, the image is something passed to humanity as a collective (Towner, 2005, p. 345).

After Gen. 9:6, the Old Testament makes no further mention of the imago Dei, thus the reader must infer a fuller understanding of the image from the remaining biblical evidence. The New Testament gives many more clues, though, as Cortez (2017) indicates, “With few exceptions, references to the image in the New Testament are explicitly Christological” (p. 99). In Col. 1:15, Paul calls Christ, “the image of the invisible God,” while in Col. 1:19, he says, “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…” The writer of Hebrews says that Christ, “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…” In John 14:9, Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Cortez (2017) argues for a New Testament understanding of the imago Dei that sees the image “as primarily an anthropological claim identifying Jesus as the perfect expression of what it means to be human” (p. 116).

The Bible is consistently clear that God has not written off sinful humanity. The New Testament makes even clearer God’s redemptive purposes in Christ. Through one man, Adam, sin entered the world, but through one man, Jesus, redemption comes (Rom. 5:12-21). In the person of Christ, God is out to reconcile Himself with His sinful image bearers (2 Cor. 5:11-21) and charges the follower of Christ to share in the ministry of reconciliation. The redeemed in Christ undergo a lifelong process of sanctification, whereby we are “conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). In eschatological consummation of what Isaiah prophesied (43:19, and 65:17), the ruling Christ declares from His throne, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). In Christ, the imago Dei comes to full restoration in redeemed humanity (Sherlock, 1996, 63).

The purpose of redemption seems nothing short of restoring to full radiance and glory God’s reflection in the redeemed human being. Given the biblical evidence supporting Christ’s work of restoring the imago Dei, Allen (2002) argues that it is imperative that Christ followers are responsible “to bear (as in, carry, convey, take) God’s attributes into every arena of life.” (p. 31). Nothing about God’s original call to Adam to righteously steward His image has changed, except that humanity bears the same responsibility under the curse of sin (Allen, 2002, p. 32). This is not a hopeless assignment for the Christian, however. As Paul states in 2 Cor. 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Through the person and work of Christ, God is recreating His image in redeemed humanity, who need not suffer the burden of bearing the imago Dei under the curse of sin and without the power of God Himself to steward the image.

The Imago Dei in the Life of the Leader

The human being remains one of God’s image bearers. That image finds its most perfect expression in the incarnate Christ. As humans, we possess the capability to exercise the communicable attributes of God—a key function of His image. Christian leaders are humans, redeemed by Christ, and undergoing a process of progressive sanctification, whereby we seek to become more like Christ, that one perfect bearer of God’s image. It is incumbent then, upon the Christian leader to not only learn from Christ’s practical leadership lessons, but to internalize the concept of the imago Dei, perfected in Christ, and reflected to varying degrees in both leader and follower.

The Image and the Purpose of Leadership

Leadership defies precise definition. However, most would agree rather generically that the role of the leader is to guide, direct, manage, or superintend a group of people or organization. Blackaby and Blackaby (2011, p. 33) define spiritual leaders as Christians in any context, secular or ministry, whose aim it is to lead as God desires. As Malphurs (2003) agrees, “Our mandate is to lead Christianly regardless of the context” (p. 13). The Christian leader is a committed Christ-follower, governed by the desire to serve God with righteous character. The Christian leader is committed to the authority of Scripture and seeks to lead in accordance with a biblical mandate.

The Bible is replete with examples showing the leader as both shepherd and servant of those he or she serves. Christian leadership is clearly a stewardship, with God entrusting the leader with His resources to accomplish His aims on the earth. Even in a secular organization, God has clearly placed a Christian leader in a position of headship because He has a purpose that He desires to fill in that organization or group of people. One cannot escape the single unifying concept behind leadership and that is the reality that leadership always involves people. The leader (one of God’s image bearers) will always guide, manage, or steward other image bearers.

The Bible repeatedly presents God as shepherd and servant leader of His people. As God the Son incarnate and the perfect exemplar of the imago Dei, Jesus Christ receives the same treatment from Scripture. Our understanding of leadership, then, must remain Christologically-focused. The Christian should have a desire to continuously become more like Christ in character and practice. The Christian is to be an imitator of Christ. Thus, to strive to lead in the ways that the Bible says that the Lord leads is to strive to reflect the image of God more perfectly in the practice of leadership.

The Image and the Role of the Leader

The leader finds his or her own role reflective of the imago Dei both in revisiting the Creation narrative and following the example of Christ. Examined in the larger context of the primordial history, Gen. 1:26-27 reveals many clues as to how God relates to His image bearers. First, as God charges humanity to have dominion over the earth He has created, the Creation narrative shows leadership to be a stewardship. Leaders find themselves entrusted with resources and, more importantly with the lives and careers of people. A leader not sobered by this thought lacks the maturity to serve in such a capacity.

