Acts 29

Rick McKinley is an Acts 29 board member, founder of Imago Dei Church in Portland, Oregon, pursuing a D. Min. in preaching under Hadden Robinson and author for Multnomah Press.

The issues of leadership are the topic of countless books, tapes, seminars and sources of conversation. Every company, community family, and nation is looking for that key individual that surfaces to the top and invites the group to follow. There is much dialogue today about the concept of "team." The majority of the conversation in the area of church planting does much to belittle the idea of a key leader or key individual, but rather all have surrendered the role to become a unified "one voice" leader. While there is much to be affirmed in the team concept, the primary idea that there is not one among us who is first and is our leader, is fundamentally flawed and lacks biblical support. This is not to say that the team around the leader lack equality but rather to say that among the leadership team there is one among us who is first among equals. Peter, James and John surfaced as first among equals, and as we follow the book of Acts we see Peter surface to the front and take the primary voice and position of leadership until the conversion of Paul.

We, therefore, must not downplay the role of the key leader. Nor can we dissect and delegate the mantle of responsibility to a team. We must come face to face with the reality that God calls, gifts, and equips one man to be the primary catalyst for casting vision--the driving voice behind this new church. He will have to motivate people to action, delegate the work of the ministry, and equip those around him to do the work. He must create, manage, model, proclaim, and lead the way. Overwhelmed yet? You should be!

Along with the demand of being the key leader, comes the spiritual mandate declaring that leaders will incur a stricter judgment from God. Who as a leader hasn't feared directing some the wrong way and, after hearing the warning of Jesus, wakes up from a cold sweat dreaming about a millstone around your neck? At the end of the day, leadership is a gift, a calling, and a mandate. It will be a lonely place for the man that God calls. So the question becomes - why do we do it?

Why We Must Lead Now
America has been corrupted with a disease that has crippled its men. We are in the midst of a leadership vacuum in our culture, in our homes, in the work place and in the highest of offices in the government. Unfortunately this disease has crippled the church as well. We find over 4,000 churches a year that shut their doors. Congregations are in steep decline, and even in the midst of the mega-church craze, national church attendance can't keep up with the rate of population increase. Who do we blame for this? The leaders! The leaders, however, are too busy pointing the fingers at the congregations, who are pointing the fingers at the culture because it is corrupt, and the culture does not even know the church has voice because the church is going away, disintegrating on the sidelines of life's playing field.

So why do we lead? You lead because if you are called by God to lead, you must lead! You can't stand on the sidelines, and you can't close your eyes. You see the state of emergency and you move to action. If you are reading this manual, then you probably know what we are talking about. Leaders lead. If you think you are a leader and there is no one behind you, you should probably look for someone to follow before you get lost. The bottom line is this: if you are called to plant a church then you stand before God and are accountable to that call. You cannot let anything get in your way. This was the call that the Apostle Paul experienced in Acts 20:22-25.

"And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me - the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again."

That's a call! He tells the Ephesian elders God is warning me that if I go I am going to get killed. Then he gives them a hug good bye. What would make a man this insanely passionate about declaring the Gospel? Paul had a deep theological understanding that his life was not his own, it had been bought with a price, and that he belonged to God. In that God had set him apart from birth for the preaching of the Gospel (Gal. 1:15-13).

Paul knew that he stood before God accountable to His call and so will we. So you cannot blame someone else for not accomplishing that which God has called you to do. God called Moses; he tried to get out of it. In the end he had to lead, because God make him the leader. After he put up with all the people and their rebellion and led them in circles for forty years so all the wannabe leaders could die, he still did not enter the Promised Land. Why? He sinned, and as a leader he incurred a stricter judgment of God. God called him to lead and commanded him to lead well. He could have blamed the people, who were a royal pain, but in the end he stood before God and was only allowed to see the land from the distance because he did not lead the way God wanted him to.

This is another brilliant wake up call for us. Along with being called we are commanded to lead God's way. We are not exempt from failure and must daily be sure that we have applied the redeeming work of Christ to our lives before we seek to apply it to the lives of others.

