Episode 1 - Grace and the Adventure of Leadership
This episode is an introduction to the theological basis for this podcast, that the gospel ought to be at the centre and foundation of all gospel ministry. The grace that saves, keeps, strengthens, and empowers us for all that God has called us to do.
Make sure you tune in to the end of the episode for some bonus content!
If you are interested in pastoral ministry or ministering in partnership, head here to connect with us, we'd love to help you on your journey.
Don’t have time to listen? Read the transcript below!
Transcript:
Riley:
Alrighty, well, welcome to Grace and the Adventure of Leadership podcast, a podcast designed to help cultivate church leadership, which is fueled and formed by the realities of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm your host, Riley Spring, and I'm here with Dave Taylor and we're starting a new podcast with the hope that people will be listening in and helped by some of the things that we've learned and are learning about what it means to have the gospel in the center of your leadership within the local church.
We love the local church, we believe the local church is the most glorious institution on Earth. We believe the Lord loves his church and therefore deserves the best leadership it can possibly have. But the best leadership the church can have is not necessarily found in business books or even by copying the most successful churches. It's actually found in the thing of first importance, the glorious realities of the gospel that Jesus died for us to set us free, to live a new life.
So as we begin, and we're going to tell you more about the podcast in a moment, but first I want to introduce my co-host Dave Taylor. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who you are, what you do, why you're in this room, apart from the fact that it's your house and your room?
Dave:
Yeah, I'm in this room because I'm sitting behind my desk and I've never met you before and you've arrived and you've instructed me with doing a podcast, so, yeah. I just have to do it. Well, my name, yep, I'm Dave. Lead pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Sydney. Planted that church in 2010, also have the privilege of serving on the Sovereign Grace leadership team globally as the director of Emerging Nations and I am thrilled to be serving with you on this podcast. It'll be a lot of fun.
Riley:
Yeah, that's great. And so Dave used to be my pastor and then-
Dave:
They were long years.
Riley:
They were long years for both of us-
Dave:
Long.
Riley:
For both of us.
Dave:
Yeah, that's right.
Riley:
But by God's grace, Dave sent me out to plant a church, he couldn't deal with me any longer.
Dave:
I just had to get him gone.
Riley:
So, what do you do when you don't like the person you're working with? You send them to church plant.
Dave:
How long, oh Lord.
Riley:
Nah, yeah. So my name's Riley Spring and I planted a church called Sovereign Grace Church Paramatta just 25 minutes away from Dave's church. I wanted to stay close enough so I'd be near those guys as I start out and figure out what the heck I'm doing, going to need a lot of help. I'm married, I've got three kids and one on the way. Probably in three weeks time, there'll be a fourth into the mix. Dave, you've got a few kids. How many have you got?
Dave:
We have five. Our eldest is 18 and they go down to nine years old. We are busy.
Riley:
And you're married to?
Dave:
A beautiful lady called Emma. We've been married for 21 years.
Riley:
That's amazing. And Emma has a podcast called-
Dave:
She does.
Riley:
What's it called?
Dave:
I think-
Riley:
It's in in the early stages.
Dave:
It's in the very early... In fact, even to say, she's got a podcast, it's... I like it, I like it. I think it's embryonic at this point. I think it was... What is she going to call it? This is your time?
Riley:
No, For Such a Time As This.
Dave:
For Such a Time as This, yes. And if she does that, she will probably instantaneously get more listeners than us.
Riley:
Yeah. She's the more gifted and talented one.
Dave:
Yeah, that's right. So I hold her bags usually.
Riley:
Now, why have we called this podcast Grace and the Adventure of Leadership? It sounds like a strange title. Where does that come from?
Dave:
I think it's an excellent title. It is not ours.
Riley:
No.
Dave:
It's a C. J. Mahaney message, the founder of Sovereign Grace Churches. Did a wonderful message called Grace in the Adventure of Leadership on First Corinthians, I believe, and looking at the example of Paul, how he found grace. But when you're looking for a title for a podcast, Riley, as we discussed at length, there are not many good ones that demand attention. But I think that title just explains two great things.
Dave:
Firstly, that leadership is an adventure. And it is. Having been a leader for the last 20 years, you realize it is an adventure. There are great times where you feel like you can take on the world and win the world for Jesus. And there are low times when you wonder why on earth you have ever, ever been called into ministry. And you know it's bad when you start looking at the guys at McDonald's flipping burgers and you find yourself envious and jealous that you might want to do that. So I think leadership is an adventure, but grace is what it is all about. And I think particularly when we hear the word grace and think of grace, what we're talking about, are the fruits of the gospel, the undeserved favor that comes through the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. And so I can't think of have a better title than that.
