Simon Cox Blog: The Focused Leader: Keeping the Mission as the Ultimate Goal

Wednesday 14 March 2018

The Focused Leader: Keeping the Mission as the Ultimate Goal

Missional leaders must cultivate biblically-shaped leadership and the gospel-structured mission.

Eighteenth-century pioneer of missional theology, Nicolaus Zinzendorf, once quipped, “Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.” Zinzendorf accurately describes the posture of the missional leader.

We don’t need celebrities that dictate to us what our ministry should look like. We don’t need trends to which we conform our personality. Instead, our ministry must be formed around the principle of John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

We need to approach leadership with Christ-like humility and pursue the noble labor of gospel ministry. We need to preach faithfully the gospel and be forgotten as the church flourishes and magnifies her Savior and Head, Jesus Christ.

But gospel ministry is filled with temptations and pitfalls that divert our focus from God’s self-directed mission to personal amusement and self-gratification.

In order to keep God’s glory and calling central, the missional leader must intentionally cultivate biblically-shaped leadership and the gospel-structured mission. These two elements are not boxes to cross off on our missional checklist, but the integral structures that define and feed our mission.

These two foundational ideas must interplay off each other as they inform our core understanding of mission. The biblical shape of our leadership more clearly defines the scope of our mission. As our gospel mission is faithfully lived out, our leadership becomes more finely contoured to God’s calling. The result is a faithful ministry that develops a future generation forged by a passionate pursuit and commitment of mission.