The Way of the Cross: Developing Fivefold Leaders
By Jeremy Groves
One of the things I love about the Lord is His profound joy in using the weak things of the world to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27).
All He looks for is a heart that is fully committed and yielded to him (2 Chronicles 16:9). One broken yes can change the world. He glories in the humble and contrite hearts sold out entirely to His love.
Embracing the Cross
In my experience of training up people called to one of the fivefold ministry offices, I don’t look at raw talent and skills; I look for those with a broken yes, those who have embraced the cross of Jesus.
I believe the pathway of the cross is the only true gateway into a pure and powerful ministry. When you bypass the process, the promised land could destroy you because you haven’t come into the maturity and faith needed to sustain its blessing.
We must first deny our life before we can live His.
Every time I have observed the Lord begin to move in someone’s life by revealing their call to the fivefold ministry, the call has always produced their death. Death to themselves, of course.
For some, it is a quick death; for others, it is a slow, painful death. It depends on how surrendered they are at the time and certain blocks in their thinking that they must overcome.
No matter the depth of the yes, even if it was a reluctant one, the broken yes has always been the primary identifying mark that shows me someone is genuinely called to a fivefold office.
Walking with a Limp
In my own life, the Lord had to break me of my own ambition and desires in ministry so that I could receive His passion. I had become completely satisfied with Him alone, and all of the ministry He led me to do was simply an offering of love to Him.
Pride in the ministry will destroy your calling, humility will raise it (James 4:6). I do not easily trust the ministry of those who do not walk with a “limp”(Genesis 32:31).
Not because I do not believe they are called or genuine, but someone who walks with a humble brokenness before God reveals to me that they genuinely know the Lord and have endured the painful road of process, which reveals to me they have plowed the ground of their own hearts so that they are purely seeking the King’s heart and not the increase of their own Kingdom.
Living the Crucified Life
Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, “ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (NIV, 1973/2011)
I believe that every follower of Jesus is called to model a crucified life (Luke 9:23). However, I have noticed that we, as fivefold ministers, have the unique privilege of experiencing a unique aspect of fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. We must model the way for others, which means our lives are held to a higher standard (1 Corinthians 11:1, James 3:1).
I have seen God do amazing things with some of the people He entrusted to me, who have embraced the crucified life because they are not resisting God’s pruning of their lives but embracing it so that they may bear fruit for Him. My favorite part of developing fivefold ministers is helping them along in their “death to self” pilgrimage because resurrection life is just over the hill.
I use all this imagery on purpose. The key to developing fivefold leaders is first to introduce them to the cross that breaks away every wrong motive and assumption they may have of God and the way he moves as well as their own destiny.
Anointed to Die
Jesus operated in the fullness of the fivefold expression and knew why He did. The anointing He carried had a purpose: to kill Him and bring life to others. He demonstrated this through a surrendered life to the Father’s will until His eventual death on the cross.
Jesus modeled the crucified life. He was belittled, betrayed, and misunderstood His entire ministry, but He was so fixed on the joy set before Him, us, that he never changed his course.
Love consumed Him to the degree that He was tempted at every point, yet never sinned so that he could die for us, knowing we would be His (Hebrews 4:15).
His death had a purpose: to release resurrection life to every corner of the earth. His goal of making a way for His life to be released was accomplished through His death, burial, and resurrection, and continued through His ascension, as He delegated His Church to carry on His mandate.
Against that backdrop, we see the birth of the fivefold ministry. Jesus spent His entire ministry trying to “kill” the disciples, modeling a surrendered life, knowing they were the men God had chosen to begin the first phase of founding and building His Church.
He was trying to get the world out of them so that He could breathe His Kingdom into them. These men would then go on to “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). The Holy Spirit is doing the same thing for us. He is removing all that hinders us from becoming the world changers we were made to be.
On the day Jesus ascended, He promised His apostles that the Holy Spirit would come and empower their commission to disciple nations.
They had given their yes to Jesus, died to themselves to the best of their understanding, sought the Lord in unity with their brethren, and awaited their release. The Holy Spirit fell, and the Church was launched, carrying the resurrection power of the Messiah into the earth.
Cross Encounters that Shape our Character
I believe there are several cross encounters we have in the development of the fivefold call on our lives.
First, Jesus calls us to Himself, beckoning us to follow him and to leave behind sin and death to embrace His life as well as to begin the process of teaching us to be “fishers of men”. He calls us first to be with Him and then to send us out (Mark 3:14).
Second, He begins to weed out the destructive motives and ways of thinking that limit our potential and the expression of His nature in us. As we continue to follow Him in an intimate abiding relationship, Jesus reveals more of who He is and the call He has placed on our lives, even giving us seasons of release to learn and grow, as He did when He sent out the twelve and then the seventy to minister until we can be trusted with a fuller realization of His call on our life. Character will always come before calling. The image of God accurately demonstrated in our lives is more important than anything we could ever say or do for Him. Our lives are living epistles known and read by everyone. What message is our lives preaching? (Matthew 10:1-15, Luke 10:1-2, 2 Corinthians 3:2-3).
