Beth Grant serves as chairperson for the AG Network for Women in Ministry. Today she joins the conversation by sharing her perspective on what AG leadership should look like.

My definition of godly leadership has been most shaped by the model of Jesus, servant leader, and by ministering for 30 years in very different cultures. As I pray about the future of the Assemblies of God and feel a personal sense of responsibility to be the kind of minister-leader we want “AG leadership” to be, I would love to be known for the following:

1) Like Jesus, let’s be a friend of sinners. I pray the Assemblies of God will be known as a church in which people without God are welcome on their spiritual journeys.

Why are we surprised when people without Jesus live like sinners?

We have tried to teach our daughters as they were growing up to genuinely care about teachers and classmates that were broken people and who were far from God. We wanted troubled young people to be welcome in our home around our kitchen table after school. Brokenness and messy lives are the natural outcome of lives without a Savior. Jesus died for those in sin, and our hearts as His people should reflect that love. It means befriending them and weeping over them rather than avoiding them. (It’s hard to lead people to Jesus & disciple them unless we as allow them to be close to us.)

2) Like Jesus, let’s walk in spiritual authority and humility. I pray the Assemblies of God will be characterized by ministers who have spiritual authority, but not spiritual pride.

One of my greatest fears for us as a movement is that we have developed a measure of spiritual pride, personally and corporately. God is pretty straightforward about the outcome of pride and how He views it. The only way we have a future as a denomination is if we as leaders llve on our faces in our hearts before Him. The only thing life-changing we have to offer real people, real cities and a real world is Jesus.

3) Like Jesus, let’s have servant hearts. I pray that when we accept responsibility “to serve” in a particular ministry role in the AG, those words are not a euphemism for ruling “like the Gentiles do.”

When I decided to follow Jesus at 7, I became a servant. I gave up my rights to make conditions on my service. He’s my Master. He can use me as He will. (Being female does not excuse me from obedience or give me the right to define how He can use me) Am I available or not?

Amazingly, one can find servant leaders in hierarchical, authoritarian structures and tyrants in democratic ones. The structure is not our greatest problem. The heart is. If a man or woman genuinely has a heart to “take up the towel”, we can do so in any structure or system. (This doesn’t mean systems shouldn’t be re-evaluted or improved upon. But without heart-change in us as leaders, its window-dressing.)

Images are helpful to me personally in capturing truth and its practical application. In my mind, the higher one is placed in a hierarchy of leadership, the greater lengths one must go to serve (the greater the “stoop” if you will to take up the towel.) It only makes the being-like-Jesus-as-servant-leader factor more critical.

A servant heart is a servant heart all the time in every direction. We not only serve Jesus, we serve those we lead, we serve those we follow and we serve one another as fellow ministers. The true servant heart does not practice selective servanthood. The image of Jesus knowingly washing His betrayer’s feet is unsettleling but compelling.

4) Like Jesus, let’s be engaged in our world on all levels. David and I love our heritage in the Assemblies of God. However, if we have one regret its that our church leaders did not encourage us to be engaged in our world outside the church. Looking back, we feel a generation lost the opportunity to influence our secular world by being overly concerned while sincere about being separate.

Jesus was engaged wherever He went. I believe the Body of Christ is to be engaged in all aspects of our society and world. How can be salt and transformational as the Assemblies of God and individual leaders if we are not?
God led David and me to become involved in ministering to women and child victims of forced prostitution in India and Nepal. It is the worst face of evil we’ve ever been exposed to and perhaps the greatest injustice in our world today. However, we’ve seen that the love and liberating power of Jesus Christ and His truth shine most brightly in the darkest places. God is not intimidated by evil or darkness, and His people must not be!

As the church engages the most challenging issues in our world today in His Name, secular people without faith will see the face of a compassionate relevant Jesus they rarely associate with the church in America today. And they like us will be drawn to the One we love and serve.

Let’s get out of our churches and engaged in our world in the love and power of Jesus Christ!

Beth Grant
Missionary educator, AGWM Eurasia
Chairperson, AG Network for Women in Ministry