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Part 3: The Heart of a Sent One

 

 

 

 

 

Ever since the tower of Babel, an overriding principle at work in fallen humanity has been to gather, enlarge, and increase our power, control, and influence, in order to make a name for ourselves without any acknowledgement of God. This principle is at work in governments, business, and religion, even the church. The Great Commission is also gathering people into a consolidated kingdom under Christ, but it works contrary to Babel. Christ commands his followers to leave the comfort and security of the known and go out into the unknown, where those who don’t know us live. He asks us to risk losing what we have in order to add new people into his family.

The Great Commission commands us to “go” make disciples, not stay put as safe and secure churchgoers.

The story of how God’s Spirit led the early disciples in fulfilling the Great Commission is found in the Book of Acts. God scattered the quickly centralizing church in Jerusalem through persecution, which caused the gospel to impact hitherto unreached areas. The church at Antioch, under the direction of God’s Spirit, chose to send out the best and brightest of its men to do apostolic (“sent out” missionary) work.

Antioch is our best model of how to do church.

God is still in the business of sending out his disciples to engage and impact those who do not yet know him.

Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” John 20:21 (NLT)

As we obey the call of the Spirit and go out into our neighborhoods, cities, work places, schools, and other places where people gather, God is developing in us the same compassion that compelled Jesus to give away his life for others.

Being a “sent one” requires us to give away our lives. This means that, first of all, we must believe that God is worth the sacrifice and, secondly, that people are worth serving with our time, resources, and everything else.

This kind of compassion only comes via God’s Spirit. Where it is lacking, people will not serve as “sent ones.” They will take the easy way out and simply gather with other believers.

God wants us to do both – to go and to regularly gather with other sent ones in order to mutually encourage, equip, and strengthen one another for the 24/7 mission of working in God’s harvest field.

The Importance of Listening

If we have Jesus’ compassion, we will realize that every person has a story worth hearing and is a life worth saving.

Many who devote themselves to being God’s ambassadors here on earth are not good listeners. We imagine that others should listen to us since we have the message of life. We often try to skip relationship building in order to quickly inject them with the gospel.

Jesus, however, was a good listener who tailored his life giving words to fit the unique human being who had his attention.

Meditate on that thought for a moment. Many times we try to “can” the gospel message into something we can routinely share. That is not how Jesus operated. He was always listening to people and most importantly to his heavenly Father. If people discern that we are not interested in them or their stories, why should they be interested in us or our message? They most likely will not be too keen on what we may have to say either. Compassionate sent ones care about every person’s story. If we expect to become expert fishers of people, we must become excellent listeners… quick to hear and slow to speak.

Targeting People’s God-Fashioned Felt Needs

Every person has needs that only God can fulfill. Because we live so isolated from one another, we may imagine that other people’s lives are just fine, not realizing that behind every door in our neighborhood some sort of drama is playing out that is preparing hearts to receive the Lord.

Some have desperately asked God to show them a sign that he cares. Could it be that you are supposed to be the answer to their prayer? Others have given up, thinking that God does not love them after all. Some people are embittered at what life has brought their way. Others are despondent, listless, and hopeless. While it is true that wealthy people generally have less felt needs than the poor, it is not true that their lives are altogether rosy. Anyone with wealth knows that money is not the answer to life’s deepest questions nor does it satisfy our deepest needs. Many affluent homes are wracked by relational dysfunction and are reaping the whirlwind that comes as a result of putting other things ahead of God.

When we meet and relate to people, God wants to open our eyes to see them as he does – harassed and helpless sheep about whom he cares deeply. Unless we discern what those needs are, how can we fashion a presentation of the gospel that addresses their heart longings? God is personal. He told the adulterous woman that she was not condemned. He told the Samaritan woman that she was important by engaging her and revealing that he knew all about her sins but did not reject her. He called Zacchaeus out of the tree and offered to dine with him.

In each case, the way Jesus engaged these individuals gave them hope that God knew who they were and cared about them. He accurately represented Father God’s heart toward them. This allowed Jesus to minister at the deepest level with amazing results.

Jesus wants us to partner with him in the adventure of being his personal representatives to lost and hurting people.

We need the Spirit’s help to pull this off. It does not come naturally to us. We cannot do it by ourselves. Only God can reveal to us what lies beneath the cleverly erected exterior that people use as a self-defense. Only God knows the deep heart cries lurking beneath people’s often crusty facades. If we listen, he will tell us all we need to know. He will assist us to fashion gospel truth into a “smart bomb” that goes right to the heart.

