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I tried whittling down the concept of a church to its irreducible minimum. Where could one go in the Bible to see this done? I think I found my answer in these words attributed to Jesus: “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” I concluded that these words were like the DNA—a building block of sorts—of the church. All that’s necessary is for two or more people to come and bond together in a common loyalty to Jesus, the Savior. Result? He becomes present in that gathering. That’s all one needs to certify that a church exists for a short or long time: Christ is here!
quote from Richard Foster. ‘The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.’”
No one got everything they wanted when they settled on me. I was a bit of a disappointment to everyone. But—and this became very important—they discovered that Gail and I had one huge thing to offer. We knew how to love people, and we were confident, then and now, that it’s possible to overcome a lot of generational divisiveness if people feel genuinely valued.
“It’s driven by a conviction that a church’s first task is to bring out the very best that God has put into people. We’re very much aware that this was Jesus’ rabbinical strategy.”
you go for depth of character first and then follow on with the practical stuff of technique and method. And I think this is an important distinction about our great idea: depth comes before competency.”
“At this point in my life,” I said, “I’m not going to give myself to one more church function that starts off hot and runs out of gas eight weeks down the road. It would be better to invest our energies in six growable people who are willing to pay the price to mature in their faith than to waste time with one hundred people who want to play religious games but won’t be any different at the end than when they started. I’m just not going there again. I’m eager to see the ministry to be about growing deeper people.”
Identifying growable people • Folding them into learning communities focused on spiritual maturity • Helping each person discover his or her giftedness and calling • Pointing them toward leadership opportunities in the church or in the larger world
Deep people: • demonstrate a consistent loyalty to Jesus and speak of him as their redeemer and Lord; • have a hunger to keep on growing in every aspect of their lives, regardless of age; • have a clear sense of how a Christian conducts him-/herself in the larger world; • maintain personal relationships that appear to be healthy and life-giving; • are respected because of their wisdom and integrity; • are aware of how the Holy Spirit has gifted them and possess a sense of personal mission or call; • love to inspire and lead others
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The deep people we will need in the coming years will not just walk through the front door. They will need to be discovered, trained, and challenged into deepening.
“Gail and I are moving into the last quarter of our lives. We often think about what the call of God is for men and women who have reached our age. And we’ve come to this conclusion. God asks us—and many of you—to invest yourselves in cultivating tomorrow’s deep people.
