One of the crippling results of the man-centered and pragmatic Church Growth Movement—rooted as it is in good old American “know-how”—is it gave birth to the “ministries” of men like Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren; along with a virtual church planting cult of wannabe Warrens e.g. Stephen Furtick (seen below), who talk a lot about being leaders but draw their views largely from secular business practices.

In a question and answer session Dr. John MacArthur discusses success and leadership from a true Christian perspective:

Question

You said in the past that you don’t really concern yourself with the breadth of how God blesses the ministry through you and through this church, but your concern is in the depth of your ministry and your personal growth with God. I understand that and I just kind of wanted you to kind of expound a little bit more. What do you do to focus on the depth of your ministry and how do you balance this with the other many responsibilities that you have, including your relationship with your wife and family?  

Answer

Well, I think by God’s design, the deeper my commitment to Christ, the better my family likes me. I mean, I’m a better husband, and a better father, and a better grandfather, and a better counselor, and a better spiritual guide and guardian, and a better servant, the more devoted I am to the Lord. So, I can’t compartmentalize my life. I can’t say, “I have to study and I have to preach” and I do that and then I go over here and try to act like a husband and go buy four books on how a husband should act. My role as a husband, my life as a husband, a father, or whatever it is…a friend…is nothing more than the spillover of my life before the Lord.

And so when it comes to ministry, it is much the same. When I say I don’t concern myself with the breadth, that means that I don’t spend my time and energies trying to extend the ministry, trying to get a bigger church. I’m not spending my time trying to figure out ways to advertise Grace Church or ways to build up Grace Church in the public image or ways to creatively draw crowds or get money or somehow reach more people. I never have worked hard to expand our radio into more stations and more stations and more. In fact, I haven’t given in my entire life an hour to that, collectively! My concern is always to do what I need to do to rightly handle, proclaim the Word of God, live out the Word of God, and make sure that the Word of God is rightly represented in the people that are around me.

It’s an old story and I talk to young people about this: if you occupy yourself with success, you will ultimately fail. If your goal is to succeed, you will fail. If your goal is to be excellent, you will ultimately succeed. I don’t care what you’re doing. If you’re working with wood, if all you want to do is succeed, you’ll ultimately fail. If what you want to do is produce something excellent, you will ultimately succeed. And that’s true spiritually… (Online source)