LF – Why Are Leaders Needed?

For our second post in the Leadership Foundations series, we felt the need to address this question – why are leaders needed?

From our Overview post, we defined leadership as this: a leader is a man or woman who receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God.

A disclaimer to begin: this blog, this post, and really anything we write about leaders and leadership is not meant to devalue ‘non-leaders.’ Like we said in the overview post, leadership is a role not a value, and Kingdom leaders are servants. There’s also different types of leaders over different scopes of influence, from a couple of people to thousands or even millions. It all depends on what God chooses to do in and through your life – and it’s up to us to be surrendered and content with our Kingdom assignment.

But we started this blog because the work of pioneering among the unreached is exceedingly difficult, and for those called to help lead a team of people in that work, the resources and training are slim to none. Because of that, there is a massive lack of well-prepared, well-coached team leaders on the missions field, leading to significant carnage in people’s lives that is largely preventable, and lack of effectiveness in the Great Commission. Here are 4 reasons why more and better leaders are needed on the missions field.

1. Because God’s pattern in the Bible is using leaders.

We mentioned this in the Foundations post as well, but God’s clear pattern throughout Scripture is in choosing, communicating, and working through a leader or leaders in order to lead the people of God. The majority of the books of the Bible are named after, or at least follow the life and actions of, the leaders of God’s people. Ultimately, every single leader in Scripture and in our lives is meant to be a dim representation of our one true and better leader, Jesus. In the one person of Jesus, we see all the facets of godly leadership together: prophet, priest, and king, servant, conqueror, shepherd, teacher, healer, everything.

And this pattern of leaders who imitate Christ that we are to imitate and follow (1 Cor. 11:1) is continued by Paul’s establishment of elders over the church in the New Testament. There are leaders for the shepherding of the flock where the church is established, and also leaders to pioneer the work where the church is not yet present. More on that later.

2. Because leaders are the bottleneck.

What we mean by this is that without leaders, the effectiveness and thriving of missions teams is greatly slowed or halted. If God’s pattern for helping His people thrive and multiply His glory among the nations is through godly leadership, it also means that where there is a lack of godly leaders, God’s people are slowed in moving towards His purposes. Examples abound in Scripture of unrighteous leaders leading their people towards ruin (10 spies, Saul, Judges, etc.), and godly leaders helping to make God’s name great and His people flourish.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Ephesians 4:11-16

In Ephesians 4, Paul speaks of how Christ has given a variety of leaders with different giftings (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers – commonly known as the five-fold giftings) to the church. But for what reason? To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

Leaders are given to equip the people of God for the ministry of God – not simply to do the ministry themselves. And when the saints are equipped and ministering, the body of Christ is built up and the believers move towards maturity.

The same is true on the missions field. Leaders are greatly needed to provide equipping, development, shepherding, and vision for those called to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. It is arguably the most difficult category of calling that can be given to a believer – pioneering the gospel in a radically different culture that has been resistant to the gospel message and messengers for potentially hundreds of years. Yet there is a surprising lack of resources, development, and coaching for goers, and even less for team leaders on the missions field.

When we launched to the field as 25 year-old team leaders, we had already gone through a 9-month training program for cross-cultural workers, and worked in ministry for another 1.5 years to develop in leadership. That preparation helped greatly – and it was still maybe 10-20% of what we needed to be successful as team leaders. Most days, we had no idea what we were doing. As we reflect on our early years especially, it’s clear that without the Father holding and persevering us and our team to stay on the field, if we had gone just 5% more in the wrong direction, our entire team could easily have been sent home.

In our past 8 years on the field, we have seen many friends that were clearly called to the nations, passionate about the glory of God, fully committed to give their lives to the Great Commission, have to leave the field. In the ReMAP II study over missionary retention, they conclude that over 50% of people that leave the field, leave for preventable reasons like team conflict, lack of clarity, unmet expectations, and lack of effective leadership.

For me, much of this stems from the lack of well-prepared and well-coached team leaders on the field. Much of the mindset of the missions environment is a ‘next man up’ approach to leadership – someone needs to be a team leader if there are goers on the field, whether or not they are called or prepared or even want to be one. There are plenty of leaders that find themselves in a leadership role and want to do a good job, but just aren’t supported or equipped in order to do so. The weightiness of needing to be at least competent in a multitude of areas like shepherding, management, vision-casting, administration, communication, language learning, cross-cultural interactions, security, and not to mention pioneering the gospel among the unreached, can be crushing for almost anyone. And that’s just for those that even desire to be good leaders. I wish I was joking when we say that we know of multiple friends who moved overseas only to find their team leader had moved to a different location and abdicated their leadership responsibility without telling anyone.

