It is a common (and largely true) lament these days that we lack godly leaders around the world. Whether we are looking at nations, companies, families, or churches, complaints about the qualities of leadership are frequent. Some of these complaints are motivated by politics—in that we see godly leaders through very narrow (and possibly incorrect) filters, some are motivated by the difficulty of distinguishing how much of our problems are personal in the leaders we have and how much of them are related to the fact that we are in a full-blown crisis stage in our present world.

That said, though, let us examine several biblical figures to see what God’s word has to say about the process of becoming a leader. If we lament the existence of godly leaders, the process of developing such leaders has gone bad, and it takes a long time to get godly leaders. Let us therefore examine, in brief, some “case studies” of godly leaders and then offer some modest proposals on how we can (eventually) see godly leaders develop in our own institutions if we are patient. We will have to be patient—good leaders don’t develop overnight and they don’t grow on trees either. They are made, and refined, through a long process.

Let us begin with the story of Joseph. At the age of 17, Joseph received two dreams about his future position of leadership where his brother and even parents (including his stepmother/aunt, as his birth mother was dead by this time) would bow down to him. These dreams he tactlessly told to his family (see Genesis 37:1-11), but to fulfill these prophecies required Joseph to be sold into slavery, be wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he refused to commit, and spend 13 years between slavery and imprisonment until he was mature enough to become a recognized leader at the age of 30 (see Genesis 41:46). Had he known of the suffering he would undergo before becoming a leader, no doubt he would have bragged a bit less about his obvious abilities and been a bit more humble.

Or what about Moses? He was raised as an Egyptian prince, adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter as a son, trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in words and deeds (see Acts 7:20-25), but when he sought to defend his people from the cruelty of slavery as a forty-year old, his people rejected him (see Exodus 2:14-15) and he was forced to spend forty years in the wilderness before returning to lead his people at the age of eighty (see Exodus 7:7) and spending 40 more years with that unfaithful generation in the wilderness again. Moses knew he was God’s man at the age of 40 to deliver the Israelites from slavery, but it was another forty years before he was ready for God to use him, and another forty years after that before Israel was ready to enter the promised land. It is easier to take the slave out of Egypt than to take Egypt out of the slave.

Or what of Joshua? He was recognized by God as a potential military leader for Egypt very early on, leading Israel’s first battle against the Amalekites (see Exodus 17:8-16), and he was privileged to go part of the way up Mount Sinai when Moses received the ten commandments from the hand of God (see Exodus 32:17). He was also privileged to be one of the twelve spies sent out to spy the Holy Land (and among whom he was one of only two righteous ones, along with Caleb, see Numbers 14:1-10), but at the beginning of his career he was too much a partisan of Moses and not enough of God (see Numbers 11:28-29), and it was not until Moses’ death, 40 years after Joshua’s leadership potential had been first recognized within the congregation of Israel, that Joshua was seen as mature enough to lead Israel into the Promised Land (see Joshua 1:1-9). And there was no one seen as fit to succeed Joshua as a successor, though eventually Othniel the nephew of Caleb did so (see Judges 3:7-11).

Or what of David? Was he not a man after God’s own heart (see Acts 13:22)? Was he not anointed to be king over Israel when he was only a young man (see 1 Samuel 16:1-13)? Did he not slay the giant Goliath (see 1 Samuel 17:50) and marry the daughter of King Saul (see 1 Samuel 18:17-30)? Indeed he did, but though he was anointed as king, he still had to suffer life in exile in the land of the Philistines and life in the wilderness before he received the kingship of Judah at the age of 30 (see 2 Samuel 5:4). Like Joseph, he had been promised rule as a young man and had to wait a difficult time and many years before that promise was fulfilled.

And what of Yeshua, Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior himself? Was He not the very Son of God, Yahweh in the flesh? Indeed, he was. Did he not, at the age of twelve, astonish the chief priests and religious leaders of Jerusalem? Indeed he did, but he remained subject to his parents despite being the legitimate ruler of the universe (see Luke 2:41-51). And he did not begin his ministry, despite his unlimited measure of the Holy Spirit, at the age of 30 (see Luke 3:23)? What is the Bible telling us through these examples?

There are a few common threads that show through these various studies. For one, leaders were often recognized as having unusual gifts of understanding or bravery or some other desirable quality long before they were considered sufficiently seasoned to rule. Leaders do not appear out of nowhere—it is possible to see them coming for a long time. They have a passion for serving, they have integrity, they have gifts of knowledge and wisdom and speaking and writing (to give but a few examples). They have strengths and weaknesses, as do all humans, but it is easy to recognize their potential even when they are quite young (even as teenagers).

And yet despite the fact that godly leaders are very conspicuous, even from a young age, they are given a long waiting period from the time where their leadership abilities become obvious (at least to them) and from when their leadership is confirmed in offices by God. Why is that? We find part of the answer in 2 Timothy 3:1-7: “This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of an overseer, he desires a good work. An overseer then must be blameles, 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, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his house, how will he take care of the church of God?); not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.”

The key point for our discussion today is that a godly leader must not be a novice. One does not put unseasoned people into positions of leadership. No matter their abilities, without seasoning a leader will become puffed up (leavened!) with pride and arrogance, and will fall into condemnation. How often have we not seen this in our own times? If you send up a 22-year old recent Ambassador College graduate out to be an associate pastor, a leader of whole congregations, with a new wife in tow, a company car, and a decent salary, how will he not assume that he is an elite based on the respect he gets from his congregation eagerly soaking up in his biblical knowledge that he got from God’s college? How is he to remain humble, realize his biblical knowledge is merely scratching the surface, and see himself as a servant instead of a lord of God’s people? How many people in that position would end up as godly leaders rather than hirelings and pseudo-aristocrats? Look at the statistics from the graduates of Ambassador College who were given positions in the ministry—it makes for grim and depressing reading.

Why does God forbid the ordaining of novices, why do the examples of godly leadership we see in the Bible show a substantial lag between when that leadership capability first became obvious and when it became actualized, and why do we ignore that lesson time and time again? We seem to want a quick fix—we see a crisis of a lack of leadership and think that a few years of training will lead to character development. We think that if we choose people who are active and who know the right answers that it will mean they have the right heart, but God tests His would-be leaders with the wilderness, with exile, and with trials to see whether their character is strong even in extremis. God tests and tries His leaders before He gives them offices—it is only refined gold and silver that He wants, not rolling the die on untested quantities. God wants to know our hearts before He gives us authority—and that means years, decades, and even generations of preparation.

Given the crisis of leadership in our society, we are way behind the 8-ball. We need to do a better job of recognizing young people (starting from early teenage years) who show the service-minded tendencies of leaders, and then to make sure that these leaders are properly guided and shown about the servant leadership that God requires of His leaders. We must not let them become puffed with pride about their God-given talents, but responsible and servant-minded about the responsibilities those talents give them. Even when we recognize talent we must be very careful and patient about developing it, even providing “exile” in the “wilderness” far from the centers of power while people are developing their capacities and character. And we need to do a much better job of working with the talent we have. There’s no use badmouthing our current stock of leaders and potential leaders if we have not done the work in developing them and helping them be their best. God doesn’t create junk, and He doesn’t give us more when we have wasted what we have. Godly leaders pay their dues, and godly institutions take the time and pay the price to develop leaders for the long haul. It’s not easy work, but nothing worthwhile is, after all.