Pastoral leadership from the pulpit is critical. Most often, we find books on leadership and books on preaching, but rarely do we find volumes that argue for the interconnectedness of the two. Currie, Pace, and Shaddix make the connection admirably. Pace and Shaddix address this interconnectedness more succinctly and practically, while Currie’s work is more robust in theological argumentation, with fewer specific applications. Though the two books cover the same subject, their unique attributes make them an excellent pairing for the preacher-leader.

Pastors feel intense pressure to successfully lead the organization known as the local church, and it’s burning them out. Over the past few decades, a business leadership model has shaped the expectations for many pastors. People expect them to be shepherds but also to lead the church with vision and strategy. This isn’t fair, and it often pulls pastors in the wrong direction. Inefficiency isn’t a sign of holiness, but too much emphasis on organizational efficiency can deform the pastor’s understanding of his God-given role.
Two books help refocus pastors on the importance of preaching for leading a church. In The Pastor as Leader: Principles and Practices for Connecting Preaching and Leadership, John Currie argues that “an unbiblical divorce often occurs between the pastoral priorities of preaching and leadership more generally.” When this happens, he writes, “the church suffers from either stagnation on its mission or a downgrade in the pulpit” (1).
In Expositional Leadership: Shepherding God’s People from the Pulpit, Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix agree and define “expositional leadership” as “the pastoral process of shepherding God’s people through the faithful exposition of his word to conform them to the image of his Son by the power of his Spirit” (15). Both books contend that preaching is leadership.
Primacy of Preaching
Pastors have been appointed to lead the church (Eph. 4:7–16), yet their primary responsibility is a particular kind of leadership. Paul tells Timothy, a pastor, to “devote [himself] to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13). He makes clear the benefit of the taught Word: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17).
Because of the expectations to lead (and all that’s baked into the leadership cake), it’s tempting for the pastor to spend far too much time in organizational strategy and far too little preparing expository sermons. Yet pastoral leadership, at its core, is the preaching of God’s Word to conform God’s people to the image of Christ.
Currie, professor of pastoral theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, defines pastoral leadership as “the process where, for the glory of God, a man of God, appointed by the Son of God and empowered by the Spirit of God, proclaims the word of God so that the people of God are equipped to move forward into the purposes of God together” (31).
A simple yet integral reality is that the preaching of God’s Word necessarily leads somewhere.
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For Christians to truly hold fast to what is good, to truly seek the good of their neighbors, then they must hate what is evil. They must hate the evil lies promoted by transgender activists. Out of love for others and love for the truth, Christians must refuse to speak the lies of transgender ideology.

