Evaluation of Spiritual Leadership in the New Testament

Principles, practices, and applications for church planting

The quality of a church plant is decided, in the end, by the quality of its leadership. The decisive measure is spiritual depth, moral integrity, theological clarity, and missional commitment, more than administrative skill or competence with programs. The New Testament is remarkably specific about the qualifications required of those who lead God's people, and those qualifications rest on character before function. Before the question "What can this person do?" comes a deeper one: "Who is this person becoming?"

Paul, writing to Timothy and Titus while new churches were being established, gave detailed criteria for choosing their leaders. The criteria stress personal holiness, relational integrity, sound doctrine, and the capacity to teach and shepherd others.¹ They are not ideals reserved for an elite. They are the minimum qualifications for anyone who will lead a community entrusted with proclaiming the gospel and forming disciples. Paul makes the setting explicit: "For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you."² These lists were written for churches that had just been planted.

For the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whose planting efforts reach every continent and every culture, the evaluation of spiritual leadership is a matter of strategic and theological urgency. The right leaders, placed in the right contexts with the right formation, will produce healthy congregations that multiply. The wrong leaders, however gifted as organizers, will produce communities that function structurally and are hollow spiritually.

This essay presents a framework for evaluating spiritual leadership in church planting, organized around six dimensions drawn from the New Testament and refined by the practical experience of Adventist church planting networks.

1. Biblical foundations of spiritual leadership

The New Testament's picture of leadership differs sharply from the models that dominate institutional culture today. In the world's systems, leadership is defined by authority, position, and the capacity to direct others. In the New Testament it is defined by character, calling, and the capacity to serve. Jesus himself set the pattern: "Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve."³ Ellen White, describing the disciples' quarrel over who would be greatest, saw in that ambition "the outworking of that same spirit which was the beginning of the great controversy in the worlds above."⁴

Three texts define the qualifications for New Testament church leadership. First Timothy 3:1–7 gives the fullest list, requiring that the overseer be "blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; one who rules his own house well."⁵ Titus 1:5–9 runs parallel and adds that the elder must be "holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict."⁶ First Peter 5:1–4 frames leadership as shepherding, oversight exercised "not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock."⁷

Several categories emerge from these texts. The leader must be a person of blameless character: not sinlessly perfect, but living a life that is consistent, disciplined, and free from the moral failures that would compromise the community's witness. The leader must be able to teach, with theological clarity and the skill to communicate biblical truth. The leader must practice hospitality, as a missional way of life that opens home and life to others, more than as a social grace. And the leader must show faithful management of the household, since leadership begins at home and is authenticated by the quality of the leader's closest relationships.⁸

These criteria are the foundation of any evaluation process, a process that weighs calling, competence, character, and fitness for the context together.

2. Six dimensions of leadership evaluation

Evaluating spiritual leadership in practice requires both rigor and sensitivity. No single instrument can capture the complexity of a person's spiritual life. The six dimensions that follow are grounded in New Testament principles and have been tested in Adventist practice. The Florida Conference, in designing its ACTS process (assessment, coaching, training, and sending), built its spiritual leadership questionnaire around exactly these six areas: spiritual vitality, theological clarity, missional lifestyle, marriage and family life, financial integrity, and relationship building. The committee drew the categories from the Bible's own descriptions of elders, and it noted that the questionnaire is just as useful for establishing elders in existing churches.⁹

2.1 Spiritual vitality

All authentic leadership rests on a living relationship with God. A leader's spiritual vitality shows itself in the reality of a disciplined devotional life, a history of answered prayer, a pattern of growth in grace, and victory over the temptations and idols that threaten every believer's integrity. Theological credentials and institutional position do not demonstrate it.

Questions that probe this dimension include: How did God lead you into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ? What are your regular practices of prayer, Bible study, and spiritual reflection? How do you discern God's voice and guidance in daily life? What disciplines sustain you in seasons of difficulty or discouragement? The aim is to see the depth and authenticity of the candidate's inner life with God, and formulaic answers reveal very little.

2.2 Theological clarity

A church planter needs a solid understanding of the gospel and the ability to articulate it with clarity, conviction, and sensitivity to context. That does not require advanced academic degrees. It does require the theological literacy that allows a leader to teach, defend, and apply biblical truth in very different situations. Timothy Keller calls the bridge between doctrine and practice a "theological vision," a faithful restatement of the gospel with rich implications for life, ministry, and mission in a particular culture, and he places it at the center of ministry.¹⁰

In the Adventist context, theological clarity includes a grasp of the doctrinal commitments that define the movement's identity: the sanctuary, the Sabbath, the state of the dead, the three angels' messages, the gift of prophecy, and the eschatological framework that gives these doctrines their coherence and urgency. George Knight has warned that an Adventism which loses that apocalyptic framework is neutered and becomes one more generic option.¹¹ Theological clarity also means presenting these truths within a framework centered on Christ and saturated with grace, avoiding both legalistic rigidity and doctrinal reduction.