It is those stories that bring us to our knees knowing that spiritual leadership is not easy. We need God to enable us to do that task. So as we stand before the corpses of so many American churches, we need a fresh surge of God-called leadership to emerge and be willing to carry the weight of leadership. We can't look back and blame, and we can't look forward and wait. We have to look inside and allow the Spirit of God to shape us into the leaders he wants us to be.

We want to focus on what it takes to lead a new work. How do you gather people to a new vision and motivate them to a different way of life?

Calling Your Core
How do you call people to partner with you in your vision to plant a work of God? In seeing how Jesus called His own disciples we find several key principles that we must be obedient to if we are to call people to join us in this work.

Theological Urgency
"The time has come the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news." Mark 1:14-15

Jesus begins his calling of the disciples with theological urgency. The coming kingdom reign of God is at hand. Repent is the Greek work metanoe meaning, "to have a change of heart, turn from one's sins, or change one's ways." He calls people to make radical value shifts and different choices in regards to how they do life. The most intriguing part of Jesus' message is not the idea of repentance but rather the reason he gives,"the kingdom of God is near." The nearness of the kingdom and its realty is the motivating force behind his call to repentance.

The choice that Jesus makes in regard to his message holds several significant factors. Jesus begins the movement of which we are now a part, with a call to turn around because this Kingdom is coming. His choice of words holds within it several dynamic forces. The first is a call away from what is. If the people had been living kingdom lives there would be nothing to turn away from. Thus, his call to repent holds within it the idea that they have been traveling the wrong way and have been living opposite of what the kingdom dictates. Second, he develops sense of eternal urgency. In declaring the kingdom is near, he brings a fresh sense of its reality to the forefront of people's minds and hearts, and it is here that he demands a response from them. The people had become complacent to the idea that the kingdom and its reality were worthy of their devotion. Jesus cuts through their complacency by declaring the kingdom both real and present at the same time.

This is desperately needed in the church of America today. As you invite believers to join your core group, you will need to call them to repentance as a starting place. You need to turn them away from what they know of their faith to what God is calling them to in their faith. Most the believers you inherit will need a change of heart to become missional servants of God.

Imagine you were on a cruise ship, not too much of a stretch for some of you, and while everyone is eating the captain's voice comes over the loudspeaker saying that a seal in the lower portion of the boat has burst. The boat is taking on several hundreds of gallons of water every few minutes and it is necessary to evacuate the boat immediately. You get up from the table grabbing tightly to your wife's arm and head up to the top deck. You don't walk you run. As you get up to the upper deck you realize no on is there; in fact you can't even find a steward. You wonder if you misunderstood the captain, so you rush down the stairs and come across a ship worker. "Is the news true, are we taking on water?" you say in a panic. "Yes I heard that too, and confirmed that with a buddy of mind who works down below. The ship is going down," with that he smiles and keeps strolling toward his cabin. Confused you run back into the dining area where you heard the announcement and no one is moving. They area all eating, the band is playing, and everyone is as calm as can be. Does the scenario sound absurd? Welcome to the American church. The Titanic is sinking and we are sipping tea.

There is nothing more staggering than complacency in the mist of an urgent crisis. How can the ships be sinking and everyone live as if life is normal? This is the state of affairs that Christ walked into in his ministry on earth, and it is the state of Christianity in America. He began leading his ministry by the call of repentance made forceful by the immanence of the Kingdom.

Why are You Planting a Church?
The most corrupting force in a church's life is a leader whose motives are corrupt. We've all heard the stories of Pastors who took advantage of women, embezzled money, or more subtle but equally as harmful, just played church because it was a decent living. We have all felt the pressure to be the next Bill Hybels or Rick Warren. So as you sit back and examine your own heart it is important to allow God to penetrate your motives. Are you planting the 'Anti' church? We are the church that is better than the others; we don't have pipe organs, old people, or hard pews. If you are, get ready to adopt someone else's headache. Are you planting a church to feed your ego? It is an easy trap to believe that the people God gives you are there because you are so good. Don't buy into it!

At the outset of your church's plant, even before you have a bible study it is imperative that you are driven by Jesus' call. It is the reality that heaven is real and near and hell is equally real and near. The only hope anyone has is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you do not hold that value deep in you heart and live it out in the midst of your people, don't expect much to happen. You must lead out of this conviction. Put your face like flint to the reality of the Gospel as the power of God for salvation and don't let anyone keep you from proclaiming and living it.

