Material drawn from: Organic Church, Church 3.0 by Neil Cole and The World needs more Elders by PJ Smythe.
Jesus used surprising parables, statements and actions to get people to think hard about His message. I try to do the same. We have been challenged in our thinking about healing with the surprising statement “Jesus did not tell us to pray for the sick. He told us to heal the sick.”
I want to challenge your thinking about discipleship with this surprising statement:
“Jesus did not tell us to start churches. He told us to make obedient disciples.”
These two statements have the same form and must be understood the same way. The statements do not say that praying for the sick is wrong, nor that starting churches is wrong. Rather, they focus our attention on the commands of Jesus which we should seek to obey.
When we focus on “church” rather than “disciple-making” it is very easy to get our priorities wrong. Although we all know that a gathering of three believers counts in God’s eyes as church, we have to be honest and say that in our eyes we need a gathering of at least a dozen or so before we really think we have a church. In other words, for us to feel we have a proper church we need “bottoms on seats.” This often leads us to look for strategies to attract more people to come to church. Some pastors make wild promises of prosperity to their congregation, others try to make their services attractive with big worship bands. But when we look at the surprising statement, we notice that the priority is disciples, not churches. You don’t need “bottoms on seats” to make disciples – you don’t even need seats! However, if you make obedient disciples you will soon find you have a growing church.
The surprising statement: “Jesus did not tell us to start churches. He told us to make obedient disciples” focuses our priorities. Although most churches start well with a focus on the mission, as people get added there is usually a dilution of the passion for mission and a drift towards getting people to attend church activities and making church pleasant for its members.
Church planting is widely recognised to be the most effective form of evangelism. But what we think of as being church has more often been shaped by tradition rather than the simple truths of the Gospel. This is true even of new and young church movements. It does not take long for traditions to get established and we need to keep re-examining the scriptures and seeking God to make sure we are running with His agenda and not our own.
Consider, for instance, the amount of effort and money commonly poured into running church buildings and services and trying to grow our congregations. It does not take long after starting a church to find that we are diverting nearly all our energies into church buildings and activities rather than disciple making. This is extraordinary when we consider that Jesus said not one word about these activities.
To start this study I invite you to consider honestly why people love church and the reasons that you go to church.
There are many reasons for us loving church. Perhaps the biggest reason for most of us is that church is place where we are loved and accepted. Church becomes our family and our community. It is a safe place. Despite this there are many who do not find church to be like this. They struggle to break into the existing circles of friendship, or they feel their relationships are superficial and they are expected to present only a happy Christian image. Nevertheless, it is usual that church provides the social hub for its members.
Many people have some role in maintaining church, whether that be putting out chairs, playing an instrument in the worship band, leading a group of some sort or giving pastoral care. These roles help to give us a sense of belonging and encourage commitment to the church. For this reason it is common for churches to try and find roles for as many people as possible. Church provides its members with a sense of purpose and significance.
‘Worship’ is usually considered to be the most important part of a church service by its members. A good band and great songs makes ‘worship’ a high point in the week for many churches. The worship leader enjoys the experience of leading this high-energy event, the band enjoy creating great musical effects, the singers enjoy having their voices projected by the PA, the congregation enjoy the vocal and physical work-out. A great time is had by all! This is not intended to be a cynical analysis of worship, but an honest acknowledgement of the human aspect of worship. Music making and community singing is something that is universally enjoyed by humans. Singing in a church service should have the added elements of expressing love for God and faith in His eternal truths. Singing plays an import role in reinforcing values and creating community. Singing should be fun and uplifting. That is what God invented it for.
Some churches pride themselves in providing excellent sermons. What counts as excellent may range from hilariously funny to scholarly exposition, from imaginative allegorising to the revelation of hidden meanings. Sermons are researched and crafted and then turned into teaching resources and books. People just love to sit under this teaching and go home feeling they have been properly fed with the word of God. But are those hearers more Godly and more obedient disciples than those who have less inspired teaching? God must be the judge of that. But it is certainly true that many Christians love to learn more and more about the bible and are much happier being taught than they are putting it into practice. A service or house group is often judged good where some new interpretation has been given to an old familiar passage bringing it to life in a new way. We go home with the satisfying buzz of new knowledge. Church can stimulate our intellect and excite us with new concepts.