He continues revealing who He is and who we are called to be and do for Him a little at a time, keeping us hungry and pursuing Him until we are so in love with Him that He becomes our only motivation, not being “the greatest.” (Matthew 18:1-4)
Thirdly, we eventually face the reality of the cross of persecution and accusation. We realize that Jesus the Messiah did not come as a conquering king to deliver us from natural oppression and to establish a natural kingdom, but as a humble and submitted Lamb, giving up His life to inaugurate His spiritual kingdom for all to enter into by embracing His cross.
He was mocked and scoffed and didn’t return a single word. He faithfully pressed on and asked His Father to forgive them because they didn’t know what they were doing. In this phase, enduring love is developed in us.
The Promise of Persecution and a Word about Slander
As Christians and especially as leaders, persecution is promised, and we are called to love and humbly walk with our God. When our good is called evil, we know we are on the right track.
Jesus was called evil throughout His entire ministry, and in fact He was the very embodiment of good. The accuser of the brethren, satan, will not waste time accusing someone who isn’t advancing the Kingdom of God. I never take slander at face value, and neither should you.
Boldly, I believe a few members of the Body of Christ have committed a great sin in publicly disrespecting and dishonoring fellow Christian leaders, even if they have fallen. We should be praying for their restoration, not condemning them for their fall. We should take our offenses to the person first if you have been wronged and seek reconciliation and only if led by the Lord with the agreement of several others do you mark someone who is unrepentant. Even then the goal is restoration. Read the letters to Corinth that Paul wrote to see how he dealt with these kinds of issues.
How many of us do the same things in private that they were outed for in public? Is there a place for confrontation of sin, absolutely, but always with a redemptive purpose, to restore them to their divine calling in God, first His image, and second His works.
All things must be done in a decent and orderly manner to bring honor to God and protect our brethren. We all make mistakes; we all need Jesus and His mercy.
Never forget, if we withhold mercy, mercy will be withheld from us. Unknowingly, we may reap judgment on ourselves because of holding accusations in our hearts towards our fellow believers and especially if we declare them publicly. We must have the fear of the Lord and the witness of the Holy Spirit and His chosen leaders before we ever mark someone. More often than not, that will not be our place, God disciplines His people, and if He does use us to do it, we must be in tune to His heart for the person. (Matthew 5:7, James 2:3).
Even David walked in the fear of the Lord when he said he would not touch the Lord’s anointed, Saul, even though he would be what we would call today a fallen leader (1 Samuel 26:9).
Carrying our Own Cross
To carry on the fivefold ministry of Jesus, we must carry His cross. We must carry the cross of dying to ourselves and submit ourselves to the will of the Father and the passion that defines His heart.
This posture is what empowered Jesus to carry out His fivefold ministry. We each come to the place in our journey where we experience the “fivefold” cross through our unique make-up.
I am always interested to see what cross people experience when they come to that place of brokenness in their walk with Jesus.
Mind you, I believe this process is one we revisit time and time again until we walk in the fullness of the Messiah’s character and calling in our lives. I believe every season we walk through in God consists of a “death, burial, and resurrection.”
A death and burial for something keeping us from our potential and purpose in God, and a resurrection of life and grace in that area of struggle.
The unique cross we are called to bear in our relationship with Jesus, I believe, marks our spiritual formation in the fivefold ministry.
For example, suppose someone carries an apostolic call. In that case, I have noticed the majority, including myself, experience the cross of brokenness in our own unique ways over the disunity in the Church and the chaos that abounds in the world, developing a longing to bring the order of Heaven, which brings peace.
If they have an evangelistic calling, they may experience the cross of brokenness over all those headed for eternal destruction, never having tasted the love and acceptance of the Father.
I do not mean to say that there isn’t overlap because all believers should share these desires or that this concept is limited only to fivefold leaders.
Still, there seems to be unique and strong passions that God births in individuals, which coalesce with the rest of the Body of Christ in a seamless unity of Christ’s heart for the Church and the lost.
To summarize my point, the degree to which we experience His cross as our own becomes the degree of maturity God can entrust the greater measures of his fivefold ministry grace to.
My Own Cross
Throughout my journey of developing leaders, I have prayerfully observed where people are in the process of maturity and then partner with God to help them as He leads, keeping in mind that I can only recognize and not take offense at someone living a crucified life if the nails have touched me as well.
I have a personally endeavored to fellowship with His sufferings to the most profound degree I can so that I can share in the fullest measure of His resurrection here on earth.
To that end, on my own journey, I have repeatedly experienced the cross of the Messiah.
I currently have a recognized apostolic and prophetic ministry among my peers across multiple streams of Kingdom expression and God has entrusted me with a budding international ministry that began a couple of years ago. Our team has traveled to Wales and South Korea, serving the Body of Christ.
However, even amid national and international success, the Lord tested my heart. He asked me to lay down my previous ministry, Presence International, on the altar before Him and leave for the U.S. Military at His direction.
We closed the doors, and I left “the ministry”. It was difficult, but a truth rose to the surface in my heart. I don’t need to be “in ministry” to fulfill my calling to love people and extend the Kingdom of God.