The Call
As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a new into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me,"  Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him. Mark 1:16-18

After Jesus had proclaimed the theological urgency of his mission--the announcement of the coming kingdom reign of God--he hand picked people to join him in his mission. We can not underestimate the power of personally calling individuals to join you in your work. You have to ask them to join you and tell them what you are going to do. Plain and simple. People may be very interested in what you are doing, and really like you and the church. More often than not planters wait for prospective leaders to approach them. This is a mistake. You may have very qualified willing people in your midst but they are waiting for you to lead them. This starts by telling them what you are going to do and asking them to help you. One of the first things we see Christ do is asks people to follow Him! It will be no different for you.

Reasons we don't ask people to follow us:

• We are not sure where we are going
• We don't want to be dependent on other people
• We don't want to ask for help
• We fear that we will owe them something if they help us in our mission

All of these reasons are rooted in pride. Pride is one of the greatest enemies of planting a church. It is remarkable that Jesus, creator of the universe, would invite blue collar, tobacco spitting, foul-mouthed fisherman to join him and help him fulfill his mission. We learn from his model that we need to know where we are going. Don't plant a church because you think it is a neat idea. Do it because you are called to, and if you don't know what the vision of your church is then admit that. You don't have to hide behind a false vision that you yourself don't believe in. Ask God to reveal specifically why your church is here and what it is to be about.

The very essence of your mission should be rooted in theological truth. Namely, the proclamation of the Gospel. You need to have confidence in where you are going.

We often don't want to be dependent on other people. This is also rooted in pride. We develop a lack of trust in people. At times we may have been burned by those we trusted. Therefore many planters fail to hand off the vision and entrust it to people. Make no mistake , you need to be the main leader, but you also need to trust God enough to hand off the work of the ministry to people he has given you. If you fail to do this you will have a small and limited work. Had Jesus not been willing to deal with the mess that the disciples made, and risk His mission by putting it idiot their hands, there would not be a book of Acts. There are not many among us who would have thought Jesus handing off the kingdom work to the twelve was a good idea. But it is God who worked in and through them. You must believe He will work in and through the people God gives you, and you must call them to a vision that is bigger than they are.

Pride also shows up in not wanting to ask for help. "It is a sign of weakness, and after all this church plant is my idea not anyone else's so I won't burden him or her with it." These are voices that often play inside the planter's head. We must shun those voices. As you invite a core group to follow you, they are looking to you for ideas of how they will play a role in this plant. Too many planters burn themselves out and steal the joy of ministry from others by not being willing to ask people to help them do the work.

Pride factors in when we don't ask people to help and join us because we don't want to owe them anything. The planter must be very confident that this church is God's idea not His. You are not calling people to your business plane that may fail. You are calling them to join you in the mission of God. Pride can easily take your eyes off God and put them onto you. This is not your church it is God's, so don't ever be ashamed to ask people to obey God. Christ called the twelve to follow and most of them were arrested, beaten, and finally died as a result of it. Yet, he never felt he owed them anything but in all of this was helping them see the reality of life lived for the Father.

Transforming the Inner Person Through a Shift in Values
"I will make you fishers of men."

As the disciples were going about their daily routines, Jesus calls them and then promises to do something very radical in them. "I will make you." The word "make" brings with it the implied creative work of God, and is also used of Jesus performing miracles. One of the most beautiful results of your new church plant will be the transformation of the believers who join you in the work. You must be secure in your calling of them that Jesus is going to change their lives. Two things come from this. The first is an excitement on your part, trusting that when you help someone enter the mission of God their faith will come alive with fresh vitality. The second is your need to trust God as he breaks through the old crust and harness of their lukewarm faith. It is difficult in the beginning, but in time you learn to be patient and trust God as your core group mourns the loss of certain comforts. We can imagine that Jesus watched Peter as he wept over his longing to be with his wife during the three and a half years that he followed Jesus. It is part of the shaping process that Jesus will "make" them something they were not before.

