Cook
Cook
As scandal after scandal affected leaders of churches, governments and other community entities, a question emerged — why?
David Cook was a student at the time, working on his doctorate in leadership from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He noted how some people in power maintained the course and grew in wisdom while others fell into abuse, deception, and immorality.
“I was bothered enough that it was why I went back to school to study leadership. I wanted to understand it better,” he said.
Cook, the senior pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Greenwood, has tried to answer those questions with a new book, “Leading from the Foundation Up.” He and co-author Shane Parker have created a book focused on Christian leadership philosophy and practice rooted in one thing: the fear of the Lord.
“It grew from the desire to just see leadership get better in the West and in the church, just the grief that people are having over leaders and Christian leaders who have fallen into scandal,” he said. “Looking at that, I thought this could be an answer; this could help us build better leaders for the next generation.”
In addition to being the senior pastor at Calvary Baptist Church, Cook is an adjunct faculty member at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He received an master’s degree in christian worship and a doctorate in leadership from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
During his doctorate work was where the foundation for the book emerged. An assignment tasked him to study a biblical leader and advance the conversation on that leader. Cook chose King Saul, the wicked leader of Israel prior to King David.
“I tried to understand if he had a fundamental flaw that contributed to how evil a king he was,” he said.
Cook found the answer in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 17, where the first thing a king was called to do was learn to fear God.
“It goes on to describe what a God-fearing king would look like, and it was the exact opposite of King Saul,” he said. “That fundamental flaw was his relationship with God.”
The idea percolated, and Cook ended up studying it more deeply for his thesis. From that research, came the discovery that leadership comes from fear of God.
Cook expanded those ideas into what became “Leading from the Foundation Up.” He wrote it with Parker, his doctoral supervisor, and they found a publisher in Reformation Heritage Books.
He has implemented the ideas into the ministry at Calvary Baptist Church, to help build leadership locally.
“There was just the hope that when my children are adults, they’ll be led by good and virtuous people, and seeing the difference that would make and the flourishing for everybody,” he said.
“Leading from the Foundation Up” is available now.