Hope for the Hopeless

Every person has a hope, which only Jesus can fulfill. Many of the people who live around us have descended into some form of hopelessness, but deep inside every individual, no matter how dim it flickers, is the hope that God knows and cares about us personally.

People long for a Savior, whether or not they will admit it, since we instinctively know that we cannot save ourselves. We hope for a Shepherd to guide us because none of us knows where we are going at the deepest level of existence. Our eternal destinies are hidden from us when we do not know Jesus. As Thoreau once wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” We bluff our way through life, hoping for the best, but, deep down, we would like to know for sure.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the only pathway to knowing the Father. He is the Good Shepherd, the Great Provider, our Protector, and the God of all hope. We can be sure that, unless a person is resolutely hardened against God, there is something in him or her that will resonate with the Good News that Jesus gave his life away to make us children of God. They will be attracted to the knowledge that Jesus will lead them safely on life’s journey, if only they will surrender to his benevolent Lordship.

Fishing for people the Jesus way requires us to learn to see, love, and engage people as Jesus’ representatives. We have been given the privilege to care, listen, love, and speak in his stead in order to lead them to the Great Shepherd. Nothing could be more exciting or rewarding!

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Part 2: Becoming Part of the Solution

 

 

 

 

 

How do we see the people who live, work, and play around us? Or do we even see them at all? Many of us have learned to live in isolation, thanks to air conditioning, television, refrigerators, and “social media.” We keep up with events and people from afar, missing out on life and opportunities all around us.

Until we see people as Jesus does and make a decision to offer to get involved in their lives, it is not likely that we will share his heart for them or influence them toward God.

Matthew’s Gospel records a time when Jesus spoke to his closest followers about the crowd that surrounded him. It gives us a glimpse into his heart for people.

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:35-38 (ESV)

Compassion motivated Jesus’ earthly ministry. He saw people as harassed and helpless sheep who desperately needed someone to protect, feed, and lead them. He pointed out that there is a great harvest field, which is ready and waiting for caring people to go to work. What is stopping us? We all battle with fear, reluctance, laziness, disobedience, and a general lack of love for the those who do not know Jesus. Have we forgotten what it is like to live without knowing the Lord? What can help us to change?

Prayer

Prayer is the first part of Jesus’ solution to adding people to his harvest team.

Only God can change us on the inside and make us willing to invest our lives in his harvest field.

Jesus said to pray “earnestly.” This is because Satan fiercely resists any effort to share the gospel and make disciples. In addition, the part of us the Bible calls the “flesh” resolutely opposes God’s harvest work. It is the spirit inside us, the part of us in union with God’s Spirit, that wants to serve God in the harvest. The spirit and the flesh are in continual warfare until Jesus comes back again to raise us from the dead and deliver us finally and completely from this struggle. Until then we must make a determined stand against the inner pull of the flesh against God’s mission.

Without constant effort and determination, we followers of Christ tend to be lazy, self-centered people who put our own comfort, ease, and security ahead of helping lost, helpless, and harassed sheep who have not yet found the Shepherd.

Earnest prayer is needed to pry followers of Christ out of the comfort of their own homes and into the places where people who need Jesus can be effectively engaged.

Only God can transform us into people who are consumed with his passion for the lost and dying, but we have a part to play, and it begins with prayer. We must make the choice to join God in this noble task.

But prayer does not save people: the Gospel does. Prayer is a means to an end and can never substitute for the kingdom work of actually conveying the Good News to those who desperately need to hear it.

As powerful and necessary as prayer is, it can never serve as an excuse for not obeying the Great Commission.

Getting into the Harvest Field

Going and making disciples (the Great Commission) is the second part of Jesus’ solution. Bringing people into the family of God through sharing the gospel message, whereby Jesus releases them from slavery to sin, disease, death, demons, and every other bondage, and converts them into fishers of men, requires us to get into the harvest field ourselves. This will not happen without our overcoming the inertia of doing nothing and making the choice to go outside of our homes, our “comfort zones,” and engage people on a regular basis.

No great fisherman only occasionally dabbles in the sport. No effective fisher of men only randomly dips his line in the water.

Once we break loose from what held us back and make the choice to get involved in people’s lives, we find that God has already been at work. He wasn’t idly waiting for us to show up. We should not have the attitude of expecting the Spirit to join us as we plow ahead with own ideas and attempts to do God’s work. Instead we should look for what the Spirit is doing and join him as humble observant servants.

