After the expiration of generations of failed religious leadership whom tried to reach God
through the Law. God decided that enough was enough and sent down an advocate for mankind,
someone who was able to perform and return to Him, those who were lost. “When the fullness of
time had come, God sent forth his Son.” (Galations 4:4 NIV). By this, he came down to earth,
forfeiting all his treasure, his status and all the security of Heaven, in order to become fully man
(Phil 2:6-11 NIV) and came to be known as Jesus Christ. We come to work, focusing on the
emails, complaints and order submissions of the day, satisfying each day’s requirement.
However, that’s management, not leadership. Management is the art of getting done, what needs
to get done, only for that time. Whereas, leadership is the art of going where you need to go. The
goal of this paper is to reflect on how Christ moved people through leadership in as categorized
in the (5) foundational areas of a leader: power, purpose, passion, priorities and pacing.
Power
The foundational leadership area of Power, is the overall authority that essentially guides
every other factor of leadership. There’s a famous quote from Lord John Acton who says “All
power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. This quote doesn’t apply to the
power of Christ. Christ used his power to implement the style of servant leadership. In fact,
Christ uses authority in service of influence. Instead of simply commanding his disciples to serve
one another. Christ shows by example the kind of behaviour he expects from his disciples and
then seals this with a mimetic imperative. The power of Christ, which has been freely given to
us, must be our source of power, as many leaders often overlook this principle. “Leadership
begins and ends with a clear understanding of the gospel and being rooted in the grace of Jesus
Christ as a free gift”.1
Purpose
The foundational leadership area of Purpose, is the primary factor that gives your
followers a sense of direction and allows them to be able to see their part in the mission, and the
values that impact every decision thereafter towards mission accomplishment. Christ character
would forever change the world, repairing our fractured relationship and allowing us a way to
return back to God. “Jesus had two purposes for his earthly life: to die for the sins of the world,
and to train twelve disciples to carry on his ministry of evangelism and discipleship”. It is the
responsibility of leaders to provide subordinates with a clear sense of purpose; this is done in
many ways. Eventually, your followers will learn that your consistent style of command and
decision-making will build their trust and confidence in you. Christ fully understood His purpose
and what He was meant to do “I brought glory to you here on earth by completing the work you
gave me to do”. (John 17:4). Becoming a man and living as a man, receiving beatings, enduring
lies, death and cruxifixition, Christ supported the vision through the understanding of His
purpose.
Passion
The foundational leadership area of Passion, is being fully engaged, committed and
motivated to accomplish their goals while also supporting others in the pursuance of their goals.
Most churchs have that one ministry leader(s) who is old in age but young in spirit. Having so
much energy that they’re bouncing off the walls, working the room and inspiring everyone they
1 David Kraft, “Leaders who Last” (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010).
encounter. Passion is the key. Passion is the great energizer. Show me a person with passion and
I’ll show you a person with energy. It’s a fact, passion energizes people. “There is something
compelling about the leaders who love what they do and do what they love. A leader like this has
the power to ignite enthusiasm and dedication in scores of others with whom he has contact”.2
All of Christ's actions and everything that He did throughout His lifetime demonstrated His
passion for us. As previously mentioned, Christ came with the purpose of redeeming a lost and
fractured world and return us back into the hands of the Father. We have either heard of or
watched the theatrical movie “Passion of Christ”. The passion refers to the short final period
before Christ’s death, as described by the gospels. We can undoubtedly recognized Christ’s
passion as “a mission to search for and find those who are lost and bring them under God’s
saving rule”.
Priorities
The foudational leadership of priorities is when leaders ultimately decide what task or
task(s) is more important than the others, and advising subordinates to take charge of that
particular task(s). There’s an old saying in boxing, no plan survives the first punch. Which
means, you can have the best plan in the world but even the best laid plans have to be reassessed
and tweaked because something went wrong. The trick is to take a step back and detach from the
general issue, and prioritize in order what’s the most important task(s), and then execute. We
should consider Christ's most important task to be us, his children. “Jesus’ priority was His
coming passion”. To recover from failure, you can’t take on 2, 3, 5 tasks at once. It won’t work.
2 Kraft, “Leaders who Last”. Chapter 3.
You must prioritize the tasks from most important to least important and be able to coney that
message to subordinates. “Clear priorities keep purpose and passion focused”.3
Pacing
The foundational leadership of pacing means to set the pace of expectations and to let
their subordinates uphold their end of the bargain. “Pacing is the matter of determining one’s
God-given capacity and deciding when to take breaks on the highway of life”.4 Feel free to
pacing as running a race “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with
perseverance the race marked out for us”. (Hebrews 12:1). For us to run well, there’s a certain
way we need to do it. Intensity. Remove excess weight, or any hindrance holding you down.
Endurance. At some point during a race, you will get tired and to keep the pace, “looking to
Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the
cross” (Hebrews 12:2-3). By fully trusting and resting in God and doing things at the Father's
pace, Christ was able to save many people not because of how fast He could do so, but because
of His obedience. “Jesus, knowing that they would intend to come and make him king by force,
withdrew again to the mountain by himself”.
Following Jesus Model
The decision to follow Christ’s leadership model is a hard choice, and it’s even harder to
remain content in that choice to follow Christ. It’s hard to model Christ because the modeling
begins on the inside, and anything self-imposed is hard. It’s because it’s too hard to do it for
3 Howell, “Servants of the Servant”.
4 Kraft, “Leaders who Last”.
yourself. By nature our minds fight against Christ’s model. That’s why we must live in the spirit.
To follow Christ’s model means we must see things others don’t, and must able to say things
others can not.
Once your decision has been made, you’re immediately thrown into the fire, sent to serve
a broken world, but to do so you must first know what it feels to be broken. To model Christ
means we must connect with people where they are, and a broken heart is able to impact a
broken world.
To model Christ means we must be a mentor and help to develop others. “Very truly I tell
you whoever believes in me will do the work I’ve been doing, and they will do even greater
things”. (John 14:12 NIV).
Christ spoke the truth, and we’re seekers of the truth. The truth has a unique ability to
attract and repel folks both at the same time. Christ spoke about being a doctor, and living water,
and the bread of life. While some will understand, it’s foreign to others.
Conclusion
God restores the radiance of his own glory by sending his son Christ to die for our sins.
As John states “See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children
of God, and so we are”. Through Christ’s life, death, burial, and ressurrection we’re able to see a
prime example of the foundational leadership areas of Power, Priorities, Pacing, Passion, and
Purpose.
