Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

Out of Print. New Edition here

The church is experiencing a leadership crisis.

For every celebrity pastor exiting in the spotlight, there are hundreds of lesser-known pastors leaving in the shadows. Why are so many pastors leaving the ministry? Best-selling author Paul David Tripp suggests that lurking behind the failure of a pastor is a weak leadership community.

Turning to Scripture for guidance, Tripp presents readers with twelve leadership-community principles necessary for a gospel-centered leadership model. Here is a book with a message for those new to ministry as well as those experienced in it—God's abiding presence is your hope in leadership.

240 pages

View excerpt here.

“Only read this book if you are desperate to be a more humble, gentle, and gracious servant of Christ. If you want something that will chart your way to ecclesiastical fame and celebrity-pastor status, this is not it. This book is about sacrificial, humble, death-to-self leadership—not self-centered, superficial, self-promoting, narcissistic authoritarianism. On every page, Tripp challenges us to recapture a thoroughly biblical approach to leadership in the church, and that is precisely what we need as we lead amid the raging battle all around us—a battle for our joy, our perseverance, our lives, our families, and the people we serve—to the end that God would get all the glory, and not us.”

-- Burk Parsons, Senior Pastor, Saint Andrew’s Chapel, Sanford, Florida; Editor, Tabletalk

“This book is the perfect complement to Tripp’s Dangerous Calling. The warning of ‘functional gospel amnesia’ captures so well why this book is needed. Leaders do not need more gimmicks. Leaders need more grace. They need more gospel.”

-- Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The strength of this book lies in the way Tripp shapes his treatment of leadership by two things: his understanding of the gospel, and his grasp of the organic nature of the local church. At one level, this is an easy read; at another level, it is sometimes probing and painful.”

-- D. A. Carson, Theologian-at-Large, The Gospel Coalition

“Wow. I had no idea that reviewing this book would become so very personal, so penetrating—an experience of leadership surgery that sliced my soul open with conviction and then sutured it shut with grace. Tripp is among the few who have the experience, stature, transparency, and clarity to call church leaders back to the urgency of gospel transformation in ministry. May God give me, and all of us, ears to hear these truths . . . and enough courageous humility to apply them!”

-- Dave Harvey, President, Great Commission Collective; author, I Still Do

Table of Contents

Preface