Many people attend church without any sense of anticipation. They do not look forward to the fellowship, the worship or the teaching. Church is not a source of joy or strength or encouragement. It is just something they do each Sunday because. Because it’s what they always do. Because it’s what Christians do. Because the letter to the Hebrews says we should not neglect to meet together. In some vague way it fulfils a religious obligation. We are doing either what God expects of us, or what others expect of us. If we find ourselves having to encourage people to come to church and bemoaning the fact that many are irregular attenders then perhaps it is because church has unwittingly become a matter of religious duty for us as well.
During the early centuries of the church, perhaps the high-point in church attendance was sharing in the Holy Communion – the mystical body and blood of Jesus. Only baptised believers were allowed to participate and many risked their lives to share in the holy meal. In churches where communion is shared most weeks, it often becomes the most important reason for church attendance. It is astonishing in the light of Jesus’ teaching, church history and present day testimony that so many churches share communion so infrequently. Church gives us the opportunity to express and share in our mystical union with Jesus through the bread and wine.
An entirely different kind of reason for church is what we might call regulation. I guess that nearly all churches and denominations have started with a move of God and a sense of revelation. Someone starts a church which grows and they plant a second church. They want to preserve the values and truths that have been foundational to starting the church and which they feel have been significant in the growth of the church. So regulations are drawn up to ensure that “our” churches follow “our” pattern. A common approach to this is to ask “What are our distinctives?” In other words, why do we exist separately from the Baptists and Methodists? The distinctives will commonly include some emphasis in doctrine, a pattern of worship and a structure for church government. But is this good, necessary and pleasing to God? Where we are trying to correct some prevalent wrong it may be the right thing to do, but I can see no justification for this regulation where it is a matter of choice and emphasis rather than truth and error. Why should one church or generation set the parameters of worship for another? Can God not be trusted to lead others into a life worthy of the gospel?
Control and regulation are pre-requisites to power and authority. Some people have a lust for power and authority and they use church structures to gain and exercise that power. But this is something that Jesus specifically spoke against.
Some people want to be the chief. They want to receive honour and recognition from their fellow men. They want to exercise power and perhaps want wealth as well. Or perhaps they want a place where they can expound their ideas or impress people with their gifts of speaking or even entertainment. Churches provide a means of control for people who want to establish a kingdom for themselves.
For a variety of reasons, church members tend to be better off financially than non-church members of the same community. Church members are also more likely to give money to a good cause than non-church members. Churches therefore provide an effective means of fund raising. Denominations can raise even more money. But the great majority of money raised in churches is spent within the church on salaries and buildings. Some churches give 1/10 of what they collect to missions, many do not. The fact remains that about 9/10 of the money church members give is spent on themselves – improving the “church experience”. It is also a fact that there is not a single instance or mention of raising money for running the church in the bible.
Churches have some sort of structure, usually including a leadership structure, some sort of “statement of faith”, a format for the services, an accepted way of making leadership decisions and often some form of oversight relationship with a family of similar churches. These are common elements for any kind of organised body of people whether religious or secular. There are two basic reasons for these structures: division of labour and control. People get together because they want to achieve something they cannot achieve on their own. This is division of labour. As Paul put it, the body is made up of many different parts, each playing its role. But for those parts to work together for a purpose there needs to be a head directing the parts. That is where control comes in. If someone has a vision to achieve something they cannot achieve on their own, they need to recruit followers who will cooperate with them, doing their bidding, so that the great work can be accomplished. This is the vision of church presented to us in the Epistles, with Christ Himself being the head directing the church, His body, in world mission.
We have mentioned a range of reasons why people like church and no doubt each has its place in God’s purposes for his gathered people. But the New Testament is surprisingly quiet about many of these aspects of church. The New Testament is almost entirely focussed on loving relationships between believers and living out the gospel as disciples of Jesus.
It would be a healthy exercise if we were to seriously consider the reasons why people come to our churches and why we want them to come.
Church is not just the gathering of God’s people; it is the presence of Jesus among His people. Without His presence there is no church.