The harvest field is where we discover how to partner with God’s Holy Spirit.

Joining in God’s work is the most fulfilling and rewarding thing anyone can do.

Generally speaking, harassed and helpless sheep are not lining up at our church doors on Sunday mornings. In fact, many of them have been turned off by the church; although, many are still attracted to Jesus. Often they are a “mess” – people with a blend of rebellion, resentment, and hunger for God all rolled up in one.

Where and how can we successfully engage people who need and secretly desire Jesus, but who want nothing to do with what they understand about “church”? I am sure the same was true in Jesus’ day. Countless people in Israel found nothing to attract them to the austere legalism and hypocrisy practiced by the Pharisees, who were considered to be the best model what it meant to be a devout Jew. Their form of Judaism was to be found in the Temple and synagogues, an unlikely habitat for the average “sinner”.

Jesus frequented these religious centers, but also he went elsewhere in search of those who were most open to his life transforming message.

Jesus engaged people in homes, market places, trees, wells, and along the road. He did not set up a central meeting place and expect people to flock to him. In addition to teaching in synagogues wherever he went, he visited people’s homes and met them in market places, wherever life happened. And Jesus is our model.

Until we become the answer to our own prayers by making the choice to get involved in the lives of those who live around us, we are not yet a part of God’s answer to the heartrending and often silent cries of harassed and helpless people in need of God who live all around us.

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Part 1: Introduction to Fishing for People the Jesus Way

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” 20 And they left their nets at once and followed him. Matthew 4:19-20 (NLT)

Just as he did at the beginning of his earthly ministry, Jesus still invites people to follow him and learn how to “fish” for people. The simple invitation quoted above sums up what it means to be a disciple. Our Lord did not say, “Come, follow me, and I will make you a moral person, a churchgoer, a Bible scholar, or any of the other things we prioritize ahead of fishing for people.

The purpose of this series of articles on “Fishing for People the Jesus Way” is to help us realize that “fishing” for people is interesting, challenging, fulfilling, adventure-filled, and enjoyable.

I hope I can help to remove any negative sense of fear, drudgery, duty, or religiosity from the equation, so that we can be set free to join the Holy Spirit, who is already at work in our communities. He is waiting for more people to join him in the work of the “harvest”. (Matthew 9:35-37)

The Gospels are filled with examples of how Jesus engaged people in such a way that they either chose to follow or persecute him. Just as today, some were indifferent, but many responded to him and his message. The Gospel generally should make people mad or glad, depending on the condition of their hearts. Those with hard hearts will become angry, but those who are “poor in spirit” (spiritual beggars who are hungry for God) will happily hear and follow.

Disciples are willing to follow Jesus wherever he may lead on a joyful adventure called fishing for people. This series will help to prepare and equip you.

I have been a Christian for fifty years and have tried all sorts of ways of presenting the gospel. These articles will address the one-on-one opportunities we get in life, not large crowd evangelism. When it comes to sharing with individuals, if we are motivated by a sense of religious duty, we may come across as being uninterested in the people we approach. If we rush or skip the process of relationship development in order to quickly notch another conversion, we may make our listeners feel cheap or part of a project and thereby sabotage God’s work. Jesus engaged people in a way that made them understand that he cared about them. Sometimes we may get “one shot” at sharing with a person. We must make the most of it, as led by the Spirit. In other situations, we may be able to share with them on numerous occasions. We dare not rush things at the beginning in those cases. To those whose hearts were tender and open, Jesus was willing to engage them on an individual basis and take as much time as necessary to help them grasp his message and identity.

Jesus poured out his blood to provide us with the Good News that the way back into God’s family, favor, and blessings is wide open. The Lord of Lords paid the price for us to be forgiven for our brazen rebellion against God’s kingship. He opened the door to our being reconciled to his heavenly Father by dying in our place and rising again. Our message is indeed Good News. Jesus wants us to engage the people who live around us with Holy Spirit compassion and zeal. Our Lord wants us to become excited about fishing for people as he did, in a quest to help them become part of God’s family of reconciled former rebels.

In the Gospels Jesus shows us how to properly engage people in order to communicate God’s love and care for them and to winsomely invite or even command them to become his followers. As we learn to demonstrate God’s love to those around us, it is amazing how much we can learn from them and how God will open doors into our hearts and theirs. The Holy Spirit will help us just as he worked through Jesus.

