Dear Discipleship-first Friends,
Let’s imagine India and China go to war. Let’s pray they never do, but for the sake of
this illustration, the two largest nations in the world are revving up for battle.
India decides, “We are only going to send our generals into battle. After all, the generals
have the most training, experience, and expertise.” India exclusively sends their top
leaders.
China decides: “We are going to send every able-bodied man in our nation. We will first
train and equip them on how to use their weapons and on battle strategy, and then we
will send them all into war.”
What would be the result? About 500 million men from China going against maybe
30,000 men from India. Who will win that war? China every time. Why? Because they
equipped and released every single person possible.
Now I want you to think about the church–about the modern church in the West. About
your church. Is the church more like India in my little parable or China?
Unfortunately, many times, we are more like India.
We send our professionals into battle to do all the work. Everyone else? We’re happy if
they show up on Sunday or at a small group, give a little money, and then go home.
A decade ago, when we started dreaming about how we could reach 1.4 billion people
in India with the gospel, we realized we would have to mobilize as many as possible.
But in reality, most of the ministry was being done by one or two people at the “top” of
the church structure. Underneath them, they might have a small team of professionals
doing most of the rest of the work. For all intents and purposes, we were only using our
“generals.” Then we had everyone else – like 95 to 99% of the church – whose main
role was just to show up and hopefully give a little cash. Why give money? To pay for
the people at the top of the structure who were doing all the ministry work.
We realized if we were going to reach South Asia, we had to flip this on its head.
It was necessary, and would make us more effective and, ironically, was also more
biblical. How did we ever get away from it? In Ephesians 4, Paul makes it clear that the
apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers were given to the church to
equip all the saints for works of service. These leadership roles are support roles. They
exist not only to do ministry, but to empower everyone else to do ministry as well…
To train people to go out and reach their friends and family.
To mobilize people so we can reach as many as possible.
If we’re going to reach our cities, shake our nations, turn the world upside down, we
need to change our thinking and rewrite our job descriptions. The role of the people at
the top is to put themselves at the bottom, to support everyone else by coaching,
mentoring, and releasing them.
We had to flip our thinking when it came to our job descriptions and also, about the
purpose of Sunday mornings. If our Sunday gatherings are one of the main times we
have everyone together, we need to be strategic and use them to train our people so
they’re prepared for the time that really counts–the other 167 hours of the week when
they are out in the harvest fields.
I wonder: How could you shift your staff roles to be mainly focused on equipping,
coaching, and releasing, rather than focusing all your time and attention on the Sunday
morning experience? And how could you shift your Sunday morning gatherings to be
one of the key times when people are equipped, coached, and released?
If you have existed in a “staff do most of the ministry” and “Sunday morning is the focus”
context, I understand. I was born and raised in the American church. This shift was
challenging for me to make.
Also, I honor the hard work pastors have been doing. What you’ve been doing is not
bad. This is not a question of good and bad. It’s about good and best.
What’s best?
And, even more important, it’s a question of what will lead to the Great Commission
being completed in our lifetime. Because that’s the mission Jesus gave us.
If we take Jesus’ mission seriously, if we believe we are responsible to do all we can to
see the Great Commission completed in our lifetime, it will change not only our thinking,
but our lives.
Fifteen years ago, I was content, as long as our church was growing. We were adding
people to the Kingdom! That feels great!
The problem was that our city could have been going to hell in a handbasket–we were
losing millions of people to the other side of a Christ-less eternity–but I was happy as
long as we had twenty more people this year than last!
Jesus did not call us to only grow our churches. He called us to bring the gospel to
every man, woman and child in the world. To do that, we need to flip the script. We need
to shift the focus and job descriptions of our staff, and the focus and function of our
Sunday mornings so we are all about coaching, mentoring, and equipping – or in other
words – discipling. That way, we are releasing an army of people out of our churches to
reach the lost with the gospel. We need all-hands-on-deck.
Flip the script, change the world.
For King Jesus,