NB Structure

There are many ways to invest oneselves in the Mission of God.

A leader at New Beginnings Church has one primary responsibility - to lead like Jesus. Jesus revolutionized the way leaders lead. The leadership style of Jesus was the antithesis of the Roman Empire’s hierarchical control model. Jesus exemplified leadership as a result of the Christian relationship. He demonstrated how leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. Christian leaders must master the dynamics of the leader’s relationships.1

Becoming a missional disciple involves building and belonging on teams. God has always worked in the context of community. Agile relational and missional leaders at New Beginnings Church challenge traditional management dogma and reap the rewards of new thinking. Hierarchical management strategies, like the Roman Empire, are unable to change as fast as the world around them is changing.

Dr. Gary Hamel, a follower of Jesus and an expert on strategic leadership, concludes that, too often, churches are not functioning well as a result of ineffective leadership models. Hamel said, “Successful leadership must do less hierarchical defensiveness and more creative visualizing, more launching of new ways, more mobilizing, more connecting, and more supporting.”2
Disciple leaders are schooled in the ways and word's of God. They may know the Bible and live the ways of the Bible. However, disciples are truly not disciple leaders until they have influenced other disciples.

Other definitions by leadership experts depict other qualities of the disciple’s leader: Hersey and Blanchard define that “leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an individual and a group in efforts toward goal achievement in a given situation.”3
In this definition, leadership is defined by influencing individuals to participate in group efforts toward mutual goals. According to Terry and Franklin, “leadership is the relationship in which the leader influences others to work together willingly on related tasks to achieve goals desired by the leader and/or groups.”4
In this definition, leadership involves influencing the group to work together.

Baton says, “Leadership is the developing of a clear system of expectations that can indentify, evoke, and utilize the strengths of all resources in the organization – the most important of which is people.”8 Discipleship leadership, can be summed up as an ability to encourage and help people develop their potential gifts from God for the achievement of mutual kingdom of God goals. The importance of the leader-follower relationship is key in all of these definitions. Bennis and Nanus discovered four common skills of leadership. After surveying and communicating with 90 great leaders from all walks of life four skills were discovered: vision, communication, trust, and empowerment.5

Disciple leaders must develop authentic relationships with disciples who agree to follow. After relationships have been identified and established with biblical credibility, the disciple leader can accomplish the following tasks of a leader. First, disciple leaders must lead followers to pay attention to them through a clear biblical vision. Then disciple leaders must deliver the meaning of vision through satisfactory communication. Finally, disciple leaders must attain trust through demonstrating a sacrificial commitment to discipleship. These are the character strengths of a disciple leader.


  1. James Kouzes and Barry Posner, Eds., Christian Reflections on the Leadership Challenge (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2004) 119
  2. Gary Hamel, Manage Differently Now, (conference lecture notes, Leadership Summit, August 6th, 2009)
  3. Paul Hersey, Kenneth H. Blanchard, and Dewey E. Johnson, Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1996), 84
  4. George R. Terry and Stephen G. Franklin, Principles of Management (Homewood: Richard D. Irwin, 1982), 327.
  5. Joe D. Batten, Tough-Minded Leadership (New York: American Management Association, 1989), 35
  6. Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, The Strategies for Taking Charge (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 26-27


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