One of my mentors gave me wise advice as I first stepped into my senior pastor role: Lead with humble confidence. Although oxymoronic, the phrase intuitively made sense to me. This is the way of our crucified Savior: strength through restraint and victory through death.
But what does leading with humble confidence practically look like for a leader today? Does it mean strongly pushing one’s own agenda but qualifying it every time with “If the Lord wills”? Is it about balancing out strong preaching with patient counseling? Or receiving criticism well without being devastated?
In this cultural climate marked by various leadership crises in the church, I wonder if one of the timely expressions of humble confidence we need is secure curiosity: leading with the ability to genuinely listen to and learn from others out of a secure sense of self in Jesus.
Secure Curiosity
As Christians, we must constantly remember our ultimate source of security isn’t in what we own or accomplish but in what we receive in and from God (Matt. 6:19; Rom. 8:14–17). We’re his image-bearers, fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator (Gen. 1:27; Ps. 139:14). We also receive for ourselves the benediction that Jesus heard from the Father during his baptism: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11), not because of our efforts but because of Christ’s willing work to take on our sin’s consequences (which we deserve) and give us his righteousness (which he deserves; see 2 Cor. 5:21). This good word that was only fitting for Jesus is now ours to receive by faith.
Our ultimate source of security isn’t in what we own or accomplish but in what we receive in and from God.
Every morning when we wake up, it’s worth remembering that our sense of security, and therefore our confidence, isn’t earned but received. As leaders, grasping this truth allows us to pour ourselves out to our people, not because we need to feed our insecurities but because our sense of self is already secure in Jesus.
I’ve long wrestled with my Asian American identity as a potential liability in my leadership of a multiethnic church that’s striving to be more diverse. This has partly been a battle against my inner critic––which is common among Asian American leaders––but is also based in the reality that there aren’t many models for Asian American senior pastors and leaders in multiethnic churches. While this wrestling motivated my work ethic for a short time, it wasn’t able to ground me. I woke up each morning needing to earn and prove, not receive and rest.
After reflecting further, I realized I didn’t know how to rightly view and embrace my Asian American identity the way God would see it in his own child. The security I was called to find repeatedly through God’s Word was that my cultural identity, along with my growth journey as a pastor, aren’t accidents to compensate for. Rather, these are the outworkings of God’s perfect design and sovereign grace in my life to receive and embrace in full. By his grace, and with intentionality, he fearfully and wonderfully made me. And by that same grace, he has sustained me through the highs and lows that have accompanied my growth as a leader (2 Cor. 12:9). This helped me to realize I have so much more to offer to those around me when I fully receive and humbly lead out of God’s unique and purposeful design of my life as his son and his servant.
From this place of security, which gives us otherworldly confidence, we can lead others with humility expressed through curiosity.
Secure Curiosity
In Mark 2, the scribes question Jesus in their hearts after seeing him heal a paralyzed man (vv. 6–8). But this kind of questioning is far from curious, for it comes from grumbling hearts. The scribes have already made up their minds about what’s happening through Jesus, so they can’t see him for who he truly is.
In contrast, people who question from a spirit of curiosity desire to learn. They see and hear others, and they value differing perspectives even in disagreements. Ministry leaders need to build their curiosity muscles to exercise healthy power, build up other leaders, and create a culture of trust and vulnerability that comes through humility.
Ministry leaders need to build their curiosity muscles to exercise healthy power, build up other leaders, and create a culture of trust and vulnerability that comes through humility.
Leading with curiosity doesn’t mean we lack conviction, nor does it mean we shirk the responsibility to make timely decisions. Rather, the goal is to pursue secure curiosity. Because we’re secure in our sense of self in Jesus, because we have confidence in our convictions without attaching our ego to them, we can empower others, ask for their input, and thereby demonstrate that learning from others is an essential ingredient for confident leadership.
Curiosity without security produces unstable leadership. Security without curiosity produces stuck leadership. Secure curiosity means we don’t need to consider people as projects, peers as competitors, or ministry as a means to alleviate our insecurities. Secure curiosity means we can genuinely and intentionally make the first move as leaders to ask questions, learn from differences, admit mistakes, and pay attention to the Spirit’s movement in various conversations and even conflicts for greater learning.
This is much easier said than done, and I’m learning as I go. But perhaps this process is exactly what people long to see in a leader in this cultural moment—someone who’s a work in progress, growing in living and leading out of a secure sense of self in Jesus, and therefore confident enough to learn from mistakes and ask questions with genuine curiosity.
Lead with Humble Confidence
Pastors and leaders, lead with humble confidence. Embrace the security that can only be received and not earned. Secure in that sense of self, open your ears and hearts to humbly learn from others.
Let secure curiosity set the tone and culture for those you’re leading, so they may take on a similar leadership approach in all spheres of their lives. May we taste the goodness and joy of the gospel security that gives us the confidence we cannot manufacture on our own (2 Cor. 5:11). May our curiosity in our constant learning from others give us the humility to truly consider others more significant than ourselves (Phil. 2:3).
The Gospel Coalition