An equipping ministry demands a change of attitude in both full-time staff people and the church as a whole.
—George Mallone
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, and 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 how I felt when the conversation ended. All afternoon I wondered if I had done the right thing.
Am I being lazy? What am I getting paid for? Am I a pastor or not? 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 (“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 taught 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’ve found that enable pastors and churches to equip people to assume ministry.
Attitude Adjustment
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 does no good to advocate giftedness and not provide 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 and teaching resources, and giving them further opportunities to preach.
Know your God-ordained priorities
Priorities in ministry are seldom a choice between good and bad, but are frequently 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 to provide her with guidance as she continued to visit.
The important thing 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, we must be prepared to give ministry to them. By faith, we must believe that God can use them as well as ourselves. God’s plan will not be thwarted because we can’t be there. The more time we spend equipping others, the more confidence we will have that they can do the job.
Work yourself out of a job
We demand this of our overseas missionaries but allow ourselves to be exempt. Genuine church growth is not merely 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; I have felt them deeply. But I can assure you that equippers will never run out of work to do or 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. You are not a slave to people’s notions of your calling.
Gift Exposure
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 leading worship 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 leading them. I saw then that music was not only a performance gift but a gift for gathering the body together in collective worship. I went home and began (somewhat 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 those called to equip others, we need as much exposure as possible to all the gifts. You may not have a particular gift personally (prayer for healing, for example), but you need to know what the gifts are and who can train your community in a given ministry. For me, this has meant traveling on my sabbaticals, attending one or two conferences per year, and making sure I am acquainted with the other pastors in my area. The latter has led me to a fellowship of some forty men and women who meet every two weeks for prayer and worship. The spillover 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, people in our congregations will be equipped through exposure to real-life situations. Here is an example: Graeme was an unpaid intern in our church. He contributed 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 the simple transfer of teacher’s notes to student’s notebook, except for a few personal illustrations I was able to give.
A short time later, as a co-leader in a small home 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 his exposure to this real-life situation would be beneficial. 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.
Ministry Laboratory
I shudder at the memory of my early years of preaching. Just looking at my notes from those days produces a sense of disbelief and shock. But my gracious congregation at that time 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 I was granted 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 we ran a “gifts fair” in the church for two successive evenings. Over thirty workshops were offered in which people had an opportunity to learn about some of the gifts available to believers, see these gifts in action, hear how leaders grow in their giftedness, be warned of some of the pitfalls, and be given suggestions for discovering and using one’s gifts. These workshops included the areas of 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 and see where and how God wanted to use them.
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 only a beginner and her self-image and confidence are shaky, but affirmation and careful evaluation will help her to take the next step. As the group gives Karen opportunity to minister and expects her to grow, she most likely 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.
Decentralizing Strategy
Few of the things we have discussed so far will be possible if a church retains the old wineskins, so to speak. The pastoral team may have a new attitude about equipping ministry, but it will be defeated if there are no 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 the norm over against participation by many. Attendance and passivity are stressed at the expense of interaction and leadership. This being the case, 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, on the other hand, 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.
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 these practices seriously enough to teach how they are done and provide the necessary materials to do them.
Our congregation writes its own study guide to lead members through personal study, discussions with spouse and children, and preparation for the next Sunday’s worship.
First floor: interpersonal and small-group development
From the foundation, we build the ground floor—interpersonal relationships and small groups. Four sections make up this level.
First, personal discipleship—the design is to have everyone learning from an older, more mature Christian and then 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 Main’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 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 congregation as a whole
The traditional church sees the Sunday service as the performance of the few and the best, which is quite different from Paul’s description found in 1 Corinthians 14:26. Although he believed in forms for worship (e.g., the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11), Paul also advocated a system in which 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 borders of our friendships to people unknown to us. Consequently, 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 other believers in a city for the purpose of proclaiming Christ and demonstrating the unity of the church. Crusade evangelism, inter-church worship rallies, and corporate demonstrations for social justice are a few examples. Each opportunity carries the potential for equipping.
These four levels we have looked at offer dozens of opportunities for people to be trained and to employ their gifts. Again, this is not a program 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. We can’t even recruit enough volunteers to serve on 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 this anxiety from time to time? An equipping model of the pastor-teacher is one starting point in the emancipation of God’s entire priesthood.
Copyright © 1997