In the articles which follow, I will share examples from the Gospels of how Jesus fished for people. As we observe and learn from how he did it and begin to imitate his example, while relying upon the guidance, power, gifts, and boldness of God’s Spirit, we can be part of winning and making more followers of Jesus who also fish for people.

I hope you will travel with me down the dusty roads of Israel with Jesus, learning from the Master Fisherman.

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Developing a Culture of Mission in the Local Church – Part 4: Be an Answer to Prayer

 

 

 

 

Jesus understood that the task of reaching “unharvested” people is great. He also realized that his time here on earth was short and that his personal ministry was limited in scope by the fact that he could only be one place at a time. He asked his disciples to pray that God would raise up more workers to join him in the harvest. The beginning of the larger answer to this prayer occurred on Pentecost Sunday, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, thereby launching the church’s apostolic / missionary efforts in the world. After the Holy Spirit filled multitudes of his disciples, Jesus’ ministry was greatly expanded.

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38  therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:37-38 (ESV)

By context, in the above passage we understand that Jesus asked God to send people with a shepherd’s heart to help the harassed and helpless who fill our communities. Many of us think that officially designated evangelists are the ones who bear the responsibility for reaching the harvest, but this is not what Jesus prayed.

The Holy Spirit is raising up an army of compassionate shepherds to enter the world of lost and hurting with a gospel invitation to be reconciled to God.

In their desperation many lost and hurting people cry out to God for help. I have knocked on more than one door to find out the resident had been praying for God to send someone to them. What a privilege it is to be the answer to someone’s prayer! What a responsibility we have when we begin to pray for God to raise up laborers in the harvest. Why would we imagine that we are not among those who should be at work? It is one thing to pray, but quite another to obey.

If our prayers for the lost do not result in our inserting ourselves into the harvest field, we are only playing at church, shadow boxing so to speak. Prayer should lead to doing.

Will you be an answer to your own prayer? Will you answer God’s call?

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” Isaiah 6:8 (ESV)

 

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Developing a Culture of Mission in the Local Church – Part 3: Seeing with a Shepherd’s Eyes

 

 

 

 

For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes— so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’ Matthew 13:15 (NLT)

How we see is a function of the condition of our hearts. Hearts filled with compassion see people quite differently from the way hardhearted people look at things.

Mission starts when we understand and embrace Christ’s Great Commission. It gains momentum when our hearts are gripped by compassion for the lost and hurting.

How Jesus saw people is recorded in Matthew’s Gospel.

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:35-36 (ESV)

As Jesus went (the “go” part of the Great Commission), he encountered people who were hungry for what he offered – the good news of his kingdom combined with healing and deliverance.

We see that Jesus’ motivation for ministry was compassion for the shepherdless masses, the harassed and helpless.

The Jewish leaders viewed the common folk as the great “unwashed,” ignorant, relatively worthless crowds, who were not really worth their energy and attention. Jesus, however, was willing to invest himself in the most unlikely of characters. He saw past their ignorance, sin, and shortcomings right into their hearts. He offered them what they longed for – love, healing, forgiveness, and someone to follow and serve. If we inject ourselves into the lives of those who live around us, we will encounter the same sort of people.

God wants us to understand, as did Jesus, that every person has a story worth hearing and every life has untold value with God.

Our Lord also understood that he was sent precisely to those whom the Jewish leaders despised, the spiritually sick.

But when Jesus heard this, He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. Matthew 9:12 (NASB)

It is natural for us to desire to put some distance between ourselves and those who are spiritually sick, but a shepherd goes after those who most need him or her. Harassed and helpless people often appear to have little to offer, but that does not deter a shepherd. The spiritually sick may drain our energy, resources, and time, but the potential reward is great. These are the people who may become the greatest advocates for Jesus and the most devoted disciples. Who could have guessed that the woman at the well in Samaria would lead an entire village to follow Christ?

A local church’s culture of evangelism and mission will be directly connected to its developing the ability to see people through the Shepherd’s eyes.

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Are We Developing Disciples or Coddling Immature People?

 

 

 

 

Without constant attention and steadfastness, pastoring a church can easily devolve into enabling codependent, lazy, and fearful churchgoers who want nothing to do with the Great Commission besides paying it lip service.

Jesus, the greatest shepherd of all time, taught his followers that a good shepherd would leave the flock in order to go after missing and lost sheep. This seems strange to many pastors, who make it their life mission to tend to every need of the already safe sheep. (Matthew 18:12-14)

If we think of pastoring as raising children, things will probably get clearer for us regarding our pastoral priorities.

One of the worst things parents can do is hover over their children in order to try to protect them from every danger imaginable, instead of allowing them to explore and learn on their own, under limited parental supervision. A derivative of this kind of unintended parental “abuse” is to do everything for the child, which sends the perhaps unintended message that the child is incompetent to manage life on his or her own.

Parents harm their children by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Well-intentioned parents can hurt their children despite having the best of motives, if they fail to understand that their mission in child rearing is to produce responsible self-governing adults, not permanently dependent offspring.

Sometimes pastors adopt the same misguided strategies and make it their goal to keep people in a constant state of needing them.

Instead of training their church members to read, understand, and apply the Bible’s teachings for themselves and to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit for themselves, they want their people to rely on them for guidance and wisdom. Instead of equipping and teaching their people to take initiative in sharing the gospel with those who yet do not know the Lord, we may train them that the extent of their missionary responsibility is to bring people to church so that the pastor can do all the ministry. The list could go on. What are we trying to do? This is certainly not how to make disciples.

What if pastors taught their people that their main duty and occupation is to learn what they need to learn in order to leave “the 99” to go after those who are lost or straying? How would our churches be different if pastors prioritized preparing their people to be active disciple makers instead of passive churchgoers? Would it cause our churches to lose members, or would it infuse them with new life and vigor? Probably both. The ones who want nothing to do with growing up into spiritual adulthood will be able to find other pastors who will coddle them, but the ones who relish the challenge of being a disciple who makes disciples will be very grateful.

We cannot make it our top priority to gain members, if we embrace making disciples. Instead our goal is to prepare and send out Great Co-missionaries.

Missional pastoring will lead us to nurture, equip, motivate, and launch people into their communities to go and make disciples. Our programs and priorities should be reevaluated regarding how they help make and send disciples. Our people should be told that our goal is to help them grow up to spiritual maturity, which is the work of missional pastoring.

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Developing Missional Churches – Part 3: Using the Equipping Model for Mission

 

 

 

 

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.

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Developing Missional Churches – Part 2: Using the Attractional Model for Mission

 

 

 

 

The church was created for mission, namely the Great Commission, which requires the church to…

  • Go – There is an apostolic mandate on the entire church to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
  • Make Disciples – Disciples are followers of Christ who obey his teachings, his Spirit, and the Great Commission.
  • Teach them to obey – Disciples must train their disciples to do as they do.

Missional churches embrace the Great Commission and focus their resources and energy toward that end.

We live in a culture that has been warped by consumerism and has produced a church “clientele” that begs to be entertained. Recognizing and capitalizing upon this bent, attractional churches use their resources to provide the most attractive church services possible in order to gather the largest following. In this article, I assume their motivation is to advance the kingdom of God.

Ingeniously many very large churches use the attractional model missionally as a platform for preaching to seekers. I call these missional-attractional churches.

Many people are being drawn to these churches and are responding to the Gospel, and many of these churches take spiritual development and growth seriously. These churches are most likely led by apostles, evangelists, or missional pastors.

The Missional – Attractional Leader

Anyone who is an Ephesians 4:11 “five-fold” or “ascension gift” minister / leader (apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, or teacher) may be primarily pastoral or missional. Every true apostle will impart an apostolic (sent or missional) mindset to the churches they oversee, making them apostolic in their own right. By looking at Paul’s and Peter’s apostolic ministries, we also observe a strong pastoral element.

Apostolic churches will take care of their own people while maintaining an outward thrust of evangelism and discipleship of new converts.

Evangelists are by nature missional. Prophets and teachers may be either. Pastoral leaders naturally focus on the well-being of the sheep under their care and can easily be consumed with doing so, at the expense of the Great Commission. However, Jesus advocated missional pastoring in his parable about the one lost sheep.

So he told them this parable: 4  “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5  And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Luke 15:3-7 (ESV)

The Christlike missional pastor never loses sight of the lost, and even prioritizes his ministry toward them, but his work with those outside the church will always have a pastoral touch to it. Jesus exhorted his followers to pray for more shepherds to be sent out into the harvest.

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37  Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38  therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:35-38 (ESV)

These laborers by context are clearly shepherds. Hurting people cry out for caring individuals to wade into their world of sorrow and pain, bringing pastoral grace and ministry with them.

Caring for lost sheep is just as pastoral as taking care of the church.

