Leadership gets tested when it costs you something. Anybody can lead when the calendar is calm, the numbers look good, and the team is humming. The real question is what you do when the database goes down at 9 PM, a client meeting turns tense, or a production issue needs someone to get in the trenches. In Christian Leadership in the Professional World, I talk about a simple conviction that shaped my leadership over time: leadership is presence. Presence is not a building or a badge. Presence is engagement. You cannot lead people you are not with, even if “with” means showing up on a video call, staying available, and carrying weight alongside them.
This matters because disengagement breeds doubt. Teams can feel it when a leader only appears for wins, presentations, and performance reviews. They also feel it when a leader stays close to the work, understands the problems firsthand, and is willing to step into hard moments instead of hiding behind distance or titles. The goal is not micromanagement. The goal is trust, built through consistent availability. People stop wondering if you will show up because they have watched you do it over and over again.
Scripture gives language for this. Luke 16:10 teaches that faithfulness in little things reveals who you are, long before the stakes get high. The small moments are not small. They are training reps. A leader does not suddenly become steady in crisis. A leader becomes steady because they were steady in a thousand ordinary moments leading up to the crisis. That kind of faithfulness is what makes people trust you with the bigger problems, the sensitive conversations, and the hard truths.
This is also where the “Christian” part becomes real without being loud. The biggest shift is not adding more Jesus language to your vocabulary. The shift is letting biblical truth change how you see people and situations. When someone fails, you stop treating them like a liability to be managed and start seeing a person made in God’s image who still deserves dignity, even in failure. When decisions affect livelihoods, you stop calling it “just business” and start treating it as stewardship.
A lot of professionals worry they cannot talk about faith at work. I get that. The point of this book was never to turn your workplace into a pulpit. The order matters. You honor Christ in your heart, you live with enough integrity that people notice something different, then you explain with gentleness and respect when they ask. That sequence keeps you from being pushy and keeps your leadership credible.
If you want a practical next step, start here. Decide what “presence” looks like in your context and do it consistently. Show up when it is inconvenient. Stay close to the work. Protect your team. Tell the truth. Take ownership when your leadership created a problem, not just when a teammate made a mistake. Those habits compound. Trust compounds slowly. Character is built over years, not quarters.
If you want to go deeper, Christian Leadership in the Professional World is built around these kinds of real, workplace-tested decisions. It’s available in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Leadership-Professional-World-Biblical-ebook/dp/B0G2K5G85M