3. Because the Great Commission is unfinished.

In Romans 15, Paul gives some insight into his driving motivation for his life and ministry: “and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, ‘Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.’”

This Romans 15 type of ambition is what Floyd McClung called ‘Apostolic passion’ – people with a passion for God’s glory among the unreached who are willing to abandon their lives for this purpose. Many people, whether goers, senders, or mobilizers, have this apostolic passion.

But I believe it is leaders with apostolic passion that are needed to pioneer out into those 7000+ remaining unreached people groups, and to equip and influence the people of God who might have this same apostolic passion towards their most effective role in the Great Commission. Leaders are the ones that are willing to go forward and go first, ones that see the need and fulfill it, ones that can create the solutions and opportunities for others to join in.

If God’s pattern in Scripture is using leaders to move His people, and a lack of leaders is the bottleneck for effective ministry, then the Great Commission remains unfinished because there are not enough godly, effective leaders with this Romans 15 apostolic passion. 

Hudson Taylor was a leader with this apostolic passion; he said, “If I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour?”

Jim Elliot said, “‘He makes His ministers a flame of fire.’ Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be a flame. But flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul – short life? In me there dwells the Spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him. ‘Make me Thy Fuel, Flame of God.’”

Lillias Trotter said, “Oh to learn how to fight through the battle in the heavenly places till the day comes. To attempt the impossible & expect the impossible – it comes back to that again.”

C.T. Studd said, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”

Has God given you this burning desire in your heart to see those without the gospel worship Jesus? Has he gifted you with a mindset or willingness to push forward when you see a need or a gap? More of these leaders are needed to see the Great Commission finished and to hasten the day of Jesus’ return.

4. Because it might be the role God has called you to play.

The first 3 reasons were abstract, high-level reasons why leaders are needed. But for the person reading this post, it comes down to what role God has called you to play. If you’ve read this far, it may be something that God has for you.

Like I (Steven) mentioned in the first post, I reluctantly entered into a role of team leadership. It was weird to lead my friends, I didn’t feel ready, and I had never really thought of myself as a leader. But I remember praying and asking the Lord, talking with mentors, having honest conversations with the friends I was going to be leading, and felt like the answer was yes. It was a role that God was asking me to take.

It has been the most difficult, frustrating, lonely, insane thing that Jenn and I have done. And it has been the most rewarding, worthwhile, humbling season that drew us closer in identification with Jesus than we could’ve imagined.

Leading a team took a lot of tears, long conversations, conflicts, hours in the hospital with teammates, hard decisions. But God brought us through all that and provided what we needed, mainly through teaching us Union with Christ. In 2019, when we expanded to 3 teams, we realized that our original team was ending. So we did a little exercise and asked – think of 3 words that describe yourself and 3 words that described this team when you first joined, and pick 3 words that describe yourself and the team now. And these are the words they chose.

From selfish, proud, naive, insecure, broken, superficial, strangers – to joyful, rooted in Christ, safe, knitted together, abiding, thriving, tested, humbled, fruitful, impactful family. It’s such an unbelievable thing that God did in such a short amount of time. By God’s grace, we are coaching dozens of Thai church planting teams that have seen some unbelievable fruit in the last few years. And that is so awesome. But if you ask us what might be the most rewarding thing from these last 8 years, it would be this list and our people. To see people freed from sin, grow into their own giftings, to see our team go from this mishmash of strangers into a legit family – it’s been one of the greatest privileges and joys to be a part of what God was doing with these people. If you would consider playing this role on a team as a leader – I guarantee it’ll be one of the most difficult things you’ve ever done, and probably the most worthwhile.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with an exhortation: Don’t disqualify yourself! So many times with leadership, including in me and Jenn’s story, we get in the way of what God is trying to do in and through us. We might think – my character isn’t godly enough, my motivations aren’t pure enough, my experience isn’t good enough, my giftings aren’t impressive enough – whatever it is, and we think, ‘maybe I shouldn’t be a leader.’ Many of you guys may have heard this quote – ‘God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called.’ Moses, David, Abraham – all of them were not ready for the leadership role that God prepared for them when He called them to it, but for all of them, He prepared them to be leaders over His people in the right role and the right timing.

There is so much joy in stepping into what God has prepared! Like the parable of the talents, it doesn’t matter if you’re given 2, 5, or 10 talents – if you’re faithful with it, you join in the pleasure of our good Master. But if we reject or bury it, His response is rebuke. Be obedient to what He calls you to – whether it’s a role of leadership, or whether it’s something else.

In our next post, we’ll try to answer the question – How do I discern if I’m a leader?