Missional churches can be led by any form of the five-fold ministry, as long as mission is prioritized. But if only the core leaders are missionally minded or if the church’s ministry focuses on the use of the gifts and abilities of a select few, is that really being true to the Great Commission? Attractional churches that focus on winning the lost by effectively leveraging their resources and the talent of a few may win a lot of people to Christ, yet miss the mark when it comes to developing disciples who make disciples. We are seeing today what happens when attractional churches succeed in gathering lots of people who are not committed disciples. The center cannot hold in those churches. Either the people will leave or the leadership will cave to the soulish demands of their clientele.

There is a difference between serving the Great Commission by marshaling members to support the local church’s Sunday services and serving the Great Commission by equipping and launching all the members of the church into the harvest field as ministers in their own right.

Although I admire the effectiveness of attractional churches in drawing the lost, I still question their effectiveness in discipling them. The Great Commission is not to win the lost: it is to make disciples of the lost, which requires equipping. Equipping churches will be the subject of my next article. I hope you will continue on this journey with me.

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Developing Missional Churches – Part 1: Tensions

 

 

 

 

Developing missional churches is one of the great challenges facing modern church leaders who live in a consumerist world system.

By missional I mean prioritizing the pursuit of the Great Commission, Jesus’ marching orders to the church. This article will address two of the major obstacles to achieving this missional goal.

Tension #1: Attractional vs. Equipping

In the United States, we live in a pronounced consumer culture, in which people are trained from an early age to view life from a “what’s in it for me” vantage point.

This consumerist mindset has infected the church, too, resulting in many people having rather shallow reasons for attending or not attending a local church.

The culture has molded our people to look for a church that provides the most return on their investment, which is often measured by how a particular church blesses them personally. Unfortunately, because we are mostly selfish in our orientation, we gravitate toward those churches that are attractive, comfortable, and impressive. To put it another way, people will “shop” churches to find the one that offers the best programs, facilities, worship experience, preaching, and other benefits, such as being a place to network with other successful people in the area. Not surprisingly such a search often leads consumer Christians to the biggest and most successful churches in the area. This is to be expected because the church growth movement that began in the 1980s taught leaders how to market their churches to the masses. This leads us to a very important point that has proved to be a disaster in many cases.

Churches that want to attract Christian consumers must choose to provide the things for which people are shopping.

Consumers need to be attracted, which has led to the development of the attractional model of doing church. This way of operating tries to present the very best Sunday service possible in order to attract the largest number of seekers and church shoppers, as well as provide a great experience for its members in order to retain them. The disastrous aspect of this model is that many leaders have compromised the gospel to “keep ’em coming.”

In stark contrast, Jesus taught his disciples that they must be willing to lose everything for his sake, which is a direct attack on consumerism.

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:33 (ESV)

The opposite of the consumerist church is the disciple making church, which prioritizes training and equipping its members to do the work of the ministry.

Comparing attractional churches to equipping churches is like contrasting going to a concert with going to school. It’s pretty easy to guess which one most people will choose. Disciple making churches cannot be consumer oriented by definition. The two ways of doing things are diametrically opposed.

Strong disciples are built through teaching them self-denial for the sake of the mission, which will alienate consumers, whose purpose in life is to consume blessings for themselves.

What draws consumers will pull disciples off track.

Leaders who wish to prioritize the Great Commission will have to face the giant of consumerism and choose to turn their backs on its allure in order to make disciples.

Tension #2: Modalic vs. Sodalic

A writer named Rob Yule, from New Zealand, wrote: “A modality is the static or geographical form of the church, the church as a local or regional community. A sodality is the mobile or missional form of the church…” Another, perhaps, better way to conceive of the difference is that modality is a function of the pastoral ministry of the church to its own people; whereas, sodality is its outward (missional or apostolic) thrust toward those who do not yet know Christ. This second definition is how I use the two words in this article.

Church leaders, because of calling, gifting, training, and/or personality, usually emphasize either modality or sodality in their ministry. These two ways of seeing and practicing church seem to be in opposition to each other, creating some tension in the church world.

Jesus launched a worldwide missionary organization called the church, whose marching orders are found in the Great Commission.

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19  "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20  teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20 (NASB)

He promised his disciples that the gates of hell would not be able to withstand its missionary advances. (Matthew 16:18) The preaching of the Gospel turned the world upside down in a very short time, as bands of early disciples, often led by apostolic (sent) ministers, went forth with the sole objective of preaching the good news of Christ’s resurrection and lordship and establishing churches whenever groups of disciples responded to the message.

But just as a conquering army must organize and consolidate its gains, the church found that tending its new converts tended to be a full-time occupation.