Your transformation may be the most profound out of anyone. All of your fears, doubts, and insecurities will bubble up to the surface. You will be asking God if you are blowing it, second-guessing decisions you make, and beating yourself up after low attendance or a poor offering. All of this is God's transforming work in you as well. We too are to be called and converted and are on the anvil of God. It is good to share with your core that God is continuing to "make" you just as he is shaping them. The beautiful part of planting a church is knowing that when all is said and done God will have used the planting process to shape you into the image of Christ.

The second thing we see Jesus promise is to convert their values. His transforming work is focused on shifting their values. From fishermen to fishers of men. The term must have brought about confusion to the men. What does the term mean? These were guys who had done the hard work of learning the fishing trade. They were unschooled and unlearned. They knew no other way of life. For them to leave fishing was to leave their security, comfort, and ultimately to leave their deepest sense of value.

Values are perhaps one of the most important areas of life. It is from our deepest values that we make choices that reflect who we most truly are. Show someone your checkbook and your daily schedule and you are showing them what you value the most. The demise of the church today is a break down in values at its core. We say we believe in loving the lost, then we form legislative committee's to protect us from having to relate to them. Values, however, never lie. The world thinks the church is judgmental and hypocritical because we have shown the world something other than Christ?

When Christ promised to make them fishers of me, he was promising to change them to the core of their being. To take that which they knew and turn it upside down. How they spent their time and what they did with their money would be forever different. When Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost to preach and saw three thousand come to Christ, he no doubt understood the words Jesus had spoken so many years ago. He was fishing now for men.

What are the value shifts that you are calling your core group to make? Can you articulate them? One of the surest death knells to a church plant is saying we value certain things but not living out of those values. You must articulate clearly the values you are asking them to leave and the values you are asking them to adopt. Values are not things we teach as much as things we live. You don't choose values because they are true you adopt them into your life because they move your heart. Often times we value and hold sacred things that clearly reflect the world, the flesh, and the devil, rather than Christ and His kingdom. When this happens we must name it as idolatry and lead people in repentance. You must be able to articulate your values and support them biblically, and ultimately make your deepest choices out of those values. The boys that Jesus called moved from values of independence to dependence, of external hardness to spiritual pliability, of this world to a heavenly world. You will need to lead the way in a transforming value shift for your people.

Conversion
One of the issues that every church planter deals with is the need to gather a core of people who will embody the values of the vision. In order to do that, church planters need to lead people through their own conversion from a life of complacency to a life of mission.

What are the sources of complacency for people and how can we lead them out of it? In his book Leading Change, John P. Kotter lists the predominate sources of complacency that he finds in the business world. It is remarkable to note how relevant his findings are to the church as well.

1. The Absence of a Major Visible Crisis
When you quote the statistics of the church's failure most people are shocked. They don't see the closure of the doors to the 4,000 churches every year. They don't see the thousands of people who enter a Christ-less eternity every day. They know their neighbor is not a believer, but they don't believe it is their job to do anything about. The lack of the visible crisis keeps people comfortable and in that they remain complacent.

2. Too Many Visible Resources
While we talk of the church decline, what people see is a church on every corner. Most church planters hear several times the remark, "Why do we need another church?"  As frustrating as this is to hear we need to realize that the visible building has taken the place of the churches success in most people's minds and as a result most people live under the illusion that we have more than enough churches.

3. Low Overall Performance Standards.
Want to hear bad music...see a bad drama...witness a sloppy event? Go to church! As a basic rule the church is functioning at a 1950's pace in the 21st century culture. From architecture to carpet to the way we comb our hair, we declare to the world that we don't value keeping up with our culture and speaking the language of the world in which we are planted. The church accepts complacency as the norm not the exception. A church recently had a youth pastor that literally did nothing. He met with a few kids, and sat in his office and read. The elder board warned him for a year. Nothing changed. Then they put him on six-month probation. Nothing changed. Finally they had to fire him. As he left the board gave him SIX MONTHS SALARY! Half a year's pay for living in sin and ignoring the counsel of the Elders! If you don't expect much don't be surprised if people your don't give much.

