Making disciples is undoubtedly central to any leader’s dream to multiply the church—moreover, it is key to any hope of evangelizing nations or shaping our culture. Yet, many pastors say they are too busy to do the work of disciple-making personally. Lead pastors can be the greatest obstacle to a disciple-making network in a local church—we lead by example, like it or not.
Let’s look at a practical case in point. Most cars come with four- or five-speed transmissions. The purpose behind multi-geared cars is efficiency: An engine doesn’t need to work hard to move the vehicle in the lower-ratio (higher numerical) gears. And as a driver shifts to higher gears, the engine is free to deliver speed rather than pulling potential.
Drawing on this gear-shifting metaphor, let’s look at six shifts you can take that can increase the efficiency and speed of disciple making to a level necessary to multiply churches and change the surrounding culture.
1. Shift into Multiplication Mode.
We need to recast our job descriptions from ministry doers to disciple makers. God calls us to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph. 4:12). Unfortunately, many pastors burn out because they do ministry rather than equip others. We must multiply ourselves in the lives and efforts of other people.
What does that look like practically for you as a leader? For starters, learn to limit your hospital visitation. Train your members that they are the church and that the church, not just the pastor, should engage people when they hurt. You can also hand off counseling by equipping members to minister to each other. Churches I pastored encouraged ordinary members to pray with one another and to learn to pray with outsiders. On the home front, we released leaders to serve communion and lead funerals, baby dedications, baptisms and weddings.
2. Develop Disciple Makers.
Jesus didn’t seek converts; he sought disciple makers. His call was for all who would come after him, including you and me: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).
Every church has a disciple-making model, though many involve a scattered cluster of classes, seminars and small groups. Ours was unified and focused. The approach linked the pulpit to shoe leather by chewing over the weekend teaching in whole-church disciple-making groups. We asked three weekly questions:
- What did the Holy Spirit speak to you while the pastor taught?
- What will you do because of the Spirit’s instructions?
- How can we help or pray for you?
Those questions taught people to listen to God and obey him. They also elicited spiritual gifts as people learned to minister to one another. This culture of communication subtly prepared our members to disciple friends into Christ. Sharing and praying with others grew instinctive, spilling out of the congregation into daily life.
3. Activate Others’ Gifts.
Too often, we look to fill slots in our ministry machine rather than help people use their spiritual gifts. If we agree that every believer possesses a spiritual gift, one of our primary tasks should be to help them discover and implement that gift.
Activating others can be scary. Once you begin recognizing gifts, you move people from spectators to implementers. They’ll invent stuff that doesn’t fit your paradigm. Just remember, we don’t control the Spirit’s agenda. The excitement begins once church members put their gifts into effect outside the congregation in a hurting and often hostile world. The Holy Spirit in your people is an innovator.
4. Give Permission.
Move spiritual authority from “ours” to “yours.” We won’t win the world by aiding people in our ministry. They need ownership, not help.
Aid creates dependency; ownership generates strength. Ownership comes when we grant our disciples permission to act as the Spirit leads. Rob Wegner’s leadership book The Starfish and the Spirit: Unleashing the Potential of Churches and Organizations comes to mind. A starfish-like group generates autonomy. Cut off all five legs of a certain type of tropical starfish, and you get six starfish. Each leg will grow a new animal while the central body does the same. It should be the same with disciples in the church.
Freedom and autonomy multiply strength. For us, the starfish principle operated well as small-group leaders learned to disciple apprentices, leave a group in their hands then plant another. If we saw someone do this three times, we would ask them, “Would you pray about possibly planting a church?” Many did.
5. Make Heroes.
Personal insecurity can cause us to play the hero in our story. Change your role from hero to hero maker, and you immediately multiply your capacity to change the world.
You can shift from self-promotion to relentlessly promoting others. Repeat the best stories of other people’s accomplishments, and they become integral to the fabric of your movement. As people act out your values, your sermon narratives can include their stories, which inspire others toward similar behaviors.
John’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus said, “Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). Could you say the same on your deathbed?
6. Build the Kingdom.
It’s possible to plant churches—even launch a network—designed to build our kingdom and bring glory upon ourselves. If we’re going to change culture, we need to shift our members’ allegiance from “mine” to “his.”
Shifting kingdom building away from you allows you to move beyond ecclesiological self-gratification. You graduate to long-term fulfillment of the Great Commission. You grow less concerned with adding and more concerned with multiplying disciples who make disciples while planting churches that plant churches.
As a young church planter, a mentor challenged me to permeate a 10-mile radius around our campus. We did a fair job by planting churches in that area. Later we took on Hawaii, attempting to multiply enough leaders and churches to bring the percentage of Christians from 4 to 5% of the population in a decade (a little more than 10,000 people). It took 11 years, but we did it by making disciples who made disciples and discipling some to plant and multiply churches.
You might begin by asking what percentage of people in your ZIP code self-identify as Christ followers. What percentage could be discipled into Christ over a stated time?
As you put each of these shifts into practice, you’ll see your disciple making and church planting kick into high gear, and your kingdom impact will multiply in your community in ways you previously couldn’t imagine.
Ralph Moore is church multiplication catalyzer for Exponential and the founder of the Hope Chapel church-planting movement.