I hope you found encouragement in my last post, YOUR LEADERSHIP VOICE AND THE HOLY SPIRIT to find your leadership voice and also be open to the Holy Spirit’s desire to stretch you. There are some valuable leadership lessons you can glean from Jesus in his early days of ministry.
Here is an exercise that you could do in your personal time with Jesus or in an inductive study format with a leadership team or small group. I recently tried this out on a wilderness trip in the Crazy Mountains of Montana with some leaders who are starting a new student ministry in Bozeman, MT and it provided some amazing insight and encouragement that, YES, Jesus is all about starting new work to reach students!
Crazy Mountains, MT – Ashley with student ministry leaders
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Read through Mark chapter 1
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List or underline the people mentioned in this chapter:
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Jesus, Isaiah, John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit, Heavenly Father, Satan, Simon, Andrew, James, John, Zebedee, hired men, people in the synagogue, the man possessed with evil spirits, Simons mother-in-law, the sick, a whole town, Simon’s companions, a leper
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Make a list of all of the action verbs you can find:
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Written, send, prepare, calling, prepare, make, baptizing, preaching, went, confessing, baptized, wore, baptize, baptized, saw, descending, sent, tempted, attended, proclaiming, repent, believe, walked, saw, come, make, followed, saw, preparing, left, followed, went, went, teach, taught, cried out, come out, came out, gives orders, obey, spread quickly, told, went, took, helped, began, brought, gathered, healed drove out, got up, left, went off, went, found, exclaimed, go, preach, come, traveled, preaching, driving out, filled with compassion, went out, began to talk freely, spreading, came…
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According to this passage, what were some of Jesus’ priorities in starting his ministry?
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Baptizing, preached, desert time, preaching repentance and belief, called disciples to follow him, went to towns to preach, healed, cast out demons (spiritual battle), more healing, solitude with God to pray, showing compassion toward the lost and those who were aware of their needs…
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What are some things we can learn from Jesus’ early days about:
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Starting new relationships:
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Choosing to pursue a few
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Starting student ministry with young people (remember that all of Jesus’ disciples were young; probably under 21 years old). For further study on the profound reasons why Jesus chose young disciples you can read or listen on Audible to the preface and introduction to my book, Christian Outdoor Leadership:
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Jesus is previous to you going to reach out to students… he is already there and working, Jesus chooses leaders, we just go invite them to come along, be about sharing good news, focus on developing followers of Jesus (disciples)
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Starting new churches (church plants):
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Simple disciple-making, God has gone before you and I like Isaiah went before John the Baptist and Jesus, just be with Jesus and you are good, preach the good news, be in conflict with evil.
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Starting a wilderness ministry:
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Solitude is valuable to Jesus so it probably should be important to us as well, John the Baptist was called to call people to repent (that’s probably a priority for our ministry as well… don’t just pat folks on the back but highlight life and death, Jesus valued time in lonely places to pray, people were drawn to Jesus and came to him because of who he was and how he taught, we are going to meet Jesus in the wilderness so let’s go there regularly.
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ACTION STEPS
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Consider the implications of this study on startups in Mark 1
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Take a group of key leaders through this study and prayerfully consider what Jesus might be saying to you as a team
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Don’t delay, put into practice what you learn from Jesus… that’s what disciples do.
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