Tell your church you’re dropping all programs …

Social media is flooded every day with talk about “missional” this, and “missional” that, and a vibrant discussion about the vital need for discipleship has spread around the globe.

But we’re sitting on the brink of, yet again, doing a lot of talking and very little acting.

If you want to be a disciple-making church, comprised of disciple-making disciples, then it’s time to start taking real, bold steps in turning that talk into reality. Otherwise, you’re going to talk to death the mission of the church.

Here’s one idea for you.

Get all the leaders within the congregation on board for this bold step: announce to your flock you’re going to be dropping ALL programs, and instead, you’re going to be pursuing a more biblical model of the leaders equipping the saints for ministry, and then these equipped saints can go minister.

For example, gather all the disciples who have a heart for ministering to children, and then equip them to be able to do so effectively. Support them, encourage them, provide them with the resources they need, but turn over ministering to children to these missionaries to children.

Do the same for youth.

Do the same for men’s ministries, women’s ministries, missions, and EVERY “program” in the church. Stop “programming” something into a mediocre, staff-sustained existence; instead, carry out the responsibility of equipping the saints, and then let them serve in the ways God leads them.

The result is that you will no longer have a canned, routine set of programs. What you will have is the demise of the “volunteer” replaced by an army of disciples making disciples of those they serve in the way God directs them to serve.

I wouldn’t be surprised if not one single church actually tries this idea. Isn’t that sad? They won’t dare because they have never done it this way before. But the church, historically, has done it this way, with far greater success than the church of today.

“Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ,” Ephesians 4:11-13.

Imagine what your church would be like if the ministry that flowed from it came from equipped disciples who, for the love of their Lord, ministered as the Holy Spirit directed and empowered them, not as volunteers doing their bit in a program, but as ambassadors for Christ pouring their lives out in service with and for Him!

Why not give it a try?

Scotty