The effective leader finds a number of ways to constantly restate the goals and priorities of their mission. Read Luke 15:1-32.

Jesus was clear about His mission. According to Luke 19:10 He came “…to seek and to save what was lost”; those that were separated from God. Jesus found many ways to communicate that goal to the crowds that followed Him, His team, and the religious and political leaders. In Luke 15 Jesus reinforced His mission through three different stories about different situations; the sheep were lost naturally, the coin got lost accidentally, and the son got lost willfully. No matter what created the lost condition, Jesus came to find and help those who were separated from God.

Effective leaders get their team to buy into their vision. Read Luke 5:1-11.

As Jesus began His public ministry He started speaking to larger and larger crowds. At one point Jesus was speaking near the Lake of Gennesaret and as the crowd grew in size and pressed in on Him, Jesus got into a fishing boat at the water’s edge and asked Simon (later known as Peter), the owner, to put out a little from shore. Free from the press of the crowd, Jesus sat in the boat and taught the people.

The effective leader reminds their team regularly of the mission. Read Mark 13:1-37.

Jesus was in Jerusalem prior to His crucifixion. As He and His disciples were leaving the temple the disciples drew His attention to the beautiful stone work in the temple. This opened the door for Jesus to help His disciples understand more about what would happen in the future to usher in the Kingdom of God. Right in the middle of talking about the birthing pains to establish the Kingdom i.e. wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes, etc., Jesus refocused His disciples on the team’s mission. Verse 10 says, “And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.” In His leadership role Jesus often called attention to the vision of God.

A leader’s vision must always be credible—in the good times and when things get difficult. Read Mark 8:31-33.

Throughout His ministry Jesus inspired His team with His vision for both the present and the future. He consistently described the character and conduct that would define the citizens of the Kingdom of God. His vision energized His team to leave everything they had to follow Him. His team applied the skills, talents, and resources acquired over a lifetime to see Jesus’ vision become a reality. They believed that if Jesus’ vision became a reality the world would be a more desirable place. Even when Jesus talked about His death and the very difficult things that lay ahead for Him, He did it as part of His overall vision.

It is critical that a leader constantly restate the organizational goals. Read Mark 4:1-20.

Jesus told a lot of parables (short simple stories intended to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson) during His communication with both His team and the general public. We discover these parables had a specific purpose when Jesus explained them to His closest teammates, but there are alternate truths that come out of these parables without destroying the original reason the story was told. In the parable of the sower Jesus talked about a sower of seed (the Word of God) and also the result when that seed landed on a certain type of soil (the hearts of the people). His point was that all may hear but not all will act upon the Word and only a few will have fruitful results from the truths they heard.