By the time you see a pastor get fired or resign under duress, a whole lot has already gone wrong.

Paul Tripp has seen a whole lot go wrong in churches. And those experiences inform his new book, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church (Crossway). This is one of the most bracing but also balanced books you’ll find on church leadership and the particular challenges in our day. Tripp argues that by the time the problem with a pastor has gone public, the church’s whole leadership culture has been compromised.

I empathize with pastors, especially during the changes wrought by COVID-19. The many leadership challenges tossed their way are heavy enough to buckle even the strongest ministers. So I asked Paul how we can identify the problem while there’s still time to fix it, before it’s too late. He answered in the context of a growing church plant:

I think what happens is at some point, strategies of achievement begin to be more what the leadership community is driven by than that old spiritual community that was so excited in the early days. . . . [T]he Christianity that’s described in the New Testament is deeply relational, and there’s no indication that leaders are safe living outside of that. At some point, now that we’re 2,000 [members], that pastor is simply not getting what he had when it was 75. With the massive change in the culture, although he doesn’t understand that, becomes massive change in the man.

Healthy pastors, then, need a healthy dose of strong leadership to support them. You can listen to the whole interview as Paul and I discuss the leadership crisis in the church and how we can fight against it in the power of God’s grace.