The Master Leader: 12 Ways to Lead Like Jesus - Takeaways from My Interview with Mark Moore

Pastors don’t need another leadership fad—they need a framework anchored in Jesus. He wasn’t interested in self-promotion or self-protection. He led with integrity, humility, and vision—and He multiplied leaders who carried His mission forward.

I recently sat down with Mark Moore, teaching pastor at Christ’s Church of the Valley and author of Core 52 and The Master Leader: 12 Ways to Lead Like Jesus. Mark has spent decades training leaders, and his framework of six values and six actions provides a roadmap for pastors and nonprofit leaders who want to build teams that are healthy, nimble, and mission-focused.

Here are the 12 ways to lead like Jesus, with insights from my interview with Mark and reflections on the real challenges we face in the church today.

12 Ways to Lead Like Jesus

The Six Values of Jesus-Like Leadership

1. Integrity

Integrity isn’t about perfection—it’s about alignment. In our conversation, Mark shared how insecurity often pushes leaders toward bravado. Jesus, however, lived from His identity as God’s beloved Son. Leaders who know who they are in Christ can walk in integrity even when nobody’s watching.

Integrity is built in the daily, unseen choices. It’s choosing to be honest about our weaknesses, inviting feedback, and aligning our private character with our public leadership. Without integrity, no team can trust you long enough to follow you.

2. Servanthood

Jesus told His disciples that greatness in the kingdom comes through serving others. In Mark’s words, no leader before Jesus ever modeled servant leadership. Today, that phrase is common in business books—but it started with Christ.

For pastors, servanthood means more than washing feet. It means leveraging authority to remove obstacles for your people. It means creating space for others’ ideas, raising up volunteers into leaders, and giving away opportunities instead of hoarding them. True servant leaders build teams that thrive without needing the spotlight.

3. Stewardship

Everything we have—our time, words, experiences, and resources—belongs to God. Jesus modeled stewardship by using every interruption as an opportunity for ministry.

Mark emphasized that stewardship is about more than money. Leaders must steward their people, their calendar, and even their words. A single conversation can shift a leader’s trajectory. Pastors who treat their words casually, or who fail to steward their time, risk wasting the very gifts God entrusted to them.

4. Consistency

In the interview, Mark told me that habits in the shadows shape character in the spotlight. Jesus regularly withdrew to pray, showing us that consistency in private disciplines fuels public ministry.

Mark confessed his own daily habits—flossing, making his bed, writing handwritten notes to staff. Why? Because doing small, hard things trains the muscle memory to do big, hard things later. Pastors who neglect the daily disciplines of prayer, Sabbath, and self-reflection eventually find their competency outpaces their character.

5. Caring

Leadership without care is manipulation. Jesus always used His power for the powerless. Mark noted that healthy teams are built on relational equity. If you neglect relationship, you’ll find yourself “writing checks from a relational bank account you can’t cash” when stress hits.

Caring means listening well, asking great questions, and making time for people outside of the agenda. Pastors must remember: people are not interruptions to ministry—people are the ministry.

6. Nimbleness

Mark said it best: “Marry your mission, date your strategy.” Jesus never wavered from His mission, but He constantly surprised His disciples with new methods—teaching on mountainsides, healing in homes, engaging Samaritans by wells.

In today’s church, nimbleness is a survival skill. Rigid leaders will break. Humble leaders, willing to pivot, will thrive. Mark reminded us that humility and nimbleness are connected: if you can’t admit you’re wrong, you’ll never be flexible enough to change.

The Six Actions of Jesus-Like Leadership

7. Build Culture

Culture isn’t a poster on the wall—it’s the behaviors you allow, celebrate, and repeat. Jesus built a culture of inclusion, mercy, and love that His disciples carried into the early church.

Mark pointed out that leaders shape culture most through what they tolerate. If gossip, pride, or laziness is left unchecked, it becomes part of the DNA. Pastors must be proactive about shaping healthy team culture by setting clear expectations and reinforcing them with consistency.

8. Cast Vision

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is confusing mission with vision. Mission is given by Jesus—make disciples of all nations. Vision is contextual—it’s the picture of a preferred future that mobilizes people in your time and place.

At CCV, their vision is to reach the entire Phoenix Valley for Christ. That bold vision compels sacrifice and creativity. In our interview, Mark challenged leaders who settle for vague goals like “make disciples” without painting a picture of what that looks like locally. A clear, compelling vision is what unleashes generosity, volunteerism, and momentum.

9. Develop Strategy

Vision without execution is a daydream. Jesus was strategic—sending disciples out two by two, setting His face toward Jerusalem at the right time, and investing deeply in the Twelve.

Mark and I talked about how pastors often default to management because they never make space for strategic thinking. Strategy requires intentional time to set goals, measure progress, and adjust. Without strategy, churches drift into busyness without fruitfulness.

10. Focus Priorities

Leaders often mistake activity for impact. Jesus, however, was laser-focused on the kingdom of God. He didn’t try to please everyone or do everything—He focused on what mattered most.

Mark encouraged leaders to practice the discipline of saying no. Early in your career, you grow by saying yes. Later, you grow by saying no. Pastors must protect their most important callings—preaching, discipleship, vision—by refusing distractions that drain time and energy.

11. Take Action

At the heart of the Great Commission is a verb: go. Mark reminded us that churches don’t need more daydreams; they need more disciple-makers. Too many leaders talk about discipleship without actually training people to live it.

This is where Mark dropped a truth bomb that I can’t stop thinking about: “Bible study is not discipleship.”

He’s right. We’ve confused teaching with training. Teaching fills heads; training shapes lives. Real discipleship looks like apprenticeship—inviting people to pray with their spouse, to lead a group, to open Scripture in their workplace. Information matters, but transformation requires practice.

If pastors only teach without training, we’ll raise a generation of hearers, not doers. The future of the church depends on moving from Bible study to disciple-making apprenticeship.

12. Mentor Leaders

Jesus poured His life into twelve disciples, and three in particular. Paul invested in Timothy and told him to entrust truth to others who would teach others also. Multiplication is the measure of true leadership.

Mark challenged pastors to see themselves as mentors more than managers. Our role is not to do all the ministry, but to release all the ministers. Imagine if the teachers, business leaders, and parents in your church were apprenticed to see their homes and workplaces as mission fields. Mentorship is what ensures our impact outlives our tenure.

Final Word: The State of Leadership in the Church

As I reflect on Mark’s framework, I’m convinced: the American church doesn’t have a content problem. We have a discipleship problem. We’ve substituted Bible study for apprenticeship, information for transformation, and management for mission.

But Jesus showed us another way. Leadership rooted in integrity, servanthood, and stewardship. Actions centered on vision, strategy, and mentoring. Churches led like this don’t just grow—they multiply.

If you’re a pastor, nonprofit leader, or team builder, the call is clear: stop settling for teaching when Jesus has called you to train. Move your people from learning to leading, from attending to apprenticing, from consuming to multiplying.

That’s what it means to lead like the Master.

AI assisted in turning this interview into a blog post.