In a Christian context, leadership is preserved for the most prominent or highly ranked people in the community. Whereas the rest of the people are doomed to the incompetence of leadership. According to Kouzes, 2006 leadership is the ability or procedure to which an individual earns respect and authority to guide the community. For instance, during the lifetime of Jesus Christ traits of good leadership skill were portrayed in all his undertakings. In addition, the article discourages the dominance leadership for specific individuals with the top position and advocates for the creation of the leadership team in accordance to the people’s capacity and talents.
The leadership system comprises of five practices that promotes exemplary leadership. That is, a leader is needs to model the way, inspire for the sharing of vision, enabling other people to act or respond adequately to the challenges facing them and encouraging of the hearts which are broken by the challenging situations.The emphasis on the need for the leaders to sensitize the community on the significance of the dynamics around the leadership relationship concept.
During the early church, leaders demonstrated their competence, influence to the community and the initiative they hold to the Christian faith using the leadership skills of the apostle Paul (Romans 16: 1-15). According to the scripture (Romans 12:3-8) leaderships is the spiritual gift from God therefore it needs to be shared to the entire creation without discriminating on lines of gender. James and Barry argument perfectly integrate with that of the Apostle Paul. They both calls for equal leadership opportunities to everybody. Leadership should be used for the benefit of the other people by developing an initiative that would help people to do extraordinary things. According to the text it highlights the way leaders used the five practices of exemplary leadership.
References
Kouzes, J. M. (2006). Christian reflections on the leadership challenge. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
