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From running programs to building people
From running events to training people
From using people to growing people
From filling gaps to training new workers
From solving problems to helping people make progress
From clinging to ordained ministry to developing team leadership
From focusing on church polity to forging ministry partnerships
From relying on training institutions to establishing local training
From focusing on immediate pressures to aiming for long-term expansion
From engaging in management to engaging in ministry
From seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth
This is what God is now doing in the world: Spirit-backed gospel preaching leading to the salvation of souls. It’s his program, his agenda, his priority, his focus, his project, or whatever business-related metaphor you’d like to use. And by it, he is gathering a new Christ-centred people as his very own; a quiet, steadily growing profusion of leaves on the great vine of his kingdom.
Throughout the world, the gospel is spreading, propagating, budding, flowering, bearing fruit. People hear it and by God’s mercy respond and are saved.
But it’s interesting how little the New Testament talks about church growth, and how often it talks about ‘gospel growth’ or the increase of the ‘word’. The focus is on the progress of the Spirit-backed word of God as it makes its way in the world, according to God’s plan.
The first and most obvious is that if this is really what God is doing in our world then it is time to say goodbye to our small and self-oriented ambitions, and to abandon ourselves to the cause of Christ and his gospel.
The second implication is that the growth God is looking for in our world is growth in people.
The third momentous implication is that this people-growth happens only through the power of God’s Spirit as he applies his word to people’s hearts.
The call to discipleship is thus a call to confess our allegiance to Jesus in the face of a hostile world; to serve him and his mission, whatever the cost.
would someone observing from outside say: “Look: there is someone who has abandoned his life to Jesus Christ and his mission”?
encouraging other people.
We have to conclude that a Christian with no passion for the lost is in serious need of self-examination and repentance. Even the atheists have worked this out. Penn Jillette is an avowed and vocal atheist, and one-half of the famous comic-illusionist act Penn and Teller. He was evangelized by a polite and impressive man, and had this to say about the experience: “…I’ve always said, you know, that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, or not getting eternal life or whatever,
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We all exist in three spheres or contexts of life: our family or home life; our interaction with friends, colleagues, neighbours and the wider community; and fellowship with God’s people in our congregations. How might we speak the truth of God’s word in each of these contexts?
There aren’t two classes of Christians—the partners and the spectators. We’re all in it together.
Imparting doctrine and life
In 1 Timothy 4:7, for example, we find this instruction from Paul: “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness.” The Greek word here is gymnazõ, a word originally used in connection with athletics and contests. As a Christian minister, Timothy was to apply this metaphor of athletic training to his life and character, so that he and his hearers might progress towards maturity and righteousness.
The sound doctrine is vital. In the pastorals, a baton is being passed as in a relay—and that baton is the gospel itself.
The heart of training is not to impart a skill, but to impart sound doctrine.
However, this transfer of the “good deposit” of the gospel is not a barren, educational exercise. It’s deeply and inescapably relational.
It was not only the good deposit of the gospel that Paul passed on to Timothy, but a way of life.
could summarize the Pauline model of ministry training by saying that it looks a lot like parenthood:
Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the home. In the home, the trainer is no longer the ‘public Christian’, the ministry leader. The persona drops away. He becomes—indeed he is—the husband laughing with his wife, the father dealing with his daughter not eating her food, the cook enjoying his creative side, the homemaker fixing the tap, the exhausted man gazing blankly at the TV. He is living out life in the Spirit in the hardest context. And in the same way, when a wise trainer is in the home of the trainee he is also observing how the trainee listens respectfully to his wife, or ignores
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The nature and goal of training can be very usefully summarized by three Cs. Through personal relationship, prayer, teaching, modelling and practical instruction, we want to see people grow in: conviction—their knowledge of God and understanding of the Bible character—the godly character and life that accords with sound doctrine competency—the ability to prayerfully speak God’s word to others in a variety of ways.
the gospel is growing throughout the world like
Stages in gospel growth
At the outreach stage, people come into contact with the word of truth for the first time.
Once people respond to the gospel message and put their faith in Christ, some sort of initial follow-up is needed to establish them in the faith and teach them the basics. Depending
Then follows the lifelong process of growth as a Christian disciple—growing
The fourth stage—training—is not a sequential one, as if it happens after the growth is all finished.
ministry is about people, not programs.
In a healthy ‘gospel growth’ church, there should be a decent spread of people across all categories.
In this way of thinking, the pastor is a prayerful preacher who shapes and drives the entire ministry through his biblical, expositional preaching. This is essential and foundational. But crucially, the pastor is also a trainer. His job is not just to provide spiritual services, nor is it his job to do all of the ministry. His task is to teach and train his congregation, by his word and his life, to become disciple-making disciples of Jesus. There is a radical dissolution, in this model, of the clergy-lay distinction. It is not minister and ministered-to, but the pastor and his people working
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Baxter’s remarkable ministry among the 800 families of the village of Kidderminster began in 1647, and transformed the parish.
In Baxter’s view, if the ministry was going to be reformed to focus on the conversion of souls, pastors had to devote extensive time to “the duty of personal catechizing and instructing the flock”. He saw personal work with people as having irreplaceable value, because it provided “the best opportunity to impress the truth upon their hearts, when we can speak to each individual’s particular necessity, and say to the sinner, ‘Thou art the man’”.[9]
It is but the least part of the Minister’s work, which is done in the Pulpit… To go daily from one house to another, and see how you live, and examine how you profit, and direct you in the duties of your families, and in your preparation for death, is the great work.[12]
This, it has to be said, is counter-intuitive. It goes against the grain. Our first instinct is to go straight to those who need the most help—and of course, as pastors, there will always be times when we need to leave the 99 to go after the one. There will be pastoral emergencies and problems that we just have to deal with. But if we pour all our time into caring for those who need help, the stable Christians will stagnate and never be trained to minister to others, the non-Christians will stay unevangelized, and a rule of thumb will quickly emerge within the congregation: if you want the
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Over time, the model of a single ordained minister working alone to pastor a church has become the norm, even though it is strikingly different from the normal pattern of ministry in the New Testament.
Co-workers need to be people who have a heart for God and a hunger to learn and grow.
Compromising on core beliefs and values:
Being impressed by flashiness over substance:
Ignoring their track record:
