Gaining by Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send
by J.D. Greear
I read this book on the recommendation of a friend of mine who leads a rather large church in our area. He told me it is the best book he’s ever read. We agreed that I would read it and he would read my most recent book at the time, Letters to the Church by Francis Chan, something he already planned to do. Greear, a pastor of one of the fastest growing megachurches in our area, has tremendous missional insight, something near and dear to my heart. Though he has uses a much different model for doing church than we do at the church I pastor, our hearts travel the same paths, and he is getting an amazing result.
In the first chapter, he addresses what I have always thought is a glaring weakness of the megachurch movement: the attractional model can draw large numbers of people without making disciples.
We measure success by size. In so doing, however, we neglect the one thing that can propel the church forward into the next generation . . . and to the ends of the earth: Spirit-filled, disciple-making disciples. [Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p. 27). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
He clearly grasps the implications of making disciples – the possibility for exponential growth. He understands that mission is the reason for the church’s existence. Otherwise we would already be in heaven.
If a church is not pursuing the Great Commission, it really has no point in existing. (p. 50)
Greear believes the key to missional success is giving away our people to God’s mission instead of hoarding them out of insecurity or the desire to build our own “kingdom.”
Missional “Plumb Lines”
A plumb line guarantees that what we build is not out of line. Greear offers some principles that he believes will help us keep our missional focus in line with God’s Word. Below are some of his “plumb lines.”
The Gospel
Fill a heart with passion for the lost, and it develops the skill of sending. No shouting required. What keeps us from proficiency in sending, you see, is not a lack of competency, but a lack of conviction; not a scarcity of skill, but a paucity of passion. (p. 58)
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” What your organization does best grows out of what it loves most. To send effectively, we must love the glory of God and the lost more than we love anything else. Then sending comes naturally. (p. 58)
Motivation for mission grows out of deep, personal experience with the gospel. When we are amazed at the grace God showed in saving us, going to great lengths to save others seems an insignificant thing. We yearn to see the glory of our saving God spread throughout the earth and others find in Christ what we have found. (p. 59)
It is impossible to truly believe the gospel and not become like the gospel. Experiencing grace transforms us into people willing to make great sacrifices to bless others. If we want to grow in our generosity of spirit, we need to feel more deeply the great sacrifice Jesus has made for us. The gospel is the root; eagerness to sacrifice is the fruit. (p. 63)
The gospel alone produces the passion that sustains the mission. Programs and institutions can be useful servants of passion, but never its sustenance. The gospel is its sustenance. (p. 67)
The Myth of Calling
Greear believes, as I do, that every follower of Christ is called by God to be a disciple maker and gospel sharer. The clergy-laity divide is a religious concoction designed to give job security to the clergy. Disciples have different responsibilities in the church under the overall missional call, some of which we call “the ministry,” but all of us are called to fulfill the Great Commission. The “five fold” ministry (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers) according to Paul are put in the church by Christ to equip the rest of the church to do the work of the ministry. Expecting the ministry staff to do all the work of the gospel is missing the mark completely. When our people embrace their individual calling to mission, they will move from being spectators to ambassadors for Christ.
Each believer is called to leverage his or her life for the spread of the gospel. As we said earlier, the question is no longer whether we are called, only where and how. (p. 70)
Every Christian, you see, has at least two major callings: (A) The call to use your vocation for the glory of God and the blessing of others; and (B) the call to make disciples. (p. 75)
We need to help “ordinary believers” in our churches recover the understanding that they are called to the mission and shaped by God for a specific role in that mission. (p. 78)
When church members understand that, they will move from being spectators of the production to owners of the vision and ambassadors of the mission. (p. 81)
Missional or Attractional? Yes.
Greear strongly believes in the megachurch model, but his commitment to mission prompts him to parlay that into a missional powerhouse. From my perspective, which is the micro-church movement majoring on small groups, the megachurch allows many people to be mere spectators at the attractional gatherings. However, it cannot be denied that his church and those launched out of his church are accomplishing a great deal for the Kingdom of God. He mixes modality with sodality quite well.