The relational view of the imago Dei in the Creation narrative also has much to commend to a biblical theology of leadership. God has created His image bearers for relationship with Him and with each other. In this sense, the leader must also understand his or her purpose in terms of relationship, both horizontally, with other people, but vertically, in his or her own relationship with God. Such relationship implies communication and creativity, as Doukhan (2014) has demonstrated.

Again, both the Old and New Testament speak repeatedly of God as shepherd and, particularly in the case of Christ, as servant. Almost unanimously, sources speaking to Christian leadership seize upon the shepherd and servant motifs as exemplifying the heart of Christian leadership. The leader seeks to provide and care for those under his or her charge. The Creation story itself demonstrates this aspect of God in His providential care for our first parents. God not only creates man and woman, and walks with them daily, but He has set them in the Garden, a place abundant with every kind of fruit for them to eat. In the Garden, Adam and Eve find themselves completely resourced as God’s image bearers. For the first of many times from beginning to end of the Bible, God shows delight as He himself serves His image bearers.

The Image and the Role of the Follower

One adage of leadership is that to be a good leader, one must be a loyal follower. At first, the connection between the follower and the imago Dei may seem difficult to identify. But if one maintains a Christological focus on leadership, then the role of the follower becomes clearer. As this paper has shown, the Bible is unequivocal in depicting Christ incarnate as the perfect exemplar of the imago Dei. However, nothing about this or, for that matter, Christ’s own practices of leadership change the fact that He constantly, purposefully, and willingly submitted Himself to the will of the Father. Orthodox theologians universally agree that nothing about Christ’s submission makes God the Son anything less than equal to the Father.

Just a few examples from the Gospels follow. Jesus prayed fervently, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;” (Matt. 26:39). In His incarnation, Jesus shows that if it was possible, He would rather not face torture and execution. Yet, He continues, submitting to the Father’s plan, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” In John 6:38, Jesus affirms, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Though Jesus was clearly co-equal with the Father, He recognized the need to suborn his will to the Father’s. So, in the ability to follow, there exists a communicable attribute of God that Christians should desire to emulate.

Many times, followers find themselves called upon to set aside their own desires and their own personal preferences to follow the guidance and direction of a leader. This is, in no sense, an indication by itself of a follower’s own personal incompetence or incapacity. Rather, it is the mark of a good team member. In doing subordinating his or her own personal desires and preferences to those of the leader, and for the good of the organization, the Christian follower reflects Christ’s obedient nature, becomes more like Christ, and thus reflects the image of God in Christ with greater radiance.

The Image and Leadership Methodology

The imago Dei informs leadership methodology in numerous ways, including the leader’s own views of himself or herself and of others. If the imago Dei means to imitate the very best of God’s communicable attributes, then such qualities as responsible dominion, love, faithfulness, relationality, morality, and a dependence upon God ought to inform the Christian leader’s practice (Allen, 2002, pp. 38-39). The knowledge that he or she is nothing more or less than one of God’s image bearers and, in this sense, on an equal footing with those he or she leads should give the leader a profound sense of humility and of respect for subordinates. The very idea that even the lowest performing teammate is one of God’s image bearers should case the leader to pause and reflect before plunging headlong into potentially negative dealings with others.

Most any secular leadership book will extoll the virtues of good communications and people skills for the leader. But such skills are not only the stuff of management textbooks or the latest business trends. Rather, the relational aspect of the imago Dei demands that the leader cultivate his or her own communications and relationship skills and foster the same sort of development in others. As a steward of God’s resources, the leader should also developing new leaders as a biblical mandate. Yet, at times the leaders may fail to recognize all the talent and potential that is before them. Indeed, leaders may be dismissive of those they perceive as being weak or flawed. As Diaz (2013) observes, the Bible is also full of stories of great leaders who did not seem well qualified at first blush. Certainly, Moses and Gideon would not appear as top choices to serve on a church staff or in a corporate boardroom today, let alone in the great leadership roles in which God used them. The leaders will do well to be mindful of the potential inherent in each of the image bearers with whom he or she shepherds.

Applying the Image in a specific leadership setting

One of the most challenging Christian leadership settings is that of pastoral ministry in a church revitalization setting. Often, a new pastor enters this situation in a church that has already been declining for several years. The new pastor will have heard from the membership and the pulpit search committee that, “we need to attract younger people.” Yet, most often, the congregation meets with tremendous resistance the pastor’s efforts to lead the change required to move the church from an insular, inward-looking focus to an outwardly evangelistic, Great Commission focus (Clifton, 2016). This setting challenges every leadership tool available to the revitalization pastor, and a strong awareness of the image of God in both the congregation and in himself.

First, the revitalization pastor is in for inevitable feelings of frustration and defeat that will leave him feeling like a failure. It is during this time that the pastor must view himself as created in the imago Dei, for relationship with God. It is the pastor’s vertical relationship with God, as well as with mentors, coaches, and encouragers that will sustain him during the first several years of church turnaround, which Clifton (2016) says can at least five years, on average.