But His presence is not with us simply to observe or comfort or to hear our prayers, but to lead us in His mission. The promise of His presence came with a commission:
When we are engaged in His mission we can be assured of His authoritative presence. But when we get distracted by introspection and petty church politics we are in grave danger of Jesus withdrawing His presence:
Church is ministry BY Jesus, not ministry FOR Jesus and should be measured not by our attendance but His presence. But do we even notice Jesus’ presence? If the leader cannot be there we think, “What shall we do?” We feel the absence of the “leader” more than the absence of Jesus! What difference would having Jesus on the leadership team make? We should be saying “What would Jesus do if he were here…?” and then say “Jesus IS here, so …”
Jesus told His disciples to preach saying, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” And “The Kingdom of God has come near you this day.” He said that both He and the Father would make their home with us. He said our angels watch over us. He said He would be with us and that we can address the Father wherever we are with a simple prayer. Elisha prayed, “LORD open his eyes that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2Ki 6:17).
We should not think of heaven and the heavenly host as being somewhere else. They are with us and around us. When we stretch out a hand to heal, do not imagine that a spiritual email gets fired off to heaven to alert the Father to dispatch some healing power by angelic courier. When we minister, we are heaven made visible to eyes that cannot see. Jesus is right there with us ministering His love.
By faith we know His presence, and by acting on that faith we see the results of His presence. This should be at the heart of what it means for us to be and do church. God dwelling with His people; Christ acting through His Body.
The Great Commission must be among the scriptures best known by Christians:
It is all too easy to imagine this commission to “go and make disciples of all the nations” applies to missionaries but not to the rest of us, and not to our local church. Or we assume that we are obeying the command by running and attending church. But there is a very important thing to notice about this commission. Jesus did not say “teach them all I taught you” or “teach them all about me” or “teach them the bible.” He said “teach them to obey me.” This puts a rather different emphasis on things. When a horse is being broken in or a guide dog is being trained, it is being trained to obey. This is not the same as being taught lessons at school. Our education system is designed to teach us to think and understand and gain knowledge. We can easily assume that teaching in church is similar, except we are learning about God. Certainly we do want to learn about God and for people to think deeply and intelligently about God. We therefore value teaching about God. But the emphasis of Jesus commission is not teaching knowledge, but obedience to Jesus.
Teaching obedience to Jesus is not the same as teaching the stories and parables of Jesus. It is not the same as teaching the doctrines of salvation and grace and resurrection. It is not the same as preaching the gospel and leading people to Christ. All these things are good, but they are not the great commission. There is only one way to fulfil the great commission and that is to teach people to obey Jesus.
People need to be taught how to obey Jesus. It does not come naturally. They need to be taught how to read the bible, especially the gospels, how to listen to Jesus speaking to them through the Holy Spirit, how to believe and trust Him and how to do what He says to do.
Discipleship is like car mechanics; a group of apprentices pouring over the manual, discussing what it means and how to do it, then going out and having a go.
The basic unit of church is twos and threes encouraging one another in obedience to Jesus. That is a good place to start. There is not a single command to initiate churches, but rather to make disciples. If we cannot discover the presence and will of Jesus in groups of two or three, then we cannot expect to do so with a larger group. If we can’t multiply groups of 2 or 3 we will never multiply the church.2
Discipleship is an adventure of faith. It requires people to be open and real with one another and to be prepared to take risks and make mistakes. Disciple making is a time consuming business requiring deep relationships. More on this later.
We must not think that every small group needs a skilled and trained leader. Three brand new believers can read the scriptures together, learn from the Holy Spirit and see God answer their prayers. This is the essence of church.
We must not hold people back because they have not been trained. We must not teach people to be dependent on us to understand the word. They must know they can feed themselves. They must know that Jesus Himself has commissioned them and sends them with His authority to do His work. They must know they can depend upon the Holy Spirit and the scriptures to be their teacher.
As teachers we must sow the seed of the word of God into people’s hearts, not our re-mix of the word. Our job is not to give messages about the word, but to demonstrate our conviction that Jesus Himself has the words of life.
Can you do that? Do we think we can improve on it? So why do we elevate our sermons about the word over the word itself? 3
Jesus chose uneducated fishermen to be His disciples and sent them out on mission immediately. They were not trained in bible study and leadership. They didn’t know how to preach or lead prayer meetings. Nevertheless, Jesus sent them:
New believers must learn to trust God right away so, like Jesus, we send new believers on mission immediately.4 But they must know that it is not us who are sending them but Jesus, and they go with His authority:
The mission we are sent on is also clear; to do what Jesus did:
Such must be our expectation from the very start of a believer’s new life in Christ. We must teach faith-filled obedience from day 1. “See one, do one, teach one.” A new believer only needs to observe ministry once before he/she should be having ago themselves. Having ministered once, they can begin to pass on what they have learnt immediately.
