What Every Leader Needs to Know about Generosity

When we talk about becoming generous leaders, we need to broaden our imagination beyond dropping a tithe into an offering plate, scanning a QR code to support a charity of our choice, or financially investing in those we lead.

Yes, supporting the local and global church has significant Kingdom impact. Giving your team raises and compensating your leaders unselfishly is a tangible way to remind them of their value to the team. But financial gifts are only one of many ways to give of yourself in a way that mirrors Jesus’ self-giving love.

Generosity is the idea that this is not about me. A generous leader puts a high value on the people around them at work and makes every effort to ensure they are cared for materially, financially, and emotionally. This kind of generosity makes you an easy-to-follow leader. Jesus is the epitome of generosity, and yet he had very few material possessions during his time on earth. Most of his disciples lived frugally as members of a lower socioeconomic status. But from his birth and through his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus’ life was one continuous act of generosity. Christ propelled his followers toward immeasurable and illogical generosity because they were motivated to be like him.

For many leaders today, promotions, titles, and influence can cause entitlement, manipulation, and selfishness to creep into our lives. But Jesus led in a countercultural way: with generous humility, love, and selflessness.

GENEROUS HUMILITY

Many times, leaders who’ve had high performance metrics, received much acclaim, or seem to shine in comparison to others fall under the pretense that they’re above others. Unfortunately, I’ve had a front-row seat to leaders who grumble with discontentment, whine about the special treatment their success should afford them, and resist any form of accountability. This kind of behavior is hard to follow, self-serving, opportunistic, dangerous, and in extreme cases predatory. Anything that starts with an attitude of entitlement—with I, me, or my—won’t propel a team or organization forward. Self-focused leaders build self-serving empires that diminish others and become misaligned and impotent in pursuing the original mission.

The truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ should stop entitlement in its tracks. You and I are sinners saved only by grace. Our brokenness deserves condemnation. And that means we are not entitled to anything. This is especially hard for leaders to grasp when they’ve climbed a corporate ladder and reached the top, served in high-capacity roles in the nonprofit or ministry world, and/or gained an influential following with a large platform—and that is where looking at Jesus’ leadership can correct our perspective.

In his letter to the church at Philippi, the apostle Paul wrote that we should “adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.” (See Philippians 2:5-6, CSB.) Jesus didn’t exploit the fact that he was one of three persons of the Holy Trinity. No, he humbled himself. If we’re going to lead with hearts of generosity like Jesus’, we must understand that we can’t live with entitlement or dwell on what we think we deserve.

Generous leaders humbly consider the needs and rights of others before their personal feelings and the feelings of others before their personal rights and needs.

GENEROUS LOVE

Whenever we went out to eat as our kids were growing up, there was always a moment when they became selfless and animated—and it was right about when we would start to discuss the possibility of ordering dessert. No two people have ever displayed the gift of encouragement more than when our kids would prompt my wife or me to order something sweet. “You deserve it!” they would tell us. “It’s your favorite!” they would urge. In reality, they wanted us to order dessert because they would get to share it with us. Their words were kind and generous—and emerged from a desire to get something for themselves.

Sadly, lots of leaders still think that giving is the best way to get. Whether they are trying to manipulate God or trying to manipulate another leader or situation, immature leaders believe generosity is transactional and not relational. Leaders who give to get are always consumed with keeping score and a record of wrongs.

In contrast, mature, godly leaders give sacrificially because they are motivated by love. They don’t give to get; they give because they love. Easy-to-follow leaders empty themselves as servants to others in the same way Christ offered himself to us.

John the apostle tells us in 1 John 4:19 that “we love because he first loved us.” The root of manipulative leadership is self-preservation. The root of generous leadership is love. If we want to cultivate more generosity, we should be the kind of people who are practiced at receiving God’s love, who surrender to living and leading loved.

We are not the source of our growth; God is. If you’re tripping over yourself to love others—and I have a hunch that many of the leaders reading this book are—maybe you haven’t fully embraced your identity as a beloved child of God. Because once you receive God’s love, you can offer it to others.

To understand what God’s extravagant, deeply sacrificial love looks like, we should consider the sacrificial love a healthy parent has for their child. Kids may never recognize or appreciate parental sacrifices. And there’s no guarantee kids will love their parents back. But sacrificial parents love anyway. How they parent—how they lead—is motivated by generous love.

In the same way, loving others generously is the outcome of brimming with God’s sacrificial, parental love. Because God is generous, he gave up the one thing that he only had one of: his Son. That’s how valuable you are. That’s how much God loves you. How might that kind of love expand your generosity as you lead?

GENEROUS SELFLESSNESS

A few years back, I spoke at a conference in New York City, and the following morning I went for a run in Central Park. On my way back to the hotel, I spotted a beautiful Methodist church building. Since I love old churches, I poked my head in to see what it looked like inside. I never would have done so if I’d known there was a service going on, but there I was, sweaty and out of breath, trying to get through the courtyard gate into the building. Before I reached the sanctuary, a woman approached me and introduced herself, asking where I was from.

She asked if I was going to attend the church service, and I was tempted to look myself up and down and point to the sweat dripping off my athletic clothes. Although I can imagine what I must have looked like to that woman, I can’t imagine what I smelled like. I said, “Oh no, ma’am. I was just going to look at the building. I’m a Christian, I’m a brother in Christ, but you don’t want me to come in there.”

And she said, “I’d be so disappointed if you didn’t.”

As self-conscious as I felt finding a seat in the circle huddled in the sanctuary, I couldn’t stop thinking about the selflessness of this woman in actively recruiting me into the church—not thinking of her own comfort or the church’s image but wanting me to know I belonged. As much as I wanted to hide, I also felt loved. She’d been generous with her invitation, and it wasn’t lost on me how easy it would have been for her to be passive about the whole situation. Instead, her selfless initiative blessed me.

By the end of the service, the church was filled with people who appeared to be experiencing homelessness and several others who had gone without showers for a lot longer than me, all of whom this woman had actively welcomed inside. What a beautiful example of God’s grace and goodness, a fragrant reminder that we really are actively welcomed and pursued by God.

Generosity actively serves. Generosity is selflessness in action. The absence of generosity reveals something about our own hearts.

Think about the last time you hurt someone with your words or actions. Or your biggest leadership failure. I suspect that if you are honest in your evaluation, you will notice two critical mistakes:

1. You allowed self to become the focus.

2. Your selfishness caused you to veer away from the path of generosity.

Selfless generosity is why Jesus “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (See Philippians 2:8.) Jesus’ generosity was never more active, more focused on serving the desperate needs of those who could not help themselves, than in his death on the cross. Jesus’ leadership shows us that generosity is not passive. It’s active.

Leader, if we pursue opportunities to be generous, we must expect that the price we pay will be sacrificial. If Jesus is active, if he pursues and seeks the lost so that he can sacrifice for those in need, so should we.