4. Internal Measurement Systems that Focus on the Wrong Performances Indexes
When you ask a pastor how everything is going, the gauge by which we judge is more often numeric. While numbers have significant value they can be deceiving. Are you growing because you're the next cool show on the block? Another poor gauge is people's happiness. If your measuring stick for success is keeping people happy, then don't expect them to do anything. We are depraved and by nature do not want to be chiseled and shaped by God. Planting a church is a huge shaping process and you will be leading people through their own painful confrontation of their sin. By measuring success with tools that are not at the heart of the Gospel the church has become highly complacent.

5. Human Nature's Capacity for Denial
One denomination had their annual meetings recently. The theme was festive, the mood was upbeat and positive. Pastors were meeting, discussing new insights they had learned. It seemed by mere appearances that all was well and looked good. No one ever talked about anything negative. At the close of the meetings each church was handed an annual report of the denomination's statistics as a whole. Their membership was down by over 35,000! It seems almost impossible but it is true. People don't like bad news and many times want to kill the messenger of it. The reason for the complacency that we are in is that we are unwilling to open our eyes to reality of the desperateness of our situation.

Why is this information important? It is important because this is the climate from which your core group will come. If you have Christians within your core, and you will, they will be coming out of a complacent environment. Many will tell you what you want to hear but when it comes time to choose they will resort to comfort nearly every time. So as the leader it is your job to lead the core through a conversion process whereby God changes their heart and gives them a love for the lost in our context. That is a huge process. So where do you begin?

In order to create a core community that embodies those values of the Gospel, it is important that you lead them through the obstacles of complacency.

1. Making the Crisis Visible
If you don't care that the church is dying and people are going to hell don't expect them to. We are quick to forget information that does not affect our day to day lives. As a church planter you must always keep the urgency of the mission before your core group. You will need to unveil the darkness of their motives for comfort and bust through the illusion that they are truly living missional lives. If they are that's great, but when it comes down to it, most people don't love lost people because they don't want to.

2. Dispelling the Illusions of Our Culture
You must teach your people how to gauge spiritual fruit. The presence of church building is not a good indicator of spiritual vitalization. Nor are Christian rallies a testimony of spiritual vitality. Deep in the heart of every community there is great darkness and a need for Christ. You get the joy of bringing people to see that reality and being God's instrument to declare the Gospel.

3. Expect Great Things
In John 12:12, Jesus, says, "I tell you the truth, 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."  It is an amazing reality to consider that Jesus invites us to expect a miraculous result from our faith. To expect and anticipate him doing great things through us for His glory. We have learned to not get too carried away with our faith. The church has learned that we should not expect too much from God. These are all lies from the pit of hell. You have to lead your people into faith. Help them believe that God is now and is going to keep do great things for his glory.

4. Measuring Your Success in Relationship to Your Mission
There are so many gauges to try to evaluate how your church plant is doing. Most the time church planters measure using the wrong gauges. The most important thing you can do is be faithful to your mission. Are people coming to Christ and being transformed? Is the Gospel being proclaimed and is God drawing people into your community? If you gauge success by making sure no one ever leaves your church you will fail. As the leader and shepherd it is up to you to call people to evaluate the success of your plant by indicators that God lays out clearly in scripture. You must train them to reject false indicators. IE: Move them from, "Bill left the church and is mad", to adopt true indicators like, "We baptized five new believers this month."

5. Be Honest with Yourselves and be Willing to Change
You will not plant the perfect church. No one has. So it is important to be willing to evaluate honestly and share weaknesses with your core. People would rather believe a lie that made them feel good than a truth that hurts. You must create an appetite for honesty among your people so that the blind spots you have that are dangerous to your mission will be uncovered. It is interesting that Jesus asks the disciple, "Who do people say that I am?" Did he not know? Of course he did. Did he know that some people thought he was nuts? Yes he did, but that did not prevent him from opening up the floor for honest conversation. The result was Peter's confession that Jesus was the Christ. That is encouraging. Even when the word on the street may be a poor repute, these people who you love and serve with will be a major source of affirmation and encouragement if you let them.

Owning the Vision
One of the biggest keys to the conversion of your core it getting them to own the vision. Calling them to something bigger than themselves and letting them be key players in that vision.

NIV Mark 3:13-15 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve - designating them apostles - that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.

NIV Luke 10:1-2 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

There are several key elements that apply to calling and converting the core that we gain insight into as we look at Jesus' call and sending of the disciples. We have already looked at the need to call your core. In Mark's passage we see an interesting comment: "He called those he wanted - that they might be with Him."