The essence of discipleship, and therefore fulfilling the great commission, is incredibly simple; groups of two or three believers experiencing the presence of Jesus and ministering Gospel truth and healing in His authority to unbelievers.
So how and where are you going to start your group of two or three? Jesus gives us clear and simple instructions:
We start by going to a place and asking people “who needs to hear the gospel?” We are likely to be directed to poor desperate souls whose lives are in tatters. Then we do what Jesus said to do:
We minister healing and deliverance to those in need, and we start our “church” in the new believers home, not ours (Matt 10:11 above). That will ensure the gospel reaches the whole family, not just an individual. Churches born out of transformed lives are healthier.
Then, again following Jesus’ example, we baptize new believers immediately and publicly and let them baptise their converts:
So how do we start? We start in the harvest and start small with 2 or 3.
Jesus gave instruction about our mission both directly and through parables. The parable of the soils is very instructive:
Some important lessons here are:
If we have ears to hear and accept these basic truths about sowing the word, we will save a great deal of heart-ache over trying to make fruitless situations bear fruit. Concentrate on the fruit-bearing soil and don’t waste time on the rest.
Let the fruitful people be a provocation to the fruitless ones. Jesus did not lack compassion for fruitless people, but He still sent them away. According to Jesus’ interpretation of this parable, fruitless people are fruitless because they have not given up on the world’s fruits. They want the world plus a bit of Jesus. Jesus said you cannot serve two masters and He told people so.
Although we cannot be sure we have found good soil until we see its fruit, Jesus did tell us where to look:
The police know where the good soil is; ask them!
Jesus did not exactly encourage half-hearted disciples, He sent them away! Jesus loved people by confronting them with their choices. He sent the rich young ruler, whom He loved, away. To do otherwise is cruel, selfish and counterproductive! 5
In addition to this general guidance about where to look for good soil, we can expect the Holy Spirit to lead us to good soil where He has been preparing the ground to receive the word.
Some important points arise from these scriptures:
If you can’t visit people in their houses, look for a place where people know one another, such as a club or popular café or local bar.6
These parables indicate that God does not want us to concern ourselves with how to grow the Kingdom. Our task is to sow the seed of His word with healing and peace and let God grow the seed. Whilst the seed is growing we should prepare for the harvest by praying for labourers:
What this means in practice is that we share the gospel (sow the seed), God transforms a person’s life (brings growth), that person becomes an obedient disciple (bears fruit) and they minister Christ to others (we reap a harvest). Our place in this process is to be a friend and an example, teaching a new believer how to depend on Christ and His word through the Holy Spirit.
The kingdom grows by multiplying healthy disciples.7 If a person turns out to be poor soil we should encourage and challenge them with the Gospel and make them chose whom they will follow. If they do not rise to the challenge and follow Jesus faithfully, then don’t waste time on them. Look for better soil.
A huge amount of research has been conducted over recent years into church growth, leading to some surprising findings. One is the enormous sums of money that are spent on improving church facilities to make them more attractive – a large car park, clean and plentiful toilets and spacious and creative children’s work being considered amongst the most important assets.
Mission Action Plans, Vision Statements, Growth Targets and church growth consultants are all employed in the effort to ensure the church keeps growing, yet perhaps one of the most surprising findings is that one of the three greatest hindrances to church growth is size! The bigger the church, the more of its resources get diverted into maintenance and the lower its rate of growth.
Perhaps this is why Jesus never told us to start churches; He told us to make obedient disciples. The only sure way to grow a church is to get on with the great commission: making disciples one at a time in groups of two or three.
We should do what Jesus called us to do and stop concerning ourselves with growth which is God’s responsibility:
Jesus told a number of parables about how the Kingdom grows, indicating that it is God’s responsibility:
Jesus also described its growth like yeast quietly working its way through the whole dough. In all of these parables the implication is the same: our job is to sow the seed, God’s part is to make it grow.
