Developing an Eager Church - Christianity Today

Sandy called me with a simple request. “George, a friend of mine is in the hospital. Would you go and share some comforting words?”

I’m all for hospital visitation and helping a friend, but at that moment my ministerial priorities outweighed my ministerial guilt. Mustering up my courage and attempting to be as empathetic as possible, I said, “Sandy, my job is to equip you to do the ministry, not to do all the ministry myself. It is your job to visit your friend. There are three ground rules for hospital visitation: don’t sit on the bed, don’t stay too long, pray and read the Word with your friend before you leave. When you have done these things, call me back, and I’ll share some more tips.”

You can imagine what I felt when the conversation ended. All afternoon I wondered if I had done the right thing. Am I just being lazy? What am I getting paid for? Am I not a pastor? Don’t pastors march hospital hallways every visiting hour?

But after a few hours, new thoughts began: I’m committed to the full employment of every believer. Putting that into practice may create a few awkward moments in relationships with people, but if I love them, teach them, and have confidence in their ministry, someday they will be off the spiritual welfare rolls and be full, active partners in ministry.

Benjamin Franklin once commented that we were better off not knowing two things: how sausages and decisions are made.

Another thing we are better off not knowing: the number of pastors who proclaim the priesthood of all believers but in practice function by sola pastora, by the pastor alone.

Given our usual seminary experience, this is not entirely unexpected. Much of our formal theological training has left us unprepared. In homiletics, we learned to preach. In Christian education, we learned to teach. But where were we shown how to train?

At our church, we have decided to make an effort to train others. In many ways we’re still learning, but we’re making progress. Here are four steps we have found that enable pastors and churches to equip people to assume ministry.

A Change in Attitude

An equipping ministry demands a change of attitude in both full-time staff people and the church as a whole.

Redefine the role. Over time, begin to redefine your role as one who equips others for ministry rather than one who does all the ministry. Describe yourself as a pastor among fellow pastors rather than as the pastor of the church. You will need to say these things from the pulpit so people begin to hear and see you in a different light. At the same time, you must affirm them, encourage them in their gifts, and although they may not have your training, show them they are necessary and useful for building up the body of Christ.

Design structures that fulfill these goals. It is no good to advocate giftedness yet provide no structure for it to work. Church structures, therefore, must be designed to help all believers minister. Here’s one example.

I am the primary teacher in our church. But I believe there are more teachers and preachers in the community, and they deserve the privilege of growing in their giftedness. One way to encourage this growth is to preach no more than 65 percent of the sermons. The remaining Sundays are not given to travel or speaking in other places but to hearing those in our community who are growing in their preaching gifts. It demands that I listen to their teaching, record my response, and spend time with each speaker providing affirmation and giving suggestions for improvement. It also means keeping them up to date on study materials, teaching resources, and giving them further opportunities to preach.

Know your God-ordained priorities. Ministry priorities are seldom a choice between good and bad, but between good and better. It would have been good for me to visit the woman in the hospital; it was better to equip Sandy to do it. And if time permitted, the best would be to go with Sandy to visit the woman and provide her feedback as she continued to visit.

What is important is that our God-ordained priorities are clear in our minds so we can handle the myriad requests. When a request to minister comes, I ask myself three questions:

Can someone do this better than I?

Is this an equipping opportunity?

Does this fit in with my goals and objectives?

At times, various pastoral needs will overrule these questions, but where at all possible, ministry should be given over to our fellow priests.

Delegate in faith. If people are to grow in their gifts, then you must be prepared to give ministry to them. By faith, you must believe that God can use them just as well as you. God’s plan will not be thwarted because of your absence. The more time you spend equipping people, the more confidence you will have that they can do the job God wants done.

Work yourself out of a job. We demand this of our overseas missionaries but allow ourselves to be exempt. Genuine church growth is not just bigger churches, but more churches with a higher percentage of ministry participation. Consequently, we should be reproducing people who can plant new churches. This may mean that you equip a team and then leave to start a new work.

Working yourself out of a job, however, is fraught with identity struggle. More than one equipper has questioned, “How can I grow in my gifts if I am constantly giving ministry away? Will there be a place for me at the end?” Both are legitimate concerns; both I have felt deeply. But I can assure you that equippers will never run out of work to do nor a place to belong. As to the identity crisis, it will be real-it will also be the fertile soil for learning the nature of servanthood. Ultimately, it doesn’t threaten identity; it provides it.