Questions include: What is the gospel, and how has it changed your life? How do you understand the particular role of the Adventist movement within the wider body of Christ? How would you explain Adventist teaching to someone with no church background? These questions test how well the candidate can communicate what he knows in missional settings, as well as what he knows.

2.3 Missional lifestyle

A church planter has to live a missional life, which is different from organizing missional programs. It means keeping real and lasting relationships with people outside the community of faith, practicing hospitality as a way of life, and showing in daily action the kind of incarnational presence that earns credibility and opens doors for the gospel. Missional living is the orientation of the leader's whole existence, shaping how he uses time, money, relational energy, and physical space. It cannot be added to a schedule already full of church activity.

Questions include: How do you and your family make room to spend time with people who are far from God? Who was the last person with whom you shared the gospel, and how did the conversation go? How much of your relational energy goes to people outside the church? These questions show whether the candidate's missional commitment is real or only rhetorical.

2.4 Marriage and family life

The New Testament consistently treats the quality of a leader's family life as an indicator of fitness for leadership in the church. Paul's logic is explicit: "If a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?"¹² The family is the first setting in which a leader's character is tested and his capacity for relational leadership is shown, and it can never be treated as peripheral to the ministry.

For married candidates, questions include: How do you nurture your spouse's spiritual growth? How do you guide your children toward a genuine relationship with Christ? How do you handle the tension between the demands of ministry and your responsibilities at home? For single candidates, parallel questions about close relationships, accountability, and relational health serve the same purpose.

2.5 Financial integrity

A leader's handling of money reveals his real priorities with a clarity that words cannot. Jesus said it plainly: "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."¹³ A leader whose financial life is marked by generosity, simplicity, faithfulness in tithes and offerings, and freedom from debt and materialism shows the kind of trustworthiness that gives others confidence to follow.

Ellen White treated stewardship as a spiritual matter as well as a financial one. "Christ has purchased us by the price of His own blood," she wrote in her counsel on faithful stewardship, and from that purchase follows the recognition that every resource belongs to God and is entrusted to us for his mission.¹⁴

Questions include: How do you use money for mission, including tithes and offerings? What do your spending habits reveal about your spiritual priorities? Are you free from unmanageable debt?

2.6 Relational capacity (relationship building)

A church planter must build people. His emotional maturity, relational intelligence, and capacity for empathy have to be enough to cultivate real community and develop other leaders. The ability to handle conflict constructively, to receive criticism without defensiveness, and to recognize and nurture the gifts of others is essential for sustainable leadership in a plant.

Questions include: Whom have you identified and helped to develop in their gifts and calling? How do you handle conflict and criticism? Can you describe a difficult relational situation you had to work through, and what you learned from it? These questions assess emotional and spiritual maturity, which runs deeper than relational technique.

3. The evaluation process

Structuring the assessment

The evaluation of planting candidates should combine structured interviews, observation of relationships, and consultation with references. One conversation cannot reveal the depth of a person's character; the process needs several points of contact in different settings. Ed Stetzer and Daniel Im describe assessments ranging from a week of interviews, testing, and group exercises to short tools for clarifying a sense of calling, and they treat the affirmation of the candidate's own church as one of the most important indicators.¹⁵

Pastoral visits allow informal but substantive conversations in the candidate's own surroundings, where family dynamics, relational patterns, and the texture of daily life can be observed. Leadership retreats create space for extended reflection, group interaction, and the kind of sustained observation that shows character both under pressure and at rest. Training sessions on the theology, methods, and practice of planting reveal the candidate's teachability, theological clarity, and capacity for strategic thinking. Craig Ott and Gene Wilson's treatment of the planter's personal life and of the development of planters offers a useful frame for this work.¹⁶

Who conducts the conversation

The Florida design adds a detail that deserves attention. The questionnaire is used by the planter's coach, ideally the pastor of the sponsoring church, with the planter and spouse together, and, as Anthony WagenerSmith writes, "the answers are not kept or filed away." Its purpose is "to open up a conversation with the church planter and their coach to take inventory on character and spiritual readiness."¹⁷ That design follows the logic of the biblical texts. If the criteria describe a life observed over time, the person who conducts the evaluation should be someone who has seen that life or will see it. If they include the household, the spouse belongs in the conversation as the person who knows it best.

