48 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY like training courses, clubs, community service projects, or mentorship programs, leaders can provide platforms for followers to explore their faith, develop leadership skills, and make a positive impact in their communities. Whether in public or private institutions, Christian leaders can strive to be salt and light in their spheres of influence, seeking to glorify God and serve others with excellence and compassion.84 By living out their faith authentically and intentionally, they can make a difference in the lives of those they encounter, imparting meaning, purpose, and fulfillment rooted in the good news of Jesus Christ. Conclusion: Leadership and Work—A Paradigm Shift The current model of work in the Western world is primed for transformation. It is largely a self-focused, self-actualized, success-oriented personal advancement endeavor versus a service to others mentality. Lee Hardy views a future state of “work as a form of mutual service, as a vocation . . . a contribution to the good of all.”85 The concept of vocation means that in our work “we bear within us God’s image as creator.”86 The Christian leader is God’s representative, His ambassador, His steward. Though work may primarily be a means to make a living, it can also produce meaning, purpose, and fruit in others. Do we work to live or live only to work? Is our work part of our calling to further the kingdom of God? These are questions we must grapple with as Christian leaders. Hardy discusses the need for both a contemplative life and a productive life.87 Yes, we are to love God, but we also must love others as we love ourselves.88 This second commandment requires a response from the Christian leader and proof that we do indeed love God. Hardy challenges us to think in Martin Luther’s terms of being channels of His love. He states that “to the kingdom of heaven brings our relationship with God, which is to be based upon faith; to the kingdom of earth belongs our relationship to our neighbor; which is to be based upon love.”89 Vocation is “the specific call to love one’s neighbor.”90 Our “talents and abilities were not given to us as tools to heap up fame and fortune for ourselves; rather they are to be exercised for the common good.”91 It is “through work we realize ourselves as image-bearers of God; through work we
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