I have Him, and He is all I need. There is still a world that needs Him, and He lives in me. No matter where he sends me, fruit will follow because I am simply following Him, not chasing ministry.
This year, in 2025, the Holy Spirit saw fit to bring me back in to “the ministry” through the launch of Four Winds Global after giving me a vision for a global revival that touches every corner of the Earth.
I have noticed at every turn; the Lord tests me in how closely I cling to the cross. There are so many opportunities in ministry to choose what is best for me and my ministry at the expense of others.
I have found confidence in my apostolic call based on the humility I experience every time I see the Lord work through me so that I find joy in laying my own ministry down to serve the needs of other individuals, churches, and ministries.
I don’t know how to truly measure where I am in my fivefold development other than looking for that mark of the cross in my life that is forming and maturing my character and calling. When my calling becomes about something other than loving and serving Him, I have gone astray.
As I’ve stayed faithful to the process He has laid before me, I have seen God affirm and release my apostolic call in increasing measures in every season until I began to be recognized as someone who operates in the apostolic ministry.
I did not promote myself because if I did, I would have to keep myself there in my own strength and would be riddled with anxiety, stress, jealousy, and fear of losing my position.
However, if He promotes me, then I am secure and do not need the validation of people, because I know who the Father sees me as and what He wants me to accomplish for His name's sake.
The Importance of Honor
It does not mean there isn’t a place for affirmation and counsel from respected leaders, but being secure in your identity in God allows human affirmation to be viewed and received in a healthy way (Galatians 2:1-10).
Recognizing the grace in someone’s life is important because it positions those in the fivefold minister’s metron, or area of responsibility, in honor of someone God has called to equip and lead them into the fullness of their destiny in the capacity they have been ordained to fulfill.
It positions them to receive the most amount of grace available from the minister, not because of their position, but because of the posture of their hearts.
Honor also gives leaders the spiritual vision to see the spiritual destiny and potential on someone’s life and call it out. Honor gives us God’s eyes for people because we see them as He sees, people made in His image and for eternal purpose.
Letting the Cross Correct our Vision
Embracing the cross expands our spiritual vision to see others as God sees them, and it is the basis for the culture of honor that God desires for His Church. For example, women in ministry leadership positions have been contested for centuries. However, I believe it is God’s design for women to serve in the fivefold ministry.
Embracing our theological and cultural cross eliminates our preconceived and prejudiced filters, allowing us to see through God’s eyes.
The blood of the Messiah has unified us in Him. Paul writes in his epistle to the Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (NIV, 1973/2011).
When we position our hearts to honor women in the fivefold ministry as co-heirs in the life of the Messiah, we will be able to benefit and be built up by the massive amounts of grace resident in the other half of the new creation humanity.
Having a female embracing fivefold ministry is vital to the health of the Church because, without them, there is a vacancy that no one else can fill as ordained by the Lord.
Therefore, we will only come to full maturity with them. This is true of every person and every calling Jesus has released to His Body.
All of us, operating in our God-given destinies, are needed to bring about the full maturity of the Church and fulfill the commission to disciple nations.
Embracing the Cross Builds Legacy
A natural legacy is born when men and women come together in a covenant union, and their DNA, characteristics, values, and decisions are passed down through their generations.
How much more of a spiritual legacy will those who come after us receive if, in our generation, we eliminate the divides between us and come together as anointed men and women of God in spiritual union with our Messiah so that what we attain to in maturity and kingdom DNA can then be passed to our generations after us so that they can pick up where we leave off and move into the fullness of the promises of God.
The goal of living a crucified life is to extend the Kingdom of God through the family of God. The connotation of family implies legacy.
We can not do it alone, and the sacrifices we make by embracing our own cross create a pathway for future Jesus followers to grasp hold of what God has done in us and take it further, just as Jesus did for us.
Jesus said in John 14:12, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (NIV, 1973/2011)
His works are our inheritance, and so it is the same for the generations who follow us until Jesus returns.
Our works in God become the inheritance for the next generation to build on. Our life echoes beyond our time here.
Will we look ahead to the harvest as Jesus did and embrace the cross, or will we widdle away our destiny in fear of the unknown and the what-ifs?
Let us be a people of legacy who live for those coming after us, not like Hezekiah, who did not care about the generations that would come after him and bear the penalty of his choices because he lost sight of the calling on his life as a reformer (2 Kings 20:19).
I believe a biblical legacy is a legacy that grabs hold of God, His covenants, His promises, and His Word and lives by them in such a way that each succeeding generation will tell of the wonders of God and demonstrate His Word and works to the next until through these generational cycles of faith and trust in God, His promises are fully attained and realized just as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob experienced.
Embracing the Cross: The Calling of the Fivefold Ministry
This is the calling of the fivefold ministry. We are called to come into maturity by embracing our own cross so that we can faithfully develop the budding generation of believers and pass on what we have attained in the Messiah so that they can carry it further until the fullness of God’s promises are fulfilled and the Messiah returns for a mature Bride.
I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit where you need to experience the cross of Christ more fully in your life so that you may realize more of His resurrection in your life.