Scoring and development

Some networks add a numerical scale, rating each of the six dimensions from one to ten. Used well, a scale can serve as a diagnostic tool and a starting point for conversation about strengths and areas of growth. It should never function as a final verdict, and the Florida practice of keeping no file is a reminder of why. The point is to see a life honestly, and a score that becomes a label defeats that purpose.

Candidates whose overall profile is strong can be directed toward planting assignments. Candidates with significant gaps in one or more dimensions can be directed toward developmental pathways, mentoring, further training, and supervised ministry, before they are entrusted with a plant. This protects both the candidate and the mission. A leader sent before he has been formed is set up for failure. A leader whose weaknesses are identified and addressed through deliberate development is set up for long-term fruitfulness.

4. Theological integration: character before competence

The New Testament's insistence on character as the first qualification for leadership stands in tension with the institutional tendency to prefer competence, credentials, and administrative skill. Character, the settled orientation of a life toward particular virtues, comes before any individual decision or technique and runs deeper. Applied to the church, this means that who a leader is matters more than what skills he has.

Ellen White held the same conviction throughout her writings. The effectiveness of ministry depends on the character of the minister more than on methods. "The greatest want of the world is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole."¹⁸ That picture of leadership, grounded in moral integrity, is the standard by which every planting candidate should be measured.

Conclusion

Evaluating spiritual leadership for church planting is a sacred responsibility, and treating it as a bureaucratic exercise misses its nature. It requires discernment, sensitivity, and deep commitment to the biblical vision of leadership as servanthood, character, and calling. The six dimensions of this framework, spiritual vitality, theological clarity, missional lifestyle, marriage and family, financial integrity, and relational capacity, give a broad lens for judging whether a candidate has what this demanding, rewarding, and eternally consequential work requires.

By following New Testament principles and using practical tools of assessment, the Adventist Church can identify, develop, and send leaders who are aligned with God's calling, leaders whose lives confirm the message they preach and whose character gives credibility to the communities they plant. In this way the church advances in health and faithfulness, producing more congregations and, above all, more communities that look like Christ and bear witness to his kingdom in every culture.

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Notes

1. William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, Word Biblical Commentary 46 (Thomas Nelson, 2000), lxxxi, 149–92.

2. Titus 1:5 (NKJV).

3. Matthew 20:26–28 (NKJV).

4. Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Pacific Press, 1898), 434–35.

5. 1 Timothy 3:2–4 (NKJV).

6. Titus 1:9 (NKJV).

7. 1 Peter 5:2–3 (NKJV).

8. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 149–92.

9. Anthony WagenerSmith, "Developing a Missional Support System for Church Planting in the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists" (DMin ministry focus paper, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2016), 35, 116–17.

10. Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Zondervan, 2012), 17–19.

11. George R. Knight, The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism (Review and Herald, 2008), chaps. 1–2. The library copy carries no printed page numbers.

12. 1 Timothy 3:5 (NKJV).

13. Matthew 6:21 (NKJV).

14. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9 (Pacific Press, 1909), 245–52; quotation at 245.

15. Ed Stetzer and Daniel Im, Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches That Multiply, 2nd ed. (B&H Academic, 2016), 49.

16. Craig Ott and Gene Wilson, Global Church Planting: Biblical Principles and Best Practices for Multiplication (Baker Academic, 2011), chaps. 15 and 17.

17. WagenerSmith, "Missional Support System," 117–18.

18. Ellen G. White, Education (Pacific Press, 1903), 57.

Bibliography

Keller, Timothy. Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. Zondervan, 2012.

Knight, George R. The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism. Review and Herald, 2008.

Mounce, William D. Pastoral Epistles. Word Biblical Commentary 46. Thomas Nelson, 2000.

Ott, Craig, and Gene Wilson. Global Church Planting: Biblical Principles and Best Practices for Multiplication. Baker Academic, 2011.

Stetzer, Ed, and Daniel Im. Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches That Multiply. 2nd ed. B&H Academic, 2016.

WagenerSmith, Anthony. "Developing a Missional Support System for Church Planting in the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists." DMin ministry focus paper, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2016.

White, Ellen G. The Desire of Ages. Pacific Press, 1898.

———. Education. Pacific Press, 1903.

———. Testimonies for the Church. Vol. 9. Pacific Press, 1909.