The Apostle Paul probably spent more time tending the newly formed churches than he did in active evangelization of unreached people. Nevertheless, he never lost his zeal for and commitment for taking the Gospel to unreached areas. (Romans 15:20) He used established churches as bases from which to launch and sustain his ongoing missionary endeavors. (Romans 15:24) In terms of a conquering military army, churches can be viewed as outposts from which greater advances can be made while maintaining conquered areas.

Both the pastoral (modalic) and the apostolic (sodalic) callings are fairly all-consuming. Paul was one of the few, it seems, who was able to keep both front and center in his life.

It is my belief that true apostles have this calling and ability. They are essentially missionaries who care deeply for and maintain a pastoral relationship of some nature with the churches they help start.

Unfortunately, however, many churches are led by pastors who may unintentionally stray from the Great Commission and settle for being modalic self-absorbed institutions. This is because it is difficult to maintain both sides of the equation – mission and pastoring.

The tension between the pastoral and apostolic calling is a second challenge in developing missional churches.

Most church leaders I know are in favor of reaching out with the Gospel to those who still do not know Christ, but fewer feel the need to devote their resources and energy toward motivating, equipping, and launching their members into the harvest field. Those who have prioritized mission are divided between using an attractional model or employing the equipping model. Which is better at making disciples? Which is better at bringing in new converts?

Two questions will be addressed in the following articles in this series.

  • Should church leaders equip the entire church (modality) to become members of a Great Commission harvest team, or should the Great Commission be delegated to specialized sub-groups (sodalities) in the church?
  • Should churches rely on drawing people to evangelist-led attractional meetings or focus on equipping average followers of Christ to competently penetrate their neighborhoods and relational groups with the gospel in order to make disciples?

I hope you will stay with me as I look at these two questions in the next two articles.

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How God Removes Deeply Embedded Lies

This is the tenth article in a series entitled Wonderful Counseling. I sometimes use other names for this ministry, such as Personal Prayer Ministry and Biblical Healing and Deliverance. The adjective "wonderful" is used because Jesus is the "wonderful Counselor" of Isaiah 9:6. This ministry attempts to make room for Jesus to personally counsel people by means of the indwelling Holy Spirit, with human ministers acting as facilitators. This makes it different from most counseling. It is highly effective at teaching the recipient how to hear the voice of the Spirit and to receive his life giving words.

 

This article will show how God helps us to remove deeply embedded lies that are the building blocks for powerful logical arguments that seek to block us from knowing God or believing his promises.

One of the major ways Jesus sets us free from bondage is by identifying and removing these deeply embedded lies and replacing them with truth.

According to Paul, these strongholds are built upon a sinful logic or reasoning that sets us at odds with the truth of God’s Word and tempts us to impugn God’s character.

For though we live as human beings, we do not wage war according to human standards, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not human weapons, but are made powerful by God for tearing down strongholds. We tear down arguments 5 and every arrogant obstacle that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to make it obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (NET1)

Satanic lies are very deceptive, and often we do not even know we believe and serve them until the Holy Spirit shows us.

An important concept for us to grasp is that we can believe one thing in our intellects and quite another thing at the heart level.

We may have good theology at an intellectual level but be practical idolators or atheists at the heart level. What we say we believe may be betrayed by how we act or think. If there is a disconnect between what we say we believe and how we act, there are probably embedded lies hidden deep in our hearts that must be identified and expelled. If we react emotionally and negatively out of proportion to the provocation, that also may point to a lie-based stronghold in our lives.

What we do, say, and think when we are under pressure usually reveals what we really believe down deep.

Unless we allow the Lord to reveal what these lies are and replace them with a revelation of himself and his truth, we likely will stay in bondage. Lie-based strongholds resist most attempts to remove them; so, simple debate is usually fruitless. We cannot reason with fear and unbelief. It takes divine intervention.

Lie-based strongholds are built upon stubbornly held internal arguments and conclusions (or speculations) which are based on our observations and experience of life.

Example of a Logical Stronghold Built on Lies

Over the years I have been privileged to work with many sexual abuse victims. Any person who has experienced the betrayal and traumatic pain associated with abuse as a child at the hands of people who should have protected him or her, will often have great difficulty trusting God for protection as an adult. I think this should be rather obvious.

The argument will probably sound something like the following. God did not protect me from being abused when I was young; so, why should I trust him to do so now? Either he was not able to protect me or chose not to protect me then. Why is anything different now?

This logic seems to be impregnable because it is based on personal experience, which cannot be denied.

