In the first article in this series entitled Developing Missional Churches, I looked at some tensions that challenge our attempt to fulfill our God-given mission. The first is the tension between attracting consumerist church shoppers to meetings and making disciples. For those churches which choose to be missional, a second tension involves choosing between using the attractional model to win people to Christ or using the equipping model to train people to do ministry themselves. In my second article, I examined how some missional churches use the attractional model to effectively preach the gospel to large numbers of seekers. This article looks at how the equipping model can be employed to make disciple-making disciples.

Leadership Goals of Equipping Churches

I have already established that Jesus charged the church to be missional when he gave us the Great Commission. Mission includes going, preaching, teaching or equipping, and launching. Whereas missional-attractional churches often are very successful at presenting the gospel to those who are drawn to their services, with many surrendering their lives to Christ, they may struggle to produce disciples who can minister in their own right. This is why the equipping model is needed.

The above continuum places attractional churches on one end and equipping churches on the other. Of course, real life churches are going to be somewhere in between. My continuum places what I call a “hybrid network” in the middle. I will talk about that later. Pure equipping churches do not employ attractional techniques or strategies. In fact, Hugh Halter, pastor of Adullam in Denver, sometimes deliberately makes his services less than perfect just to remind people that we do not go to church to be entertained. At LifeNet, we never have to try to do that. It comes naturally.

Equipping churches seek to develop disciples by giving them adequate Bible knowledge and competent ministry skills and launching them into the community to do the work of ministry.

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12  for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; Ephesians 4:11-12 (NASB) 

Instead of adopting a strategy to invite people to church meetings to hear the gospel from a main speaker, equipping churches develop disciples who are competent to share the gospel themselves outside the four walls of the church.

Leadership Strategies of Equipping Churches

Leaders of equipping churches necessarily will be missional, and they also must be committed to training. This is the biggest difference in leadership strategy. Instead of maximizing their own pulpit time, they will seek to step aside to make room for their disciples.

This means equipping churches are willing to put less polished speakers and worship leaders in the forefront in order to develop them. This runs counter to the accepted attractional strategy, which always puts the best of the best in front of the crowd.

Think “teaching hospital” when you think of the equipping church. Think rock concert when you conceptualize the attractional model.

Equipping churches can be led by any of the “five-fold” ministry, but missionally-minded teachers always will have a large role to play.

Equipping churches do not rely simply on classroom or lecture style teaching. Instead, they use Jesus’ method, which blends instruction with demonstration and application.

This means their disciples will be able to effectively share the gospel, pray for the sick, cast out demons, counsel, and do other facets of ministry. The doing is part of the learning. Until the disciple does, he or she is not a disciple. Unless churches develop a way for people to have “hands on” opportunities to practice their ministry skills under supervision, equipping will not take place. Obviously, listening to a talking head for an hour each Sunday will never accomplish this. Equipping church meetings are designed to maximize disciple making. The small group setting is ideal; although, it is quite possible to break a large church down into small discussion groups on the fly. In order to facilitate the application of teaching, ministry opportunities must be created, ideally outside of the church meeting. All sorts of creative options are available, everything from door-to-door visitation to men’s nights out, to starting or joining some sort of affinity group or club.

A necessary part of equipping and launching disciples is decentralization.

Nothing bottlenecks ministry as much as forcing all decision making through a top-level choke point. Equipping churches expect to produce mature ministers who have the wisdom and courage to be spiritual “entrepreneurs.” Just as natural dads release their sons and daughters to establish their own families, equipping churches adopt a strategy of equip and release. For this to work ideally, launched disciples will maintain a healthy relationship with their mentors and launching churches, having the same values, mission, and strategies.

Integrating the Attractional and Equipping Models

Neither the attractional nor the equipping model is perfect. Both have strengths and weaknesses that can be complemented by the other. In his book, AND – The Gathered and Scattered Church, Hugh Halter advocates creating a hybrid church that incorporates elements of both. (You can read my summary here.) Having pastored both types of churches, I am intrigued with the possibility of integrating the two into one “mean, lean missional machine.”

Larger attractional model churches usually have nice facilities, established programs for youth and other sub-groups, and resources. Equipping churches, especially the small group variety, may have none of the above, but be rich with missional vision and committed people. The blending of the two can provide pastoral stability (modality) with missional passion (sodality).

Such a hybrid makes room for people who may not be willing to go the more radical missional route of the equipping church, but who support it. It also provides programs and resources not otherwise available to smaller equipping churches.

Such hybrids will necessarily be led by those who see the need for both expressions of the church.

The leadership team will need to make room for the more fluid expression of missional sodality within the protective covering of the modality, the larger “mother” church. Disciples and leaders that come out of the equipping ministry of the hybrid church, can be plugged into the various small groups as leaders or be encouraged to start their own through evangelization.

Hybrid missional churches will be able to conduct schools of ministry for training and equipping future leaders. This training will include hands on mentoring in the doing of ministry.

Hybrid leaders will need to resist the desire to “rein in” the more sodalic expression of the church, and sodalic leaders will need to properly relate to the modalic church. This will have to be worked out over time, but the possibilities for mission are huge and probably worth the effort.