As soon as we begin to see fruit from our sowing we are likely to become concerned about how to keep things on track. This is completely natural and proper. We want our children to grow up as balanced and mature people living godly lives. We should do what we can to promote healthy growth. But we should not try to create clones. We must trust Jesus to be the head of His church and the Holy Spirit to lead and teach His children. To impose control over small groups and churches in order to ensure they conform to some pattern we have decided upon is to go beyond our remit as disciple makers.
Neither can we use rules and structures to ensure things don’t go wrong. It is better to face the reality that if a person wants to sin they will. If a leader falls into a snare of the devil, they are unlikely to accept accountability. I am not wanting to encourage pessimism, but to warn against ineffective and counterproductive control. People commonly worry about heresy creeping in where leaders are uneducated, but in practice, where people are each reading scripture for themselves and sharing honestly with one another as they pursue God’s mission, there is much less danger of heresy than in churches where an educated leader presides over the beliefs of his congregation.
Jesus was perfectly clear and un-phased that 3 out of 4 seeds may ultimately prove fruitless, that tares will grow up with the wheat, that false prophets will do mighty wonders without ever knowing Jesus, that talents will be given which are buried and that many will fall away. In the light of this we must trust Jesus with His church. Our attempts to protect what we have by hedging it about with rules only have the effect of stifling growth and development.
We should teach well, warn people who depart from the simplicity of the Gospel or who get ensnared by worldliness and pray for God’s intervention. But in the end we must let go. In our care for the church we should not end up babysitting poor soils, but give ourselves to working with the good soil.8 Jesus is unlikely to be pleased if our church presents Him with an audience of consumers, however large its number or well educated its members.
So far I have avoided talking about church since it can so easily consume all our energies without advancing the Kingdom of God one bit. It’s not that I think church is bad – I don’t. I think the church is the Body of Jesus. It is Jesus’ inheritance and His bride. However, I do think we have often got things out of perspective in our vision of what church should look like. One significant area in this regard is church leadership, which has typically been very hierarchical with the goal of exercising control (to a greater or lesser degree) over the members.
Jesus said “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Luke 22:25-26)
It is important for us to notice that Jesus expressly says that amongst the Gentiles “the rulers exercise authority over them. But you are not to be like that.” According to Jesus, the purpose of leadership within the Kingdom of God is NOT to exercise authority, but to serve. Servant leadership is a widely used phrase in the church, yet there seems to be no lessening of the exercise of authority over church members. Leadership without the exercise of authority is so counter-intuitive that it is hardly ever seen. Yet I suggest that our churches and church movements would be a whole lot healthier if we were to take these words of Jesus seriously in our church leadership. No one should be persuaded to do something in the Kingdom of God because of an appeal to our authority as leaders. Our appeal should always be for our members to follow Jesus and for us to lead by example. Paul said, “follow me as I follow Christ.” Amen to that. But “fall into line because I am Gods appointed and anointed leader” is simply contrary to Jesus explicit teaching.
However in the letters we do get exhortations to obey our church leaders:
There is clearly an assumption here of leaders ruling and saints obeying, but this biblical relationship must remain in harmony with Jesus’ words. Our submission should be joyful, faith-filled and pleasing to Christ. Obedience should not lead us to go against our conscience or our understanding of what pleases and honours Jesus, but should honour both Jesus and those He has called to lead us.
NT church leadership consists of Jesus the head, elders/leaders and the saints, who are the foot-soldiers of the church.
Paul instructed Titus to appoint elders over the churches in his care. It is the New Testament norm for local churches to have one or more elders to care for it. But Paul warns not to appoint novice believers who lack maturity in their faith. The reason is that young believers are often eager to become elders because of the esteem it gives them. But Jesus shows us the true heart of an elder:
An elder should be a believer with a heart broken for the lost; moved with compassion for the captives and passionate about Jesus. Such a person is likely to lead a healthy church.
In addition to elders, God gives ‘gifts’ of apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors to help equip the church for ministry (Eph 4). Although the NT does not make clear how these ministries related to the local church and mission, it seems that the 5-fold gifts spear-head and motivate church planting and lay the foundations of truth and practice for churches. Meanwhile, the elders/leaders and saints get on with the task of discipling and multiplying. No doubt some churches had resident ministry gifts whilst others received input from visiting ministries.
