Step 5. Resource people development (not program development)

A strategic shift being made among churches is to harness resources to develop your people more so than developing programs. I need to go on record here and say that I believe passionately that the continuation of off-the-shelf programs in churches is relatively ineffective for kingdom growth, and depriving us of creativity, innovation and energy. God’s people, resourced and supported by their local church, are to bring hope to people ‘out there’.

This is the commission of Jesus to his disciples, now well-scattered beyond Judea and Samaria. There are three biblical main reasons for my plea:

1. Jesus invested his time and energy in people who would continue his mission, there was no programmatic approach.
2. St Paul did the same, resourcing the people in the churches he planted to live for Christ through their homes and in the marketplace.
3. Paul’s training of and instructions to Timothy and Titus clearly indicate the priorities of church leaders are to use their spiritual gifts to develop the gifts of others, and thus release the Church into the world.

So our focus needs to be on forming disciples and developing leaders in our local churches. Furthermore I suggest that to focus on formation and developing the people in our care, we need to make a significant change. We need to move to equipping and supporting his disciples to personally continue his mission in the world, not just invite others to church. We need to require less of their own time ‘at church’ and free them to be able to represent the kingdom wherever God places them. To think about: how many rehearsal man-hours are taken up by your worship band members preparing for meetings on Sunday? Imagine that time spent in mission by the same people, trained and fired up to relate to people who would not come to church.

I am not suggesting we cease having ministry teams and programs to specifically cater for the variety of people in our church, or cease effective evangelistic programs. But these always need to be evaluated, which tends not to happen in many churches – because it is too threatening and sounds very worldly. I am suggesting programs developed and marketed for use by churches to use are best avoided, in favour of planned activities and events that local leaders create and review, and a focus on forming our people.

There are so many opportunities to work alongside people in the local community. As well as focusing on doing church together, our encouragement needs to be to equip and release people to be agents of God at work, home, coffee shop, leisure centre etc. Church commitments can dominate, and members can be content to see church involvement as an expression of their spiritual service for God. Can we get them serving beyond the church walls? Interestingly, there are thousands of non-church people getting involved in a ‘cause’ they can support with both their time and money. Such people are spiritually motivated but unlikely to meet anyone who can introduce them to Christ, because the latter are almost exclusively committed to what goes on at the clubhouse.