He shares his rationale for using the attractional model for Sunday services.
God commanded Israel to create a “court for the Gentiles” so that Gentiles could easily observe the Israelites in worship, would he not also want us to do whatever we can to help unbelievers understand what is going on in our worship services?(p. 88)
He addresses another issue I have with the attractional model, which is that it encourages the average believer to simply invite people to hear the pastor, instead of sharing the gospel themselves.
The congregation’s job is not merely to invite unbelievers to hear me preach, but to be the primary means by which God testifies to their friends. (p. 94)
He states another key principle for missional church life here.
But most of what God wants to do in our society happens outside the church, facilitated by the hands of ordinary people. (p. 95)
It would be very interesting to see what percentage of his people actually buy into these principles of mission and service and how many simply come to consume. I would assume that his churches are like most human institutions, which follow the 20-80 rule. Twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work.
His next point is a key issue of mine. How can we actually use our gatherings to equip people to be on mission outside the church meetings? I see far too many people get sucked dry by serving all that the church is doing within the four walls, leaving little or no time or energy to be on mission in the community. This I believe is a fundamental tendency of very large churches, because it takes so much man power and other resources to pull off the attractional meetings.
if we want to reach the next generation, we are going to have to equip our people to reach them outside the church. (p. 96)
Here he makes a great point in support of using the attractional model, however.
Missional advocates love to emphasize the church going (as they should), but they overlook the fact that Jesus and the apostles had a whole lot of people coming to them as well. (p. 99)
How to Transform an Audience into an Army
In this chapter, Greear lays out a huge key to a successful missional movement – leadership development.
“A Church Is Not a Group of People Gathered Around a Leader, But a Leadership Factory.” (p. 101)
Once again he strikes a blow at the clergy-laity division lie.
ordinary people — people with problems and faults and stubborn habits and personal weaknesses — can be used mightily in the mission of God, because it’s not about their abilities to do things for God, but about his ability to work through them. (p. 104)
The church ought therefore to see itself as a leadership factory that stirs up the gifts of God in people, not an auditorium that gathers people behind a leader. (p. 106)
Ordinary people must be challenged to become leaders and empowered to do so.
Shouldn’t pastors see themselves as servants of the movement rather than celebrities of the moment? (p. 108)
Congregants are not to be merely gathered, counted, organized, and assigned volunteer positions as cogs in our ministry machines. They are to be empowered into their own ministries. (p. 109)
great churches will do more than simply recruit volu. Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Greear then hits on the main theme of his book, saying that we must have the courage to send out our best leaders.
That doesn’t mean giving away leadership talent is not scary. Sacrificial giving of any kind always is. You give up control of something you feel like you need, or at least something you know you would love to keep, and sow it into the fields of God’s harvest. (p. 114)
Faith-based generosity, you see, is about more than having an open hand with money; it’s about having an open hand with every good thing God has put in your life. (p. 114)
A New Metric for Success
This principle is true for every kind of church, mega to micro, but must never eclipse the main focus, which is to make disciples. Disciple making is the means to impact our communities.
The goal should not be the size of our church; it should be the salvation and blessing of our city. (p. 120)
The Church Makes Visible the Invisible Christ
It’s easy to substitute doing good works for sharing the gospel. I hear it said too often that the gospel can be preached through our actions. No, it cannot. Our love is communicated by our actions and sets a stage for us to share the gospel, but for the gospel to be intelligible, words are required.
Let me be clear: The church’s primary objective is to preach the gospel, not to beautify the city, care for the poor, or renovate the ghettos. That’s because the gospel testifies to what God has done to save the world, not what we can do to patch it up. The gospel is an announcement about Christ’s finished work. (p. 122)
However, Greear states that “love on display is our most powerful apologetic.”