Prepare for flak. An energetic equipping ministry leaves little time for lingering at high tea. You may not be at every social event or committee meeting. An educated congregation, still having the traditional role in mind, will no doubt have some questions about your absence. Graciously answer those concerns, but stick to your equipping priorities. You are a servant of Christ, called to do his bidding, and not a slave to people’s notions of your calling.

Exposure to All the Gifts

Eleven years ago I could not carry a tune in a bucket (I still sing pretty poorly). At the same time, I was exposed to men and women who had gifts in worship leadership, and I began to covet those gifts for our church. I remember watching one pastor lead his congregation in singing for forty-five minutes. There was no musical accompaniment, only his gentle voice in leadership. I saw that music was not primarily a performance gift but a gift of gathering the body together for collective worship. I went home and began nervously to model this in our own community. From this beginning, I took every opportunity to expose myself to as many worship leaders as I could find.

Giftedness needs exposure. As one called to equip others, therefore, you need as much exposure as possible to all the gifts. You may not personally have a particular gift (prayer for inner healing, for instance), but you need to know what it is and who can train your community in this ministry. For me, this means I must travel on my sabbaticals, attend one or two conferences per year, and make sure I know other pastors in my area. The latter has led me to a fellowship of some forty men and women who meet fortnightly for prayer and worship. The spill-over from this meeting is that we exchange equipping ministries with one another. I led a workshop on facilitating congregational worship in Bob’s church and he led a workshop on evangelism in mine.

As we have been trained, so people in our congregations will be equipped through exposure to life-on-life situations. An example: Graeme was an unpaid intern in our church. He gave twenty hours a week to study and ministry. In return, I spent time with him in reading tutorials and lectures. One such lecture dealt with church discipline. It was pretty much a process of teacher’s notes to student’s notebook, save for a few personal illustrations I could give.

A short time later, as a co-leader in his house group, Graeme was confronted by a problem demanding discipline. Our elders decided to let the house group handle the discipline and not involve themselves unless it was absolutely necessary. No doubt Graeme felt in over his head, but he had been trained in the principles of biblical discipline, and I was sure this exposure to a real-life situation would be rewarding. It was indeed, for Graeme successfully led the group through the process of discipline and ultimately saw the restoration of the person back to the church. The equipping opportunity had been married to life exposure and produced a mature disciple.

Experimentation in Ministry

I shudder at the memory of my early years of preaching. Just to look at my notes from those days produces a sense of horror and shock. But that gracious congregation believed the principle that gifts grow in an experimental climate. Giftedness does not emerge into maturity all at once but slowly develops through trial and error, affirmation and correction. The tolerance granted to me as a young preacher needs to be extended to all.

An equipping church will foster a climate of experimentation with all the gifts. One year, for two successive evenings, we ran a “gifts fair.” Over thirty workshops were given in which people had an opportunity to hear about a particular gift, to see it in action, to hear how the leaders had grown in their giftedness, to be warned of some of the pitfalls, and to suggest ways the beginner could start. These workshops included areas like helps, administration, working with prisoners, worship leadership, drama and dance, photography, writing music, preaching, counseling, ministry with the handicapped, and leading evangelistic Bible studies. As limited as this was, the climate invited people to experiment with gifts and to see if God wanted to use them in this way.

One of the primary places for gift discovery and affirmation is in small-group meetings. Within a relational environment, people can share their spiritual desires for ministry. When someone wants to use a gift, there is a good chance God has put that desire there. Spiritual pride can occasionally skew this principle; but generally we should encourage people who volunteer a gift.

The small group should manifest an attitude of expectation. If Karen believes God has given her gifts in songwriting, then we want to bring this before the group in prayer and give Karen a chance to share her compositions. We know she is just a beginner and her self-image and confidence are shaky, but affirmation and careful evaluation will help her take the next step along the path. As the group gives Karen opportunity to minister and expects her to grow, she surely will. The group may encourage her to share one of her songs in the Sunday service. Whether she does a great job or falls flat on her face, the group is there to encourage her in the process and to give helpful suggestions.

A Decentralized Strategy

Few of the things we have discussed so far will be possible if a church retains the old wineskins. The pastoral team may have a new attitude about equipping ministry but be defeated if there are not structural changes.

The average church today is highly centralized. Everything happens at the church building (the successful church is open seven nights a week), and the senior pastor or one of the paid staff usually administers the program. Performance by a few is chosen over participation by many. Attendance and passivity are stressed at the expense of interaction and leadership. Therefore, a highly centralized church will need fewer equipped people for its ministry. Unfortunately, it will also sacrifice the priesthood and giftedness of the believer to see this happen. A decentralized philosophy, however, demands more equipping because everyone is working.

