Paul Magnus may seem an unlikely fit for his new appointment to the R.J. Bernardo Chair of Leadership at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto. After all, he is a child of the Prairies who spent the bulk of his career as an educator at the Briercrest Family of Schools in tiny Caronport, Saskatchewan.

But the closer one examines his life and the breadth of his activities, the easier it is to see why the big city seminary wants the rural professor to help others learn to lead.

Magnus, it turns out, is a natural. For more than 30 years he’s been preaching, teaching, developing curriculum and building a thriving cluster of schools in the middle of the Prairies.

Along the way he’s been involved in a host of national leadership opportunities, including more than 20 years on the executive council of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC). He currently serves as chair both of the EFC and the affiliated Christian Higher Education Council (CHEC). He is also coaching churches and Christian agencies in transition.

“I like to help people discover what could be, especially when the situation is difficult,” he says. “Life can be purposeful, and the future can be brighter than the past.”

Church and world

When Magnus formally picks up his new role at Tyndale on August 1, he’ll be working at two complementary goals: to develop leaders for the Church and theological world; and to develop leaders for the marketplace and help them upgrade.

“One of my first tasks will be to develop curriculum for seminary and certificate programs for the marketplace,” he says. “In my former life at Briercrest, I launched a leadership degree back in the mid-1980s. It was the core to the seminary until just a couple of years ago and is a still a good prototype for me to work with.”

He acknowledges that Toronto presents “a very different sphere—a different population and different needs. But the same principles of leadership apply,” he insists.

“Leadership is grounded in a person of authenticity and character. It is both an art and a science. It’s a gift and a set of skills. We can teach the science side of it, which theological education has typically been short on. Many failures in ministry are a consequence of incompetence in leadership.

“What Tyndale wants is a seminary with a curriculum focused on training and developing leaders for the ministry world and the marketplace,” he says.

“We would like all people who move through the seminary at Tyndale to be better leaders because of their experience there. Theological studies are important, but our curriculum will provide a focus on a set of skills beyond theological expertise. Leadership is as noble as the discipline of exegesis.”

Magnus will be working to shape a curriculum within the seminary for a master’s level degree and to lay the foundation for a doctoral program. He will also be looking for new ways to connect the seminary to the worlds of business and commerce—the marketplace—where most people spend most of their days.

And he wants to replace himself. “I want to lay a solid foundation and build a team to carry it forward,” says Magnus, 63, who signed on for a three-year term. “My own emphasis in the last five years has been away from leading to developing new leaders and opening doors for them.”

Bible and beyond

Magnus is the product of a Bible college setting, earning a diploma from Briercrest Bible College in 1966 and a BRE in 1983. Meanwhile, he studied philosophy and graduated with a BA from the University of Saskatchewan (1969). He went on to earn both an MA in educational leadership and a PhD from Trinity International School in Deerfield, Illinois.

“Most of my journey has been in the theological Christian world,” he explains. “But I’ve done a fair bit of study of leadership and have always tried to stay balanced in both theory and practice of leadership. I’ve always both taught and led in some role or other.”

Magnus is convinced some of the best literature on leadership is written for a wide population; that the best business authors are Christians who’ve simply written for a wide audience. Indeed, “the best works have not been written for the theological world, but for the marketplace,” he says.

“One of the consequences is that you have to do a great deal of integration and reflection on biblical principles to guide you.

“My best friends are authors. The very best thing anyone ever did for me was a professor who said, ‘You’ll be the same person you are today except for the books you read, the people you meet and the dialogue you have with those people.’

“I committed in a life plan he had us do to read a book a week for life. I’ve kept that. I’ve read 40 to50 books a year on leadership, and 85 per cent of those were written more for the marketplace.” Magnus believes the best leadership authors “will land pretty close to the biblical record, because God is not inconsistent.”

He looks back to the time when many Bible colleges worked to avoid contamination and establish a clear distance from the world. “With time we’ve recognized you can’t influence people to follow Jesus unless you’re relating to them and are in their world. Many early seminaries were critiquing culture without living in it and knowing it. We did what scribes and Pharisees did,” he says.

It’s a mistake Magnus does not to want repeat. “That’s part of my passion for this chair of leadership. We don’t want to just look at it through the Christian author and theological window, but also through the lens of the minds God created when He made mankind.

“Our institutions are recognizing that standing outside of culture and making funny faces at it doesn’t accomplish much.”