Leadership is not reserved for the loudest voice in the room, the person with the biggest following, or the one with the most impressive title.
It is not unique to a certain personality type, birth order, or position. I believe everyone is a leader because God created every one of us to influence, shape, and impact the world around us.
If you stop and think about it, leadership shows up in more places than we often acknowledge. You shape your family culture through leadership. The way you handle conflict is leadership. The way you use your money, spend your time, make decisions, and care for people all reflect leadership. Nothing changes, develops, or advances without leadership showing up at some point in the process.
This understanding matters for the church, particularly in our current cultural moment. We don’t need Christian leaders waiting for permission to lead. We need believers who understand that leadership begins where our influence meets purpose. We also need support from those who care deeply about seeing missionaries, leaders, and everyday disciples strengthened to live, serve, and make disciples where God has placed them. This is work that requires a broader, inclusive, and more biblical vision of leadership, one that is less concerned with ego, platform, or control, and is being built on impact.
Looking at the life of Jesus, I see a pattern of leadership. He led in a way that was both deeply connected to His faith and practical. Jesus did not lead randomly. There was a rhythm to the way He influenced people, pursued His purpose, endured hard times, and advanced God’s mission. From His life, I have framed leadership through six interconnected elements: Influence, Mission, Passion, Action, Commitment, and Trust. Together, they form what I call the IMPACT Leadership framework.
Everything begins with influence. Leadership starts the moment our lives begin affecting the lives of others. John Maxwell famously said that leadership is influence, and there is truth in that statement.
Influence is the ability to inspire people and motivate them toward something bigger than themselves. It shapes behavior, character, convictions, and direction. We have all been formed by influence, whether through parents, teachers, pastors, friends, or even people who misused influence in ways that left wounds.
In our own lives, the real question is not whether we have influence. The question is how we are managing it. Jesus provides us the clearest possible example. In the Sermon on the Mount, He did more than preach a memorable message. He reshaped the moral imagination of His hearers. He taught about humility, mercy, reconciliation, prayer, generosity, and love for enemies. He reoriented hearts and invited people into an entirely different way of living and being human. Then, immediately after teaching the large crowd, He privately healed a man with leprosy. Here, Jesus is modeling godly influence. He is showing that true influence is not simply performing for the crowd. It is compassionate, relational, and aimed at the good of others.
But influence alone is not enough. Influence without direction quickly becomes nothing more than information transfer. That is why mission matters. Mission gives leadership its direction, provides clarity, and defines purpose. A leader may have the ability to move people, but the mission determines where they are going. Your mission is your discovered purpose that is rooted in God’s calling. It answers the deeper questions beneath our work: Why does this matter? Why has God placed me here? What burden has He asked me to carry?
Jesus was very clear about His mission. In Luke 19, He stops under a sycamore tree and calls down Zacchaeus, the tax collector. This is not a random interaction. Here is the heart of His mission: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” He saw someone others had understandably written off, and He moved toward him. He did this with purpose. Mission-driven leaders do the same thing. They notice what others overlook. They move toward the needs that others avoid. They stop drifting and begin leading with conviction.
Once the mission becomes clear, leaders need passion. Passion is not hype, personality, or emotional intensity. Passion is the inner conviction that compels you to invest in your purpose and sustain perseverance over time. Every meaningful leadership journey eventually becomes difficult. Progress slows. Criticism comes. People misunderstand you. The initial excitement fades, and leaders are forced to decide whether to keep going or quietly quit.
That is where passion matters most. Passion keeps leaders invested when the results are slow and the work is costly. In Jesus’ life, we repeatedly see that He was moved with compassion. He was not detached from the needs of the people around Him. He wept over Jerusalem. He healed the sick and restored the fallen. His mission was sustained by His deep love for the Father and genuine compassion for people. This kind of passion transforms leadership from the exercise of authority into the work of sacrificial service.
Passion, then turns into action. Vision is powerful, but vision alone does not change anything. Many leaders are gifted at and comfortable with dreaming, planning, and imagining what could be, but transformational leadership requires movement. Action is taking strategic, intentional steps toward fulfilling the mission. It turns burden into progress and vision into impact. Without action, even the clearest calling remains only a possibility. Jesus never only talked about the Kingdom of God. He demonstrated it. He moved toward the broken, healed the suffering, discipled followers, and sent others into ministry.
No meaningful mission is accomplished without commitment. Jesus models this powerfully for us in the Garden of Gethsemane when He prays, “Not my will, but yours be done.” This is true commitment to His calling, even in the face of death. Commitment is dedication to working hard to achieve the best possible outcome in fulfilling the mission. Many people have desire. They feel inspired and start strong. But desire alone does not produce fruit. Commitment is what stays when the work becomes inconvenient, unrecognized, expensive, or exhausting.
Finally, all of leadership rises or falls on trust. Trust is the quiet foundation beneath every other part of the framework. Trust is currency, and without it, influence collapses. Without trust, the mission is questioned, passion is doubted, action is resisted, and commitment loses credibility. Trust is relational capital built over time through humility, responsibility, accountability, and faith. It grows slowly, and it can be damaged quickly.
One of the most moving pictures of this is in John 21. Peter had failed by denying Jesus publicly three separate times. Yet after the resurrection, Jesus does not discard him. He restores him. He doesn’t pretend Peter’s failure never happened, but neither does He allow failure to have the final word. He restores trust and calls Peter back into meaningful leadership. Jesus’ restoration of Peter models the necessity of trust in his future ministry. Trust can be restored, regrowing where integrity is practiced, and grace is received.
There is another side of trust that Christian leaders cannot afford to miss. While leaders need to work diligently to be trustworthy, they also have to trust God. Leadership will inevitably bring us to places where outcomes are uncertain, and resources are stretched thin. Moments when we can’t know how things will unfold. In these moments, leadership becomes an act of faith. We trust His wisdom, His timing, His Word, and His ability to do more than we can see.
I am grateful for how Jesus models leadership for us. He allows us to see why this IMPACT framework is so necessary. Influence recognizes that we are responsible for how we affect others. Mission gives us direction. Passion sustains us when our leadership becomes costly. Action keeps the mission moving forward. Commitment anchors us for the long haul. Trust gives credibility to all of this and roots our leadership in dependence on God. These are not random, disconnected ideas. Together, they reflect the pattern we see in the life of Jesus.
For those of us who are committed to the work of disciple-making, the invitation is clear. To achieve more robust Kingdom advancement in our contexts, we have to rethink leadership. It is not something for a select few but rather a responsibility entrusted to every believer. Parents are leading. Pastors are leading. Business owners, artists, and missionaries are leading. Teachers, coaches, neighbors, and volunteers are leading. The question is not whether you are a leader. The question is whether your leadership is creating impact that points people to Christ.
At MyBLVD, we believe leadership matters because people matter, cities matter, context matters, and disciple-making matters. We believe God is at work raising up leaders through other godly leaders around them who will serve with courage, clarity, compassion, and conviction right where they are. We believe leadership is not about building personal platforms, but about faithfully stewarding influence so that lives are changed and communities are strengthened.
So what does this mean? Where can we begin? Here is your call to action. Stop waiting for that title, a stage, or a perfect moment to begin leading. Ask God to show you who is in your sphere of influence and to give you the courage and wisdom to engage them. Embrace the burden that the Lord has placed on your heart and then take the next faithful step. Stay committed when it gets hard. Build trust with integrity. And use every ounce of influence you have to light the path for someone else. The leaders who change the world are not always the ones standing at the center of the room, getting all of the attention. More often, they are the ones who quietly, faithfully, and intentionally surrender their influence to the purposes of God.
