A practical insight behind a core church leadership truth …

Something I’ve taught church leaders for many years is this core leadership truth: Your leadership will never surpass the quality of your followership.

While it can be tempting to think that the concept of a church leader’s personal followership of Jesus Christ will fuel and drive the content and quality of their leadership is a “Duh”! idea, you might be surprised at how many church leaders struggle with this as a reality.

Let me give you a couple real life examples (stories I have permission to tell) …

First is a minister’s wife who is an executive coach … and struggling mightily with her marriage. So is her husband. Yet, both husband and wife know precisely how they would counsel couples in their church experiencing the same issues.

Get this …

How they would counsel such couples is correct — it’s good, wise, and accurate biblical counsel that would be transformative to a marriage if lived out by the husbands and wives receiving the counsel.

Yet, this couple can counsel wisely but don’t personally practice what they counsel. They see the problems in the lives of others they are serving, and they see good and godly remedies to those problems, they just don’t apply them personally. And the failure to do that is now impacting not only their marriage, but their own leadership as it erodes their relationship, their mental health, and their spiritual well-being.

While initially their leadership seemed to be strong in spite of their weak followership, that could only last so long before the quality of their followership began to impact their leadership.

The same is true for a husband/wife couple where he serves as lead pastor and she does a lot of work in women’s ministry and with couples and their marriages. But this ministry couple are miserable with each other. They both routinely counsel other couples about their marriages, but their failure to personally practice what they counsel is now having a detrimental impact on their leadership, not to mention their spiritual well being and their emotional and mental health.

This kind of internal conflict is what mental health professionals call a discrepancy — a disconnect between what someone professes to believe and how they actually live. When a person gives wise counsel to others but does not follow it themselves, that contradiction creates an internal strain. Over time, this strain can manifest as stress, anxiety, guilt, depression, and even burnout. It’s exhausting to live in conflict with one’s own stated values.

But this isn’t just a psychological issue, it’s a deeply spiritual one. Scripture repeatedly warns against hypocrisy, the act of teaching one thing while doing another. Jesus had some of His strongest rebukes for religious leaders who “… crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden” (Luke 11:46b). James also cautions believers, saying, “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves” (James 1:22).

A leader who fails to follow the biblical truth they teach not only undermines their credibility but also places themselves under enormous emotional and spiritual strain. The remedy? True integrity — aligning one’s actions with one’s professed beliefs. When leaders commit to being true followers of Christ in both word and deed, they experience greater peace, stronger relationships, and more effective leadership.

So, the question for every church leader is this: Are you leading from a place of genuine followership, or are you living in a discrepancy that is quietly eroding your leadership, your spiritual health, and your overall well-being? Your leadership will never surpass the quality of your followership. The good news? That’s something you can change today.

Scotty