In our church, the decentralization strategy becomes visible on four levels: personal, small-group, congregational, and citywide. Each level builds on the previous one.

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The basement: personal and family development. In any building, the foundation is most important. So it is with building a body of equipped saints. Individual growth and family strength is the foundation. Growth can’t happen without individuals involved daily in Bible reading, meditation, and prayer. But seldom do we take it seriously enough to teach how it is done and provide materials for it.

Our congregation writes its own study guide to lead members through personal study, discussions with spouse and children, and preparation for next Sunday’s worship.

First floor: interpersonal and small-group development. From the foundation, we build the ground floor-inter-personal relationships and small groups. Four sections make up this level.

First, personal discipleship-the design is to have everyone learning from an older and more mature Christian and sharing information and life with a younger believer. Bible reading programs, Scripture memory covenants, and prayer partnerships all play a part. Each of these involves some training and equipping.

Second, hospitality. As Karen Mains’s book Open Heart, Open Home suggests, hospitality and entertainment are two different things. It is essential that we train in the ways of hospitality. We’ve had special workshops to discuss the dilemmas of hospitality and how to get out of the entertainment rut.

Third, friendship evangelism. Most people come to Christ through contact with Christian friends or family members. Our emphasis should be upon sustaining contact with non-Christian friends and slowly winning the right, by our character and service, to share Christ with them. We try to train people in ways of friendship evangelism.

Fourth, household groups-probably the single greatest tool for gift discovery and development. Ranging from ten to twelve people and meeting in homes for up to three hours per week, these small units are able to know one another in an atmosphere of study, sharing, worship, prayer, and mission. House group leaders in our fellowship are designated by the elders and serve as the primary pastoral team for their groups.

To keep our twenty-five house leaders encouraged and growing, we provide monthly training. Let me share one example.

As one who tours all the house groups to observe our leaders in action, I noticed that some were doing a poor job of leading Bible studies. That night I gathered five leaders in the center of the room and led an inductive study for them. The other twenty leaders sat on the sidelines with evaluation sheets in their hands to critique my leadership. Did I answer my own questions? Did I draw out the quiet and shy person? Were my application questions relevant to where people lived? At the end of the study, people shared their reviews. The leaders all agreed they could now lead a study more effectively because it had been modeled for them.

People are equipped when the activity is modeled and discussed at the same time. Demonstrate, analyze, and affirm.

Second floor: large groups and whole congregation. The traditional church sees the Sunday service as the performance of the few and the best, which is quite different from Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 14:26. Although he believed in forms for worship (the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor. 11), Paul also advocated a system where believers were given freedom to share in that service. Such involvement can be greatly enhanced by equipping more people to participate on a regular basis.

Let me highlight that major change in the church does not happen at the Sunday service level, no matter how good your preaching. Radical change begins at the foundational level and moves up to the congregational level. Sunday services are only an expression of vitality experienced at the personal, family, interpersonal, and small-group levels.

In addition to Sunday services, we also use large-group activities to train people. Saturday seminars, weekly training programs, weekend retreats, summer camps-all are excellent tools for developing effective workers for the mission of the church.

We encourage large groups to become involved in extensive evangelism. While friendship evangelism (intensive) focuses on friends and relatives, extensive evangelism reaches beyond the border of our friendships to unknown people. Thus, activities such as door-to-door visitation, open-air preaching, and evangelistic dinner parties can be great opportunities to train people to share their faith.

Third floor: citywide ministry. Every congregation needs opportunities to participate with all believers in a city in order to proclaim Christ and demonstrate the unity of the church. Crusade evangelism, interchurch worship rallies, and corporate demonstrations for social justice are just a few examples. Each holds the possibility for equipping.

As you can see, these four levels offer dozens of opportunities for people to be trained and to employ their gifts. Again, this is not a program (please design your own), but a strategy for decentralizing the church so that more people fulfill their God-given ministry.

“Outrageous-the whole process is outrageous,” you may be saying. “It would never work in my church. Why, we can’t even recruit enough volunteers for our committees!”

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe believers are tired of fitting into fixed slots that have no relationship to their giftedness. Don’t you feel that anxiety from time to time? An equipping model of the pastor-teacher is one starting point in the emancipation of God’s entire priesthood.

George Mallone is a teaching elder at Emmanuel Christian Community, Richmond, British Columbia.