Who we are 

If you're accustomed to identifying people by means of a tidy label, you may have difficulty labeling our Jesus First Leadership movement!

To be sure, we are conservative in wanting to preserve our precious Lutheran doctrine, and we are truly confessional in our commitment to the Holy Spirit and our historic Lutheran creeds and confessions. But we are also liberal in our love for all people and our appreciation for the freedom of the Gospel, and we are middle-of-the-road in our strong desire for peace and unity in the church.

We are evangelical in our recognition of the centrality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our faith and life and in wanting to reach out and proclaim the Gospel to all the world.

We are traditional in our appreciation and continued use of God's past blessing to His church, but progressive in our desire to make use of all available knowledge and technology to carry out the mission of the church as we enter a new century.

We are Missourian and congregational to the core, but also ecumenical and global as we seek to strengthen relationships with other Christians and to reach out to the whole world with the love of Christ.

Many labels may be ascribed to us, but none of them fully describes who we are.

It's also difficult to identify us solely on the basis of the people associated with our movement, for we are a very diverse lot. In past decades, some of us were associated with moderate, others with conservative causes. Such interests and causes may be important, but our Jesus First movement does not exist to promote any one of them per se, nor do they identify who we are.

What brings us together and identifies us is our common and deeply held conviction that Jesus Christ is the first in our faith and life and that our Gospel freedom is our most precious possession. That conviction motivates us to choose and support leaders at the congregational, district, and synodical levels who truly put Jesus Christ and his Gospel first, in theory and in practice, and who will teach and help the church to do the same in both our individual and corporate lives.

We believe this effort is absolutely necessary, not only to correct any negative leadership attitudes, practices and voids that are all too common in our church body today. We need to do this also to stand fast in the freedom of the Gospel and to encourage our boldness in meeting the challenges and opportunities of the Gospel.

That's why we identify ourselves simply as the Jesus First Leadership movement, and that's why we invite all of you to be a conscious part of this effort.