Fix this failure and watch your church grow …

Yes, I do WANT to start this blog post with a preface. Anyone who really knows me, knows I love the Church. It is the bride of Christ, for which He is passionate about. Given that simple preface, it’s easy for anyone to see there are multiple problems in the Church which keep it from being the beautiful bride Christ desires it to be.

Without launching into a list of what’s wrong with the Church, let’s look at just one great failure, and this one falls directly into the laps of leadership: the failure to equip the congregation. When leaders fail to equip the saints, the result looks something like this:

Christ has specifically gifted the church with leaders who have, among other responsibilities, a primary objective of equipping disciples to be able to serve.

“11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ,” Ephesians 4:11-12.

When leaders carry out their biblical responsibility to equip the saints, the results look more like this (yes, the leader will also row with the team, this is just an view of equipping):

It is true that some people would not be willing to be equipped if training was offered; but it is also true that many saints not only would be willing to be equipped but actually want to be! The problem is, there is far too little equipping of the saints going on in the church, to the point the average church member is thoroughly unequipped to share the Gospel with a non-believer.

That’s often why they don’t.

Churches that get serious about equipping members, and then encouraging, supporting, and challenging them to serve both in and out of the Church usually experience both spiritual and numerical growth.

That’s because they’re applying scripture by actually doing what they should be doing.

Scotty