Sharing Life Together
As you go to plant your church, your core group will become to you a sense of great friendship. No doubt many will come for a time and leave you. Jesus experienced this as well. Hundreds of people followed him and left. But there is an inner circle of people you will find strength from and who will own the vision to a much greater extent than your average attendee will. These are your key players. It is important that these people be people who give you life. People you want to spend time with even when you are not talking church. It is an amazing compliment that Jesus wanted to be with these men.

One thing that Jesus had going for Him was the ultimate holy maturity. He was not just calling a group of buddies, but a very diverse group who would not always get along. Yet, he enjoyed them. As you call your core you could fall to one of two extremes. You could call people you don't really like but think are good to have on board, or you could call all your best friends and have a group of yes men that will not stretch or shape you. You must avoid either extreme. It will be important that you have people who are your friends, but don't be surprised if your friends become your biggest source of frustration. Many times they won't respect you as a leader and will not allow you to pastor them. We must cultivate a maturity that allows us to become kindred spirits with those who share Gods' heart for the world. They may not look like you, dress like you, or talk like you, but they will be your greatest strength and go the extra mile for you. They will be the ones who you trust when you need to the most. Most of the times you will trust them because you know their heart for God. That will give you more security than knowing that they just really like you. In the end these will be people you do weddings for, mourn deaths with, and look back after many years to celebrate the great work of God through your lives. These are people you want to be with.

The Sent Ones
One of the most missed facts of all ecclesiology is understanding the sentness of the church. Our primary identity is that of the sent people of God. We see this identity beginning in the Godhead. The Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit, and the Father, Son, and Spirit send the church. We catch a glimpse of this as Jesus sends the twelve and the seventy-two. One of your major tasks as you cultivate your core and lead them into engagement with the lost world will be to educate them in mind, heart and actions to stand in their called identity as the sent people of God.

This is a great distinction. The church today has an understanding that the pastors are the ones who do the work. The congregation's job is to show up. It turns the tables on them to see that on Sunday the church gathers to worship the God who has sent them into the world the rest of the week to be the hands, feet, and voice of Christ. What happens when people begin to understand this as a primary identity? They will see that they are key players.

Imagine what it was like to leave the side of Jesus and go out into villages proclaiming the Kingdom. They did not have money, food, extra clothes, and a church reserve account to tap in case of emergency. They learned so many things about God and his mission as practitioners versus listeners.

They earned dependence in that they had nothing in and of themselves to trust in. They were going out in faith and if God didn't show up they were in trouble. It is not different today with your core. You are launching out into faith. Fear of failure is all around. And yet, it is in the place of insecurity that we find our greatest security. Faith! When your core grasps that fact that they are the key players it will give them a great sense of ownership. This is no longer your mission it is their mission too, and ultimately it is God's mission. Don't be surprised however if your core group is hesitant. Some people will take a lot of time to move out into the mission of leading people to Christ. That is why we see these people hanging out with Jesus and being key witnesses to his work with people. As he sent them out they encountered similar circumstances that they had seen him encounter. That is I how they knew what to do. As they came back they are rejoicing saying the demons submit to us in your name! This is why your modeling is so crucial. You need to take them with you to places where you are meeting lost people. If you can't take them with you then share with them the stories and encounters you are having. Have them pray, and share with them the results. By doing this you are allowing them to be with you in the mission and showing them what reaching lost people is like.

It is safe to assume that most of your core will not have lead many people to Christ. Be patient with them. If you create a culture where the Gospel is preached and people are getting saved, and they can taste that, when you invite them to be a key player they sill want to suit up. It is your job to believe in them and send them out. Keep your finger in the middle of their back until they are playing the game.

Key Players are Trusted by the Coach

Jesus gave them authority to do the work. There are so many pieces to a church plant. Worship, set up, tear down, children's ministry, office work, finances, bible studies, counseling, assimilation, events, and on and on. That is a huge task and you will not be able to do it alone. It is imperative that as you move people through the process of conversion to a missional life you allow them to go out and do the work. Many times they will come back rejoicing and sometimes they will fail. The conversion process is you letting them go to be on their own before God, bearing the weight of the work they are called to. They need to know that you are behind them are their biggest fan.