We must concede that God, since he is almighty and sovereign, did allow the abuse to happen. Logically, based on his or her interpretation of personal experience, the person holding this position feels justified in concluding that God cannot be trusted. This argument can hold us tenaciously in its grip in spite of clear Biblical teaching that God is our defender and Keeper. (Psalm 121:7-8) This is a perfect example of a lie-based stronghold, one which I have seen God help several people to overcome.

The lie at the root of the stronghold is that God is not trustworthy.

This is the same lie that Satan presented to Eve in the Garden. It is perhaps the most insidious of all lies, especially when we are presented with seemingly inescapable logical proof that it is so. Perhaps you know someone whose faith in God was derailed by such an argument. I do. Anyone captured by this satanic logic is in deep trouble, and without the help of God’s Holy Spirit, will likely stay enslaved by the lie. How does God liberate us?

We tend to believe what we see and experience more than we believe God and his promises because deep down we are fiercely independent in our sin nature.

When we are born-again, we receive a new identity. Our reborn spirit is joined to and loves the Lord. (1 Corinthians 6:17 and 2 Corinthians 5:17). However, even though our spirits are reborn, we still have a connection to Adam’s sinful independence through our yet unresurrected bodies, which the Bible calls “the flesh” (Greek: sarx). We are beings who are a combination of a new creation spirit and an old creation not yet resurrected body. Our souls (mind, will and emotions – the personality) are conflicted as a result. (I have written on this extensively in my series, Living Free in the Spirit.) We have a sort of “split personality.” Part of us loves God deeply and wants to serve him, but the “flesh” still wants to be an outlaw and live off God’s grid.

The “flesh,” still insists on making its own decisions and evaluations instead of relying upon the Lord and trusting his words.

The “flesh” never disappears and cannot be rehabilitated. According to Paul, the “flesh” was crucified with Christ and also must be constantly put to death by us. The flesh wants to be able to provide for itself rather than trust an invisible God. It wants to protect itself, instead of relying on God to be its defender. All of this reveals that we still hold to a presupposition that we are better off on our own in life, which is exactly what prompted Adam and Eve to reject God and choose independence so long ago. They failed in their test.

We must overcome this temptation to opt for self-directed independence, if we are gong to experience the freedom Christ died to give us.

Sinful logic has a very limited perspective and does not factor in God’s wisdom and understanding. It is not built on any sort of revelation of God or faith in his promises. Think of how modern TV shows and movies are written and produced. Most of them present a version life in which God is never in the picture and people fend for themselves. Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses,” a crutch for weak-minded people who cannot handle life on their own. The “flesh” laps up this sort of logic, which is one reason so many fall for the lies behind Marxism and evolution, which are God-denying, man-glorifying approaches to life.

The Way Out

If a person who is captured by such a stronghold wishes to experience freedom, he or she must eventually reject sinful logic and make a decision to rely on what the Bible says about God and his promises.

I can almost hear you thinking, “Yeah, right. That sounds pretty easy, but actually is close to impossible.” Exactly! That is why we need God’s help. When we approach God in prayer, asking for his help, he will never let us down. He is more willing to help us experience freedom than we are to seek it. Jesus already paid the price for our liberation. The Holy Spirit is waiting for us to ask for his help.

Changing how we think about things is called repentance, which comes from the Greek word metanoeo and means literally to “change the mind.” Changing how we think precedes changing who and what we believe.

Repentance moves us from trusting in ourselves to trusting in God.

Repentance and faith are gifts from God. (Acts 5:31 and Ephesians 2:8) Unless God reveals himself to us in a personal way, we cannot repent or believe using only our own abilities. The Holy Spirit is always at work when people truly repent and trust in God from the heart.

Bondage derives from sinful logic, but a heart that turns back to God in simple trust will experience freedom.

That is why it is vital for us to take any of our lie-based logical strongholds directly to the Lord in prayer and ask him to help us with them through his written Word and the Holy Spirit. Lie-based strongholds are always arrogant and proud obstacles that stand between us and knowing God. The only way to destroy such a stronghold is to confront it head on with repentance, humility, and a determination to move forward with faith in God and the truth of his Word. We cannot make it through this process without God’s direct help.

This brings us to story of Gideon, which I will cover in the next article. I will show you how God helped him to confront the lies he believed about himself and God and how he became an overcomer as a result.

Go back to Part 9: All Bondage Is Built on a Lie

Read Part 11: How God Moves Us from Fear to Faith

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