10An elder is a man who is called and gifted by God, who with other elders has the responsibility for leading a local church. Scripture portrays him as a man who is:
The elder is responsible for the day-to-day discipleship of the church and is rightly concerned with the details of individual’s lives and the particular challenges and delights of living out the Kingdom in the community.
Self-control is the preeminent qualification for eldership and is the only thing Paul tells Timothy to teach young men! Learning to lead yourself is the key preparation necessary to lead others. If young men can win this battle early, then they will develop into fine leaders.11
The devil lays snares for elders! Every potential elder must honestly ask himself where his weak spots are. Where will the devil lay his snare? Pride is a common snare, but there may be others. Do not appoint elders hastily; examine their character and the fruit of their faith.
Elders should be transparent. What you see is what you get. Their ‘yes’ means ‘yes’ and their ‘no’ means ‘no’. Elders and deacons need to be people of pure hearts and open spirits whom you know you can trust. If they have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, do not entrust them with true riches.12
Elders must honour the priesthood of all believers and should therefore always seek the counsel and mind of those they lead and involve them in the process of decision-making.
The ministry gifts, especially the apostles and prophets, are called to have a bigger vision and wider perspective on what is happening. There tends to be a healthy tension between elders who want to strengthen their local work with more leaders, and the apostles who want to push those leaders out into new works. In addition, apostles and prophets are more likely to see the foundational significance of certain events and how they are responded to. This produces another healthy tension between the pragmatism of an elder and the relative idealism of an apostle or prophet. It is not that one is right and the other wrong, but that both voices and influences are needed. The elder has the God given responsibility to lead and care. The ministry gifts have the responsibility to provoke. For this reason elders need to be continually envisioned and equipped by apostles and their teams.
Teachers will have particular gifting in understanding the breadth of truth in the scriptures, providing doctrinal perspective and balance. They help to reveal simple truths that so easily get obscured by tradition or worldly thinking. They help the saints to gain the confidence to search the scriptures for themselves and take both the meat and the milk of the word. They will not promote their own wisdom with new interpretations, but appeal to the simplicity of the gospel and the witness of the Spirit to bring clarity to the scriptures.
Jesus’ commission for discipleship implies multiplying disciples which leads to multiplying leaders and multiplying churches. Paul was obedient to this, moving quickly from one place to another leaving a trail of young churches behind him. Part of Paul’s strategy was to maintain a simple pattern which he taught wherever he went:
Paul does not give us his pattern in a simple form, but it can be discerned from his letters, and is perhaps summarised by his repeated themes of faith, hope and love:
Works of faith – healing the sick and delivering people from the snares of the devil; labours of love – loving one another as Jesus loves us; patience of hope – living life out of our secure position in Christ. These are then DNA of our discipleship and should be in every aspect of our private and corporate church life.
Every disciple, every meeting, every ministry must have all the DNA at the same time13; works of faith, labours of love and patient hope in the sight of our God and Father.
The missional life is: Make friends, Throw parties, Tell stories and Give gifts. Sounds both entirely possible and fun14
Disciples should look for good soil in which to sow the seed of the word. But what should we sow? How should we present the gospel? For decades the church has used tracts with a summary of the “gospel” for evangelism. These typically talk about the problem of our sin, the solution in the cross and a “sinners prayer”. Do you not think it strange that this “gospel” is not presented in this form anywhere in scripture. It is even stranger that this “gospel” cannot be easily derived from the four Gospels. We do well to heed the Gospel which the Holy Spirit has already designed for us: John said:
Those verses describe precisely what we are trying to achieve with our little tracts. It is time we followed the inspired scriptures rather than trying to improve on them with our selected verses. The reality is that unsaved people are not interested in the means of our salvation which our tracts try to explain. They need to hear genuine good news. The signs which John records are a powerful way of sharing that good news.
John selected seven miraculous signs:
A method which has been found very powerful is to get a seeker to take one story a week and read it every day. Each week meet them and ask:
The building block of the church is 2-3 disciples in intimate relationship. Across the world single-sex LTG’s, Discipleship Groups, Triplets – call them what you like – have proved to be the essential foundation of multiplying churches.