Riley:
Yeah, and I think we often think about grace as the kind of the starting point of the Christian life. We're saved by grace through faith and then we sort of move on into obedience and all these other things. But actually, that cuts to the core of why we wanted to do this podcast because grace is actually at the foundation and flows the whole way through the Christian life. Everything we do is by grace, everything good that comes from us is by the grace of God. Our entire lives, our entire ministry, is as a result of His grace, powered by His grace and ultimately all for His glory.
And so the reason why we're doing this podcasts is we want to see how the idea or the power of grace can impact leadership in the local church. And behind grace is the reality of the gospel. And grace isn't just this powerful word. Behind it is a whole story about what Christ has come to do, how He came into this world, how He died for our sins, He rose into new life, ascended into heaven, calls those to follow Him who are headlong into hell that were you and I, and then gives us this glorious new life to live for Him and to share the light of the gospel with others.
And that story, that dynamic, permeates everything in the church, in our lives. And so, for you, Dave, what's been your experience of how grace and the gospel actually interact with more than just your salvation and more than just what you preach on a Sunday? How does it go from there?
Dave:
Yeah. I mean, just hearing you talking then and describing what you're talking about excites me, because I just don't think I understood this. I've always gone to church all my life, grew up in my mother's womb going to church. So never had a Sunday where I wasn't somebody who went to church and yet grace was never amazing. You'd even sing the song, Amazing Grace, and they were words, but I was not amazed. I didn't really understand. I actually thought I was a pretty decent guy to be quite honest. So you're like, "Maybe other people need grace, maybe not myself. I'm fine. I'm probably a good catch for Jesus." It felt like that.
Riley:
Lucky to have you on His team.
Dave:
Yeah, that's right. God, hasn't He done well. Just no clue, no clue of the reality of my life being an individual who's running away from the Lord, who is an object of His wrath and who deserves to be an object of His wrath. I had no clue. So when I became a Christian around 20 years old, through a long series of events, grace became amazing. In an absolute moment, it became amazing. But I had to then learn that this glorious gospel of grace, wasn't just for me becoming a Christian and now we move on and just serve Jesus.
I had to learn and it was actually a part of a Sovereign Grace Church then. What it really meant to now I've become a Christian and so affected by grace, how do I live this grace out? What is sustaining grace? What is sanctifying grace? What is future grace? I had no clue on most of these entities. And so the longer I was being pastored well and served well in the church that I was in, in Wales at the time, having finished up at university, the more I realized grace and the gospel is the central theme of the Bible. Every page whispers the name of Jesus. It all points either to Him or right at Him or back to Him and everything ultimately then points to the gospel all the way through.
Dave:
And so I've seen over many years, the way the gospel guards us, it guards us from legalism, it guards us from subjectivism, it guards us from condemnation. I think all three things I would have struggled with inherently in my life and never... Legalism, I used to just think of legalism, "Oh, that's like Pharisees." And have no clue that there's a Pharisee in my heart. Just completely unaware of this temptation to earn my relationship with God based on my own performance. But when you're hearing the gospel preached and applied to life, even as a Christian, you realize the gospel guards me from those things [so you realize it's true. It's truth, we stand on truth, not on how we feel.
There is therefore now, no condemnation for those who are in crises. It's a fact, not based on what we feel. Also saw how the gospel changes people's lives and that changed my life. It had a profound effect on my life when I started to realize we don't get saved and now start to live for Jesus as a different entity. We become a Christian by grace and now through sustaining grace, we allow the gospel to inform everything. And so I saw people whose lives have been affected by the gospel, whose marriages were being changed by the gospel, whose parenting were being changed by the gospel, the way they spoke was being changed by the gospel, the way they were in a workplace was being changed by the gospel. It had a profound effect on my life as I realized the motivation wasn't to try and impress God as if we're performing before Him to try and make Him love us more. We're so affected by grace, we want to live for Him. And it was powerful.
Riley:
Well, that was my experience. I mean, I became a Christian at some point when I was young, nine or a declaration, a decision. But when I was about 16, I was-
Dave:
I think I had about seven of them.
