Leadership is a popular topic for both Christian and non-Christian pundits of organizational behavior. With few exceptions, however, the pundits view leadership from a naturalistic worldview. For the non-Christians, spiritual reality either doesn’t exist or it is regarded as irrelevant to organizational leadership. And for Christians, who believe in the existence of spiritual reality, many concur. Consequently, the popular view of organizational leadership for both Christians and non-Christians is naturalism, which focuses on what is deemed to be practical.
Practical leadership focuses on living in the moment based on natural reality. Popular topics include discipline, accountability, sacrifice, purpose, communication, teamwork, and success. Even humility and integrity can be found among the popular topics. But there is almost no consideration of spiritual reality. Spiritual reality is a priori excluded. This means that they limit the causes for phenomena to the natural realm.
Given a divine Creator is a spirit being, spiritual reality exists. Furthermore, if the Creator interacts with his creation, then there must be the possibility of divine intervention in the natural order. While there may be some truth in natural wisdom, the value of such wisdom is limited because it is not grounded profoundly in truth. Consequently, from a Christian worldview practical leadership is at best incomplete and at worst error.
Christianity is based on a created reality (Genesis 1:1) by a transcendent being known as God, who is a spirit being (John 4:24). God created everything with intent and purpose (Isaiah 46:9–11). Consequently, to understand natural reality correctly, we must seek the Creator’s purpose and seek to align with his purpose. This is strategic leadership, which is far more profound than naturalistic leadership.
Because practical leadership based on naturalism is inherently self-limiting, pundits constrained by this level of thinking can never think strategically aligned with the Creator. Strategic leadership requires the ability to discern the Creator’s perspective and a willingness to align with his purpose. To seek to lead in God’s universe any other way is in vain as expressed in Psalm 127:1.
My definition of strategic leadership:
