Do you have a growing desire to become the spiritual leader God has made you to be?

First, you ARE a leader. Every person has a major role in someone else’s life, and that makes you a leader! You influence others as mom, dad, friend, grandfather, grandmother. You take the role of a leader every time you influence someone else in your private or professional life.

We are all to be “relational leaders” even if we are not “organizational leaders.” No matter what level of authority you think you have, you have the right and privilege to be a servant-leader. Think about the people who have had the most impact on your life, who influenced your life choices and your thinking…I bet they were not organizational leaders but relational leaders.

The church, the Body of Christ, is desperate for a new leadership model. In its worst state, church leadership is archaic, autocratic, and built on personality, selfish ambition, and management techniques of the world. But the “Jesus style” of leadership is not from this world. He came with a mandate to love, embrace, release, and gather. Jesus led and continues to lead his lovers by EXAMPLE. We have the PERFECT leadership model in Jesus’ life and ministry. It is difficult to think of one leadership trait that Jesus did not model for us. Jesus has MORE followers than any other leader the world has ever seen. The obscure Nazarene rose to become the greatest leader the world has ever seen! How do we know that Jesus is the world’s greatest leader? His followers! Almost one and a half billion people claim to follow Jesus. That’s impressive.

But more impressive is the impact Jesus’ words, miracles, and love have on those who follow him. But one may ask, “How do I live with and care for imperfect people.” To lead like Jesus requires that we LOVE like Jesus. This is the only true leadership model based on the example of Jesus. And that only comes when our hearts are healed, made whole, and constantly drinking in the Love of God! We cannot manufacture love, it must be poured into our hearts and brought forth by the Holy Spirit (the FRUIT of the SPIRIT is love).

To let Jesus love YOU is the starting point in your leadership as a follower of the Lamb.

“Let him smother me with kisses— his Spirit- kiss divine. So kind are your caresses, I drink them in like the sweetest wine!”

Song of Songs 1:2 TPT

“If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal.

And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing.

And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 TPT

He wants to be intimate with you first before you are given the authority to speak into others’ lives. It is a LOVE-BASED model. Leadership is showing people Jesus’ love. It is loving our neighbor as ourselves.

It begins on the inside. In the HEART. If our heart is not right and full of love, all our brilliant strategies and clever leadership models end up looking self-serving and manipulative. It is a transformational journey that begins on the inside of us.

We must be healed from “leader wounds.”

We must offer our hearts to God for thorough cleansing and renewal.

We must be willing to change. “Follow ME…”

We become better leaders when we become better people.

The best leaders are not those who are skilled at taking charge, but intimate lovers of God who listen daily to the voice of the Holy Spirit. 

It is a model of FREEDOM, the freedom to follow heaven and not culture.

It is not simply finding solutions; it is finding the SPIRIT and the grace of God.

To lead, you must first be VULNERABLE. Jesus was vulnerable. He made himself pierceable. Nails could hurt him, the whip could sting him, the cross could kill him. See Philippians 2:1-11.

Vulnerable leadership is ENGAGEMENT with others, not being aloof, or separated from people. That is what the word Pharisee means, “separated one.”

So, who is our Role Model? It must be Jesus! Let’s read Mark 10:42-45 TPT:

“Those recognized as rulers of the people and those who are in top leadership positions rule oppressively over their subjects, but this is not the example you are to follow.

You are to lead by a different model. If you want to be the greatest, then live as one called to serve others. The path to promotion comes by having the heart of a bond-slave who serves everyone. For even the Son of Man did not come expecting to be served, but to serve everyone, and to give his life as the ransom price for the salvation of many.”

Mark 10:42-45 TPT

The Jesus Style of Leadership is not organizational. It is not like the world that esteems the one who pulls himself/herself to the top of the pile; that is the model that corporations and, sadly, many churches have adopted. To be a leader in God’s kingdom means you have learned to be the servant of all. We don’t build an empire around us, we lay our lives down in order to serve and empower others:

without a title,

without recognition,

without applause until it becomes a lifestyle.

Let’s follow Jesus into his heart and truth and become a “Jesus-style leader!

Brian Simmons

For more information about the Jesus Style Leadership Academy visit: www.passionandfire.com/academy