24-7 Prayer's Alain Emerson on why the church needs humbler leader

The Profile

Alain Emerson is best know as an Irish pastor of Emmanuel Church. He is also national director of 24‑7 Prayer Ireland. Emerson grew up in Lurgan, the place he now leads at a church and attended services from an early age with very loving parents. When he was quite a young boy he gave his life to Christ because, he jokes, he felt it was important to get his destiny 'secured'. It was only as a teenager that he began to understand what sin was and what Jesus had done for him in forgiving him of it.

Emerson felt called to church leadership and married young to Lindsay when he was 25 and she was 21. Tragically their marriage was cut short after she was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died. Emerson says he experienced an understandable darkness during that time but also knew that God was there with him in it.

That loss has gone on to inform his church leadership and in 2017, he published Luminous Dark, a memoir recounting the grief surrounding the death of his first wife and ultimately finding a deeper, more resilient faith through Scripture, and the support of others.

In his latest book The Cruciform Leader he distils his pastoral experience into guidance for leaders, encouraging them to follow Jesus’ model—marked by self‑sacrifice and servant leadership.

He also takes aim at the celebrity culture of some Christian leaders.

"I can only imagine the Apostle Paul walking into one of our Christian conferences and going into the green room and just flipping the tables and going, what on earth has this become? You know, that's, I think you would be horrified. You know, with so much of the razzmatazz that now comes with that."

In this interview with Deputy Editor of Premier Christianity magazine Emma Fowle speaks to him about his early life, the loss that shaped his early adult life and the example we have in Christ not to fall into the pride of celebrity but crucify ourselves for one another.

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