Stop Managing Legacy: Returning to First Principles in CoVo Leadership
- Dave Miller
- Sep 16
- 3 min read
by Dave Miller
In both business and ministry, there’s a subtle temptation that creeps in once something begins to grow. What started with risk, prayer, sweat, and faith often shifts into a mode of management. Instead of pressing forward in the first principles that birthed the growth, we begin to protect outcomes, maintain structures, and preserve legacies.
The problem? Legacies were never meant to be managed—they were meant to be multiplied.
First Principles vs. Momentum
Momentum feels good. A business launches, customers arrive… a church multiplies, leaders are raised, and communities grow. But momentum is not the same as foundation. Without a sustaining commitment to first principles, momentum turns fragile.
In business, that may mean forgetting that quality and relationship is what brought people in the first place.
In ministry, it may mean mistaking numbers and programs for the essence of disciple-making.
Management isn’t what got us there, and it won’t keep us there. First principles—the core truths and practices—must remain central. We like to call them Brilliance in the Basics and Core Value Culture.
Sons, Not Managers
If we pass down only structures, our next generation of leaders inherit an unbearable weight: to maintain what already exists without having gone through the trials that birthed it. They carry outcomes without having experienced the process.
But if we train them in first principles, they become spiritual sons and daughters who grow into fathers and mothers themselves. They don’t merely manage someone else’s story—they join the Father as he writes their own.
Paul modeled this in 1 Corinthians 4, describing himself as a father, not a manager. His authority came not from structures but from sacrifice. Likewise, our goal in CoVo leadership isn’t to build managers of legacy, but multipliers of essence.
Essence + Execution
There’s a vital balance here:
Essence without execution becomes theory, leading to talk without life.
Execution without essence becomes bureaucracy, leading to activity without conviction.
When essence and execution meet, we get the pattern Jesus modeled. He didn’t set up a classroom; He lived the kingdom, and then multiplied that essence into His disciples. That was His execution.
Anti-Fragility: Embracing the Breakdowns
Here’s the hard truth: systems break. Teams shift. Churches lose momentum. Businesses plateau.
Instead of being surprised by the breakdowns, CoVo leaders can embrace them as opportunities to return to first principles. This is anti-fragility—the reality that what breaks and rebuilds becomes stronger. It’s the long obedience of faithfulness, pressing the shirt well, preaching the gospel clearly, reconciling relationships, and returning again and again to the foundations that actually bring life.
CoVo Takeaway
For covocational leaders, this is both freeing and challenging:
Freeing, because the results are never the point. We don’t live to preserve the glory days or manage outcomes. We are called to the abundance of living this Life.
Challenging, because faithfulness to first principles is never one-and-done. It’s daily, messy, and repetitive.
But that’s where the joy lies—not in managing legacy, but in embodying and multiplying first principles. Our sons and daughters in the faith don’t need our momentum; they need our essence. And if we live it, they will too.
Listen to Dave Miller and Mark Goering's conversation about returning to first principles on the H3X Podcast:
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