You also have to look out for them. When people fear failure they often work themselves to death. Burnout is a major problem in church planting. Part of being their coach is knowing when you need to pull them to the sidelines for a rest. A perfect example of this is in the children's ministry. Everyone wants a stellar children's program to attract young families. The only problem is that no one ever wants to work in children's ministry. The result is a few very faithful people who will serve with huge hearts to their death. Don't let your people get burned out. Have the wisdom of Jesus, as he would take the disciples away to quiet places after times of ministry. In doing this you are protecting your core and they will own the vision all the more knowing that you are not just using them to get something done but really caring about their soul.

Aside from taking them aside for rest, you must release people to fulfill the piece that God has called them to in this vision. As each one does, you gather them to show how each piece of the vision connects to form this beautiful thing called the body of Christ. When the disciples came back Jesus did this by sharing with Him that He say Satan fall. They had no idea that their small piece in the mission would have such a major overall effect. Jesus showed them how vital their piece was in the overall picture. This builds great excitement and greater ownership. Call those you want to be with and learn from, send them out, and give them authority.

Pray
So much church work today is how-to. It is often just a list of things that worked somewhere else. When you walk away you believe that if you do everything the way someone else did it you too will be successful. The truth is there are hundreds of failed church plants for everyone that is successful. They followed all the rules, did everything just the right way, and still nothing happened. Jesus calls the disciples to pray. Pray that God would send workers into the harvest. We can imagine that as these raggedy people went into villages to preach the Gospel with nothing but the shirt on their back, the prayed a lot.

We underestimate the power of prayer. The reason we don't pray is that we still believe it is something about us that is making it work. God is not impressed with us and our efforts. What he is looking for are people who will humble themselves before him and let him be Head of the church. We believe that if we have the right look, music, style, building, ECT - then our church plant is going to work. That is heresy. God moves where he wants to move. He could use the lamest service, worst sermon, and most backward event. Why? Because he chooses to. So our job is to be dependent in prayer. We should always be growing more and more in the work of prayer and creating a dependant core of people who truly believe that a church that bears fruit is God's thing and not ours.

Prayer also reveals how much faith we have in trusting God. If you don't have key leaders right now, do you ask God for them? He will move them in from other states and countries if he has to. Do you believe that? Prayer must permeate all we do. He will save us from ourselves and from creating yet another church that does no reflect his heart. If we truly desire to create a church that reflects his heart than we have to get close to it. We do this in prayer.

Prayer will also build greater confidence in you as you begin to cast your cares on Him. Give him the worries, fears, and troubles and praise him for the joys and blessings. When we strive to be close to God in prayer and let him dictate to us rather than us dictating to him, we being to dream God's dreams rather than asking him to bless ours. Many men have the entrepreneurial skill to make something happen, but only God can do miracles. Your church needs to reflect a miracle size God to a world that is ripe for harvest.

Taking It All In
The writer of Hebrews calls his hearers to remember. He wants them to remember that they are surrounded by a great cloud of believers who are watching us. They have gone before us and lived great lives of faith. They have launched out into the unknown and found God faithful time after time. As you launch out, you embark upon your own building of the ark, your own call of Abram, your own exodus and many others. Knowing that the walk of faith never ends the writer encourages us to fix our eyes on Jesus.

That task we embark on is insane in many perspectives. The world cannot understand why we would do what we do. Yet, anyone who has tasted the life- changing work of God in their lives and has been used of God to bring the Gospel to someone else's life knows why we do what we do. The path of calling and converting your core is riddled with mistakes. Yet God in his grace gives us insights and pieces to lead us. It is here that we must boldly lead and go forth inviting others to what will be the hardest and most life giving experience of their lives.

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i For more on the concept of first among equals see Biblical Eldership, by Alexander Strauch pages 45-50.
ii See World Encyclopedia of Mission and Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Handbook of Denominations in the Unites States, 11th Ed) by Frank Spencer Mead, Samuel S. Hill, Craig D. Atwood.
iii For more on this see Lectures To My Students, by C.H. Spurgeon, chapter 1 "A Minster's' Self Watch."