The Point of Everything Is to Make Disciples
Greear simplifies the definition of disciple making into something every follower of Christ can do, no matter where we are on our spiritual journey.
Effective discipleship is not about a curriculum; it’s about one person learning from another person what it looks like to follow Jesus. (p. 138)
If you know how to love and walk with Jesus, you can disciple someone else. (p. 138)
The focal point of spiritual reproduction is the individual believer. Reproduction does not happen through programs, books, or experiences, he says, but when individual Christians accept their role in the Great Commission. (p. 142)
The author acknowledges that real discipleship only happens in the context of relationship, which has to happen outside an attractional gathering. The small group setting and one-on-one encounters are best suited for this.
Greear counters the multitude of excuses people make for not making disciples. These next quotes will resonate in the heart of every missional leader.
The next great missional expansion will occur when the church refocuses itself on making disciples who make disciples. (p. 148)
the goal is not to disinfect Christians and separate them from the world but to disciple them and send them back into the world: p. 150)
To follow Jesus means to become a fisherman. (p. 150)
The author strikes a blow against the idea that the Great Commission is only for the apostles.
Furthermore, Jesus commanded his first disciples to teach others “everything” that he had commanded (Matt. 28: 20). Everything would include the command to make disciples of all nations. Jesus did not say, “Teach them all that I have commanded, except this command to make disciples internationally . . . that’s only for you.” (p. 151)
Scripture is an announcement about a rescue mission God has come on for us, and an invitation to join that rescue mission (2 Cor. 5: 14 – 20). God formed the church for mission, Wright says. He didn’t come up with a mission for his church as much as he formed a church for his mission. 3 Thus, to separate any teaching of Scripture from its context of global mission is to misinterpret it. In other words, you can’t teach any text of Scripture properly if you don’t teach global missions out of it. (pp. 151-152)
We should not confine “missions education” to a single program; it must saturate every facet of every ministry, just as it saturates every chapter of the Bible. (p. 154)
Greear also provides an antidote for churchgoer boredom.
Joiner says, “When there is nothing challenging or adventurous about your style of faith, you begin to drift toward other things that seem more interesting and meaningful. Mission helps your faith.” (p. 155)
Small Groups
Greear offers some sound advice for guiding small groups.
We encourage each small group to adopt both a city service-evangelism project and an international missionary. (p. 155)
Sometimes small groups are even formed for that purpose — that is, rather than being a group that goes on mission, they come together for mission and form a group. Sometimes it’s better to send people and group them rather than group them and send them. (p. 155)
Small groups should be taught to understand, by their very design, that they are born to reproduce. (p. 156)
Baptism into Mission
I absolutely love this concept!
We build sending into our baptismal confession. We ask each person before they are baptized: “Are you willing to go wherever he sends you, and do whatever he asks you?” (p. 157)
Multiculturalism
Greear addresses the importance of overcoming racial barriers in order to best express Christ to a divided world. The following quotes show his thinking.
When our third race becomes our weightiest identity, unity becomes a possibility. (p. 165)
Evidently, Paul no longer saw his ethnicity as primary to his identity. (p. 166)
“Do you want to know how you know you are in a multicultural church?” a friend of mine asks. “Frequently you feel uncomfortable.”(p. 168)
Second, in order to achieve multicultural unity, churches and individual believers are going to have to learn to live “sent” to the other cultures right in their own cities, (p. 176)
Taking Risks
Risk taking is fundamental to following Christ. The author gives some good insights to help us become more risk embracing.
Jesus gave us what he gave us so that we could create greater return for his kingdom, not so we could have more to sit on for ourselves. (p. 182)
What is more: Not taking those risks ensures our decline. The servant who refused to risk had even the one talent he held onto taken away from him. (p. 183)
“The Christian life is a call to risk. You either live with risk or waste your life.” (p. 185)
C. S. Lewis said that the way to know you are living by faith is that what you are doing for God scares you… So get comfortable with being scared. (pp. 187-188)
This is a great read for every church leader.