Riley:
When I was about 16, the Lord, I think, through the Holy Spirit convicted me of my sin and I saw that I was indeed deserving of hell. And then the gospel, the reality that Jesus died for my sins, went from being just true to being beautiful. And I was overcome with just awe and thankfulness to God for saving me and that stayed with me the whole way.
But as I kind of went through being a young man and doing ministry, those kind of realities would be what I would preach, but I wouldn't necessarily live out of the good of that. I would be trying to just do things and do it and make it happen. And then I joined Sovereign Grace Church Sydney and saw this different dynamic. This lightness, this joy that came from being set free from works righteousness. Being set free from having to perform and earn God's favor, but it still didn't really make sense to me. I didn't see how grace really was that important. I felt like you could just motivate people with the bigness, the greatness, the glory of God, His demands, and that people should just do this stuff.
But as I spent time with you, your beautiful wife and the leaders in our church, I began to see the every single thing we do in life, if it wasn't for God's grace to me, we wouldn't be doing it. Any good work, any ministry thing, any holiness, anything at all is a result of His grace. It wasn't me. I think I had a high view of myself. So I knew I was a sinner, but I thought I was actually a pretty good leader. Pretty captivating, charismatic, pretty determined. I lived out the Christian life and other people didn't do it so well. I thought. "Haha, good job, Riley."
And as I stayed around you guys long enough, I began to realize that it's all by grace. It's not me at all. And progressively over time, the Lord's brought me lower and lower to see it's not me. It's all Him. And I'm just a servant, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4, I'm just a steward of the mysteries of the gospel. I don't have any great position. It's all Him. I'm just a jar of clay and He's the treasure. And the gospel is so liberating in that and you got to keep coming back to it. That's why we're trying to use this tagline in the podcast, that's fueled, that's motivated by the gospel and formed by the gospel, because we want those realities to come through.
And so for me, the gospel has changed my life. It's changed my parenting, my marriage, it's changed my leadership. I'm just a different person to who I was eight years ago when I first joined your church. And I'm so grateful for the way that some of these teachings have helped change my life and yours too.
Dave:
Yeah, Amen. Well, I'm so pleased and brother I've learned off other people as well. You are not going to be... No one's going to be hearing any original thoughts on this podcast. Now and again, I think I have them and then I wake up.
Riley:
Or you read-
Dave:
It's a dream.
Riley:
Oh, it's a quote.
Dave:
Yeah, no, that's right.
Riley:
You type it in, you're like, "Oh. Oh."
Dave:
I am at best a walking quote. I've heard things from other people over so many years that have probably become me, but I certainly have not originated in them and neither have you. And I think that's part of the joy of doing this type of podcast. You're able to pass things on that we have learned from others over a long period of time. And you're exactly right. At best, even extremely good leaders are just helpers in the field. It is the Lord who builds His church. It's the Lord who shepherds His church. It's the Lord who leads His church. But what a privilege we have to assist and to play our part in what we do and if we can pass things on that we learned from others, then that's a happy place and a happy thought for me.
Riley:
And our hope is, is that in that passing on, people who are already leading in churches will be edified instructed. I mean, you guys already know what you're doing so it may be of limited value, but we hope it does bless you and help you. But I remember when I was 15, 16, I tuned into the Sovereign Grace Leadership podcast. There was only four episodes. It was C. J. Mahaney, Jeff Purswell and Joshua Harris and they were all speaking just on four topics but I re-listened to those podcasts I don't know how many times, and they formed me. The pastor and his reading, the pastor and his soul, the pastor and his time and the pastor and I can't remember the fourth one, but man, I came back to them so many times.
And so my hope is that someone might listen to this, a young guy, a young man thinking about leadership in his first days and thinking, "Who do I want to be as a pastor or as a leader? How do I want to serve the Lord?" And that maybe some of these topics will help you. And so we pass it on and hope that the Lord uses it. So stay tuned.
In the next number of episodes, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be looking at seven kind of cultural distinctives or seven characteristics of a leader who is fueled and formed by the gospel. So if you really believe the gospel and you really believe that your life is meant to be shaped by it, well, it has to look like something. And so we're going to be talking about seven things that the gospel ought to look like in your life or how it ought to make you live.
Riley:
Things like humility, gratitude, serving. Topics like that. So stay tuned. We're going to do an episode on each one of those as we go through, and we hope that it blesses you.
Dave:
Excellent.
Riley:
You've been listening to the Grace and the Adventure of Leadership podcast with Riley and Dave.