Pip: The Women’s Leadership Development Blog asks a question most leadership content skips entirely: what does it actually take to lead when the source of your authority isn’t a title or a résumé?

Mara: Gail Ausby digs into that question through the lens of spiritual formation — how leaders are built, equipped, and sent. Today we’re looking at what that process looks like in practice.

Pip: Let’s start with the muscle-building.

Becoming a Spiritual Leader: Built, Not Self-Made

Mara: The core claim here is that spiritual leadership isn’t self-generated — it’s conferred and developed through a process. The church functions as a school, and the curriculum isn’t optional.

Pip: The post anchors that in Ephesians 4:11-12, setting up the reason any of this structure exists: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”

Mara: So the upshot is that the offices exist for a purpose — equipping, not prestige. Leadership is instrumental, pointed outward toward the people who need it.

Pip: And the post is careful to include both men and women in that appointment. This isn’t a narrow lane.

Mara: Right, and the Moses episode in Numbers 11 illustrates how even the most burdened leader gets structural relief. God tells Moses to gather seventy elders and promises, “I will take some of the Spirit that is upon you and place it upon them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you will not carry it alone.” Leadership distributed is leadership sustained.

Pip: Huffstutler gets cited here — the Spirit empowered those elders for ministry, not just for moral support.

Mara: The post draws a straight line from that moment to Pentecost. Jesus Himself didn’t begin public ministry until endowed with power, and the same pattern holds: “Achieving spiritual objectives requires spiritual methods, which can only be realized through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

Pip: Blackaby’s framework lands in the final stretch — God uses relationships and events across formative stages to build character before capacity. Leaders forged, not manufactured overnight.

Mara: And the anointing of David in 1 Samuel 10 closes the argument: the Spirit of the Lord rushing upon a person isn’t historical curiosity. The post insists that Spirit is still active, still equipping, still moving leaders toward what they were appointed to do.

Pip: Formation before function — the pattern holds across the whole biblical record.

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Mara: What stays with me is the insistence that no leader carries the weight alone — the structure exists precisely so they don’t have to.

Pip: Distributed authority, sustained by something larger than any one person. More of that next time.