On Matt Walsh’s New Documentary
At the very beginning of the Bible we are instructed about the division of the sexes: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). There are only two, male and female, and nowhere does God’s Word indicate that men can become women, or women men. In fact, the Bible explicitly condemns attempts to live as the opposite sex. Deuteronomy 22:5 says that “[t]he woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.” The Bible is abundantly clear about the nature of sexual division within the created order.
In “What is a Woman?,” Matt Walsh’s new documentary about the transgender movement and its critics, Walsh nowhere appeals to the Bible, but instead uses common-sense, rational questioning to investigate transgenderism’s attempt to overthrow nature—God’s “second book” of revelation. Walsh’s documentary reveals how the transgender movement has exchanged the truth about humanity for a lie. No lie conforms to reality, yet Walsh shows how this lie is especially incoherent and detached from reality. Over and over, licensed doctors, college professors, practicing pediatricians, and sitting politicians fumble through Walsh’s interviews (or end the interview, refusing to answer his questions) thereby exposing their gender ideology for the nonsense that it is. Walsh directs each of his interviewees to a concluding question, one that transgender activists were unable to answer in a direct or logical way: What is a woman? Responses ranged from “Great question” and “I’m not a woman, so I don’t know,” to “Why do you want to know?” and “A woman is someone who claims to be a woman.”
One particularly striking interview was with Dr. Patrick Grzanka, Professor in a University of Tennessee Program for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Walsh begins by asking Grzanka if sexuality and gender are different. In a long and circuitous way, Grzanka answers that the concepts are distinguishable yet interrelated. When Walsh presses Grzanka, asking if we can identify a person with male physical characteristics who identifies as a transgender woman as in fact male due to his biology, Granzka demurs. This leads to one of the most eye-opening exchanges in the film. Grzanka asks Walsh why he cares so much about identifying someone’s biological sex, and Walsh says he wants to understand reality, to “start by getting to the truth.” Grzanka reacts, claiming that he is deeply uncomfortable with the language of “getting to the truth,” and that such language is “deeply transphobic.”
Grzanka and other transgender activists believe in their ideology despite what they see. The external world has no necessary connection with reality for the believer in transgender ideology. Instead, each individual’s deliberate choice decides whether he is a man or a woman. Transgenderism thus requires its adherents to deny the concept of stable, accessible, absolute truth, as well as stable human nature. As Grzanka and numerous other interviewees of Walsh made clear, they recognized “my truth” or “your truth” but not the truth.
Walsh’s interview with Gent Comfrey, a gender affirming therapist, reveals the extent to which the transgender understanding of truth and the world blurs the lines between men and women. This blurring makes even knowing one’s own gender uncertain. Comfrey explained that modern research has shown that sex and gender are not mere binaries and are not restricted by biological sex differences. She claimed that “some women have penises…some men have vaginas.” When pushed by Walsh to explain how that claim is known, Comfrey said that she learned it by talking with transgender people who identify as the opposite of their biological sex. Walsh then asked the logical follow-up: if these concepts are fluid, how can Walsh know whether he might be a woman or not? Walsh explained that he likes scented candles and watched Sex and the City. Could Walsh be a woman? Comfrey did not dismiss the idea but encouraged Walsh to ask the question with curiosity to start his journey of gender identity development.
Walsh interviewed one person who had taken the concept of individualized truth to its logical extreme. Naia Okami claimed to be both a transgender woman and a wolf therian. A therian is  “someone who identifies as a non-human earthen animal either spiritually or psychologically.” Okami told Walsh about how he (she?) discovered his inner wolf-ness at around age 10 when watching an anime cartoon. Apparently Okami then went on to spend time at many wolf preserves, communicating with wolves in non-verbal ways.
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His basic position is that he was born gay, there’s little chance of him ever changing from that orientation and so he somehow deserves to be in the pulpits of Jesus Christ’s Church, and that we actually need to have more men like himself in pulpits. He says he needs to be authentic to the way he was born, and anyone who commends him to Christ to change his sexual orientation is being abusive and unloving toward him.

Prior to this I have not spoken publicly about the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) internal debate over same-sex attraction and Pastor Greg Johnson’s efforts to see to it that more same sex-attracted men end up in the pulpits of the PCA. I have not spoken publicly because I did not believe it appropriate to publicly air this matter in front of the secular world.
Well, recently Greg Johnson published a book and has begun a series of interviews with secular TV networks and News/journalism Internet outlets promoting the idea that same-sex attraction is permissible in the church so long as the gay person does not act and consummate his / her desire with a sexual act.
As such now I can no longer stay silent, and I must publicly repudiate and refute Greg Johnson’s theological error and abominable sinful attitudes.
His basic position is that he was born gay, there’s little chance of him ever changing from that orientation, and so he somehow deserves to be in the pulpits of Jesus Christ’s Church, and that we actually need to have more men like himself in pulpits. He says he needs to be authentic to the way he was born, and anyone who commends him to Christ to change his sexual orientation is being abusive and unloving toward him.
However, Matthew 5:28 makes it clear that the mere desire for any sexual sin is itself sexual sin. The Bible teaches that looking and lusting, that desiring what God has forbidden, without acting or committing a sexual act satiating the desire is itself sin. This would necessarily include both lustfully looking at a woman by a man and any homosexual/lesbian sexual desire. Mr. Johnson is wrong. His teaching is theological error. He himself is showing himself to be a false prophet.
And in a most recent interview he has sinfully and publicly demeaned, insulted, belittled, and smeared other PCA ministers who we’re trying to have a private discussion internal to the PCA with him; instead, his desire was to go to the secular media to employ their sympathies to arm twist, shame, and silence the stand of these fellow elders for Scripture and godliness.
So permit me to publicly speak straightforwardly about this issue:
My every impulse to sin is just me wanting to be me… to be “authentic” … to NOT deny the way I was born—a sinner.
And every commandment of God regarding my sexuality and everything else is just God wanting me to be like Jesus and not be like me.
Regarding Greg Johnson let me say:
This is why I say Greg Johnson and the Revoice crowd don’t understand the most basic aspects of Christianity or the Gospel, and in no way are qualified to be anywhere near the pulpit…. other than kneeling in front of it and repenting.
Mark Kozak is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Pastor of Providence Reformed PCA in Lavalette, WV.