With 4 or more, it is very easy for a person to drift into the background, or for sub-groups to form. Groups of 2-3 are the ideal size for both accountability and mission:15
The recommended LTG weekly meeting is as follows:
Suggested accountability card questions are:
12-15 is the ideal size for the church family. It allows intimacy with diversity. You can look after one another’s wellbeing. This group is a family and should do family things. It is not meant for mission, nor for leadership. It is meant for fellowship and pastoral care. It is the group in which children are nurtured.
When a church grows too big, it should not just be cut in two, but rather as it grows, opportunity should be sought to send a small team (2-3) to start a new church. Sending two or three on mission is far less painful than chopping a family in half.16
The Lord’s prayer is meant to be a pattern for His people to commune together with Him (it is entirely in the plural). It makes a great pattern for a church-family meeting.17
Communion is symbolic of the very heart of the gospel and Jesus intended it to be repeated daily as part of supper. It was celebrated by the church family as a meal, eating together as families do:
There can be no doubt that these were full meals with plenty to eat and enough alcohol for people to get drunk! Hardly comparable with a wafer and a sip of wine. We have wrongly used Paul’s warning to prevent “unworthy people” from sharing in communion:
But Paul does not say anyone should be excluded, or exclude themselves; rather that all should share, with none excluded by people who have a bad attitude towards others. Nowhere does the bible say that unbelievers should be excluded from communion. Rather, it says we should remember and proclaim Jesus whenever we share supper. What could be more natural and yet provocative of a good discussion with an unbeliever than sharing a meal and proclaiming Christ in our giving thanks for it. That is what the Lord’s supper was meant to be. Remember that the first person Jesus shared the bread and wine with was Judas Iscariot – the one unworthy, unbelieving person there!
Our daily suppers of thanksgiving, whether at home with the family or with our church family, should be so full of love that any unbelievers sharing it with us should fall in love with Jesus and His people. It reflects the genius of Jesus that a sociable act that we do every day should be transformed into a natural proclamation and reminder of His great love for us.18
The church family on a mission together is the proper place for children to grow up in God. Children who see lives transformed and lost people loved grow up to love the lost too. They know the power of the Gospel and believe in it.
When a child receives the lord he receives the fullness of God, not a child-sized play version. Childlike faith and the indwelling Holy Spirit makes a potent agent of God’s kingdom. We should expect great things from our children. They often have the best questions, the most profound thoughts and the strongest faith. Let children occupy themselves for a time whilst adults are sharing, but then invite them to share their own thoughts and what they think is important.
Society places the responsibility for the development of our children on educators, but God places that responsibility within families. The church has followed society and provides Sunday school. Church itself has ceased being a family environment and become an educational and institutional environment. This is a great loss and departure from God’s intention. Church is a family and children are family. We should not separate them.
It’s a great blessing for kids to see their parents worshipping and praying, and for the parents to see the kids doing likewise. Parents who lack parenting skills can learn by seeing other parents handling their children in the church family.
As churches plant other churches a natural network of relationships between churches arises. 100-150 is the maximum number of meaningful relationships that most people can handle. Jesus left behind 120 disciples. Networks of house churches very rarely grow beyond this (say 15 churches). Beyond this you need to launch a new network. Leadership teams of 4-7 (ideally 5) serve within a network of churches providing encouragement and provocation.
If we rely on crusades to start churches then we are starting with a strategy that prevents church reproduction, because it sows a dependency on something else (another crusade) to give birth. If a church is to be self-reproducing, its start must not be dependent upon any outside resource.20
In addition, growth must develop from twos and threes into churches. Gathering a crowd of “converts” and then trying to form LTG’s is very difficult, and as a model for growth it is a non-starter.
Parts of this section quoted from Organic Church, P54 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P99 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P66 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P132 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P71 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P177 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P98 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P69 ↩︎
Some points quoted from Organic Church. ↩︎
PJ Smyth, “The world needs more elders” P11 ↩︎
PJ Smyth, “The world needs more elders” P15 ↩︎
PJ Smyth, “The world needs more elders” P20 ↩︎
quoted from Organic Church, P118 ↩︎
quoted from Church 3.0, P206 ↩︎
quoted from Church 3.0, P140 ↩︎
taken from Church 3.0, P155 ↩︎
taken from Church 3.0, P205 ↩︎
taken from Church 3.0, P200 ↩︎
taken from Church 3.0, P210-220 ↩︎
quoted from Church 3.0, P81. ↩︎
taken from Church 3.0, P70 and 84. ↩︎