Moreover, the turnaround role requires the pastor to view congregants, often the very sources of his frustration, as God’s image bearers. Human nature may cause the pastor a natural desire to take out his frustrations on those he believes are causing it. Seeing congregants as bearers of the imago Dei will remind him that each is worthy of dignity and respect. A desire to project the imago Dei demand the turnaround pastor to exercise mercy and love and Christ-like grace. Change requires tremendous buy in. As the imago Dei is horizontally relational, the church revitalizing pastor will find the need to sharpen his communication skills, no matter how good they were before undertaking revitalization.

Conclusion

No doubt human efforts to explain the imago Dei, based on the information available, will fall short in some respects. While humans may not fully grasp precisely what it means to be created in God’s image, nonetheless the doctrine remains important to a rightly conceived theological anthropology. In the pages of the Bible, God tells His image bearers that they are different from the rest of His creation and that He designed them for special relationship with Him and to convey to the world something about Him. On a practical level, the imago Dei seems best understood as the human being seeking to imitate God in His communicable attributes. Particularly, the Christian seeks to imitate God in the person of Jesus Christ. If Jesus is the exact image of God, in human flesh, then the Christian can achieve nothing greater than Christ-likeness in attitude, intention, and conduct.

This understanding of the imago Dei transcends leadership contexts. The Christian leader who serves as a pastor or on a church staff should view himself and others no differently than does the Christian leading in the corporate world. Christian and unbeliever, alike, both remain God’s image bearers, and that should powerfully influence the leader’s desire to see followers as worthy of infinite respect and as a true stewardship responsibility.

Informed by the imago Dei as a central leadership tenet, the Christian’s desire to lead like Jesus goes much further than pithy sayings such as, “What would Jesus do?” Rather, the Christian leader will seek to better understand the leadership methods of the incarnate Christ precisely because He is the perfect image of God in human flesh. The Christian leader will seek to be servant and shepherd to those he or she leads, because that is what Jesus did. In leading the way Jesus did, the Christian leader fulfills his or her biblical mandate to be conformed to the image of Christ, and, in so doing, more greatly reflect the glory of God.

References

Allen, R. D. (2002). The Genesis principle of leadership: Reclaiming and stewarding the long-lost image of God. Lookout Mountain, CA: Covenant College. Retrieved from https://www.covenant.edu/pdf/academic_publications/faculty/Allen_Dick.pdf

Bird, M. F. (2013). Evangelical theology: A biblical and systematic introduction. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Blackaby, H., & Blackaby, R. (2011). Spiritual leadership: moving people on to God's agenda.(Revised, Ed.) Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group.

Clifton, M. (2016). Reclaiming glory: Revitalizing dying churches. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group.

Cortez, M. (2016). Christological anthropology in historical perspective: Ancient and contemporary approaches to theological anthropology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Cortez, M. (2018). ReSourcing theological anthropology: a constructive account of humanity in the light of Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

deClaissé-Walford, N., Jacobson, R., & Tanner, B. (2014). New International Commentary on the Old Testament: The book of Psalms. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Diaz, P. R. (2013). Exploring biblical leadership in God’s image. The Living Pulpit (Online), 22(1). Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=http:// search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLA0001981646&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Doukhan, J. B. (2014). The creation narrative. In S. Bell (Ed.), Servants and friends: A biblical theology of leadership (pp. 31-47). Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press.

Eckardt, B. F. (2015). Another look at the imago Dei: fulfilled in the incarnate one. Concordia Theological Quarterly, 79(1-2), 67-78. Retrieved October 29, 2018, from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLAn3816522&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Erickson, M. J. (2013). Christian theology (3rd ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Glas, J. (2015, Summer). The gospel, human flourishing, and the foundation of social order. Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, 19(2), 100-130.

Grudem, W. (1994). Systematic theology: An introduction to biblical doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Hamilton, V. P. (1995). New International Commentary on the Old Testament: the book of Genesis, chapters 18-50. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Kilner, J. F. (2015). Dignity and destiny: humanity in image of God. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Malphurs, A. (2003). Being leaders: The nature of authentic Christian leadership. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Martin, R. K. (2002, Spring). Encountering God in the image of Christ: Iconic leadership. Journal of Religious Leadership, 1(1), 83-100. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLA0001699612&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Middleton, J. R. (2005). The liberating image: The imago Dei in Genesis 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.

Schwarz, H. (2013). The human being: A theological anthropology. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Sherlock, C. (1997). The doctrine of humanity. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

Towner, W. S. (2005). Clones of God: Genesis 1:26-28 and the image of God in the Hebrew Bible. Interpretation, 59(4), 341-356. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLA0001483944&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Walton, J. H. (2001). NIV application commentary: Genesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Wilburn, M. (2017). Anthropological telos and leadership goals in theological anthropology. Journal of Religious Leadership, 16(1), 89–112. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLAn4091711&site=ehost-live&scope=site

[1]All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).

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