Pastor Leadership Quotes & Sayings

As a pastor our main ministry is exhortation. — Johnny Hunt

I define my life not by the things I have done, but by the people I have loved. — John Paul Warren

A graceless pastor is a blind man elected to a professorship of optics. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If you perceive right you receive right. If you perceive wrong you receive wrong. — John Paul Warren

Be your self at your personal best — John Paul Warren

If you as a pastor don't have a passion for evangelism then don't be surprised if your people done either. — Aubrey Malphurs

Coming to the END of MYSELF and all SELF effort ... seems to be the very point that God steps in and shows HIMSELF to be more than ENOUGH. — John Paul Warren

The IMPOSSIBLE is ONLY relevant to those who NEVER attempt it ... otherwise it is ABSTACT and MEANINGLESS — John Paul Warren

Many have exchanged the touch of God for the applause of men — John Paul Warren

The most important task that every pastor has is to get all his church members involved in some kind of ministry. That should be one of his main priorities. 3 — Sunday Adelaja

The Church is Christ's witness to the world of a loving savior and His redemptive plan for man. — John Paul Warren

No pastor, no spiritual leader, is ever able to take his people any further than he himself has gone with God. — W. Phillip Keller

True leaders bring out your personal best. They ignite your human potential. — John Paul Warren

God uses imperfect people for impossible tasks — John Paul Warren

Parishes that have learned to develop a culture of continual invitation to leadership, training, and growth in responsibility for their members are predisposed to ongoing health and growth when pastor transitions occur — William E. Simon Jr.

It's not just picking the right friends. It is being the right friend. — John Paul Warren

Stop counting your "years" and start enjoying your "seasons". — John Paul Warren

We completed meetings with leaders from over a dozen ministries over a ten-day period. Toward the end of our journey, we asked our Sri Lankan host for his feedback. After about the fourth day, he had become convinced that we were actually there to listen, so his feedback was honest. He said (and I'm paraphrasing):
Paul and Christie, you and your leadership training are welcome here in Sri Lanka. If you host your training in a nice Colombo (Sri Lanka's capital) hotel with a nice venue and a buffet lunch, we can get fifty to one hundred pastors and ministry leaders to come. They will come, and you can get some great pictures for
your newsletter. Then, after the seminar, they will take your manual home with them and put it on the shelf with [U.S. megachurch pastor's] training manual and [another U.S. megachurch pastor's] training manual and [a well-known U.S. leadership trainer's] training manual, and they will go about their own ministry in their own way. — Paul Borthwick

Count your blessings, discount you're loses — John Paul Warren

I don't know of a way to have a generous church without a generous pastor. — Johnny Hunt

Your outlook affects your outcome — John Paul Warren

There are two kinds of leaders, cowboys and Shepherds. Cowboys drive and Shepherds lead. — John Paul Warren

Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune. — Eugene H. Peterson

I refuse to live life with unsettled differences. — John Paul Warren

The last thing I want to do is pastor a church Jesus ain't at. — Matthew Carter

Too many in the Church today are likes babies in the nursery,they put everything in their mouth. — John Paul Warren

Leaders in OVER their heads is the mere result of getting ahead of their intended SEASON. — John Paul Warren

My life has far exceeded my expectations not because of my own personal efforts or mindset but because of my friends who have enriched my existence — John Paul Warren

Be a FRIEND and stop worrying about having any — John Paul Warren

Authentic leaders are often accused of being "controlling" by those who idly sit by and do nothing — John Paul Warren

In my first leadership position, I mistakenly thought that being named the leader meant that I was the leader. Back then I defined leading as a noun - as the position I was appointed to - not a verb - as what I was doing. Though I had been hired as the senior pastor, I quickly discovered the real leader of the church was a down-to-earth farmer named Claude, who had been earning his leadership influence through many positive actions over many years. He later explained it to me, saying, "John, all the letters — John C. Maxwell

Moving forward implies MOTION when in all actuality it may be simply standing STILL and seeing the salvation of the Lord. — John Paul Warren

As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven. — Adolf Hitler

Live as temporal, serve as eternal — John Paul Warren

Missional leaders are comfortable in the own skin. — Gary Rohrmayer

Men of God are not just born, they are formed — John Paul Warren

As important as it is for all members of a leadership team to commit to being vulnerable, that is not going to happen if the leader of the team, whether that person is the CEO, department head, pastor, or school principal, does not go first. If the team leader is reluctant to acknowledge his or her mistakes or fails to admit to a weakness that is evident to everyone else, there is little hope that other members of the team are going to take that step themselves. In fact, it probably wouldn't be advisable for them to do so because there is a good chance that their vulnerability would be neither encouraged nor rewarded. — Patrick Lencioni