“Love thy neighbor” is easy when your neighbor agrees with you, votes like you, and shares your perspectives on everything from theology to the Tennessee Titans.
It’s considerably harder when your neighbor is the board member who questions every decision, the employee who challenges your authority, or the community leader whose values seem diametrically opposed to yours.
Yet as Christian leaders, we’re called to love our neighbors—all of them. No exceptions.
The Leadership Love Challenge
Over thirty years of leadership in banking, nonprofits, and higher education has taught me that our capacity to love difficult people often determines our effectiveness as leaders. Not because love is soft, but because love is strategic.
When we lead with genuine love—even for those who oppose us—we create space for transformation that simply doesn’t exist in environments driven by politics, power plays, and personal agendas.
What “Love Thy Neighbor” Looks Like in Leadership
It’s Not Agreement Loving your neighbors doesn’t mean agreeing with them. During my presidency at Williamson College, I had to make decisions that disappointed people I genuinely cared about. Love doesn’t eliminate tough choices; it transforms how we make them and communicate them.
It’s Not Weakness Sometimes the most loving thing a leader can do is hold firm boundaries, deliver hard truths, or make unpopular decisions. Love doesn’t mean avoiding conflict; it means engaging conflict constructively.
It IS Intentional Respect Even when we disagree strongly with someone’s position, we can honor their dignity as image-bearers of God. This means listening before responding, seeking to understand before seeking to be understood, and assuming positive intent until proven otherwise.
It IS Persistent Investment Love keeps showing up. It doesn’t write people off after one difficult conversation or dismiss them after one mistake. It invests in relationship even when relationship is costly.
Three Practices for Leading with Love
1. Listen for the Heart Behind the Heat When someone opposes your leadership, resist the urge to immediately defend or dismiss. Instead, listen for what they’re really saying. Often, the harshest criticism contains legitimate concerns wrapped in poor delivery. Address the concern, not just the tone.
2. Separate the Person from the Position You can strongly disagree with someone’s stance while still valuing them as a person. This distinction allows you to engage ideas vigorously without attacking character. In board meetings, I learned to say, “I respect you and I disagree with this proposal,” rather than making it personal.
3. Look for Common Ground Even in the most contentious situations, there’s usually some shared value or concern that both parties care about. Start there. Build from what you agree on before tackling what divides you.
When Love Gets Practical
Last year, I worked with a nonprofit whose leadership team was fractured by a significant disagreement about organizational direction. The conflict had become personal, with people questioning each other’s motives and commitment.
Instead of choosing sides or pushing for quick resolution, we started with a simple question: “What do we all want for the people we serve?”
That question revealed that despite their tactical disagreements, everyone shared a deep love for the organization’s mission. From that foundation, we could address the strategic differences without attacking personal character.
The result wasn’t unanimous agreement—that rarely happens in healthy leadership environments. But it was mutual respect and collaborative problem-solving.
The Exception Trap
The temptation in leadership is to create exceptions to the “love thy neighbor” command. We convince ourselves that this person is too difficult, that situation is too complex, or that relationship is too toxic for love to apply.
But exceptions to love become the rule. Once we decide that some people don’t deserve our best, we gradually lower the bar for everyone, including ourselves.
Love as Leadership Strategy
Leading with love isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s the smart thing to do. When people know they’re valued even in disagreement, they’re more likely to:
- Share honest feedback instead of hiding problems
- Take creative risks instead of playing it safe
- Support decisions they didn’t initially favor
- Stay engaged during difficult seasons
No Exceptions
The command to love our neighbors doesn’t come with asterisks, footnotes, or escape clauses. It applies to the difficult board member, the resistant employee, the critical community leader, and yes, even the person whose politics make your eye twitch.
As Christian leaders, our call isn’t to love only the lovable. It’s to love as we’ve been loved—persistently, sacrificially, and without exception.
The marketplace is watching how we handle disagreement and opposition. They’re looking for leaders who can remain gracious under pressure, maintain integrity in conflict, and build bridges instead of walls.
Love thy neighbor. No exceptions. It’s not just a nice idea for Sunday morning—it’s a leadership imperative for Monday morning and every morning after.
