The Trellis and the Vine (12 page)

Bruce Hall has been doing something like this for years at St Paul’s, Carlingford, in Sydney’s north-west. Here’s how he explains his regular meetings with lay co-workers:

Churches don’t make disciples; disciples make disciples (Matt 28:19-20). The principle I follow with lay workers is: If we are not on the same page spiritually then we won’t be on the same page in ministry. So:

1.
I choose men to meet with me weekly from 6.30-7.30 am.

2.
I used to do it Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; these days only Tuesday.

3.
We spend 15 minutes chatting, catching up. I lead for half an hour, just reading a section of the Bible and commenting and inviting comments and applications to us; then we have 15 minutes of prayer. Which Scripture we read is irrelevant.

4.
We always focus on where we are up to in our witnessing, and occasionally we will just pray (and not read Scriptures).

5.
I always have my wardens (elders) in the group and we have about 8-10 in each group.

Consequences:

1.
Most of those in administration (wardens and parish councillors) have been in such a group with me.

2.
Most of the other congregational ministers on staff here run similar groups. Consequently most of the home group leaders and other leaders have been in such ‘breakfast’ groups.

3.
Guys in the group see me with all my strengths and weaknesses, hear me pray, see me read the Bible, and hear my passions and theological perspectives.

4.
We seldom have ‘relationship’ issues when we are arguing about the business of the church or future directions, because we meet together to pray in the mornings.

5.
The ministries they are involved in are lay pastoring (alongside the congregational minister), home group leadership, wardens, parish council, and just about everything else.

How to select co-workers

In one sense, the criteria for selecting co-workers are obvious. Co-workers need to be people who have a heart for God and a hunger to learn and grow. They need to be soundly converted, mature believers with some runs on the board in Christian living, who have the faithfulness and potential to minister to others. It’s 2 Timothy 2:2—“and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also”.

However, it’s easy to make mistakes when recruiting fellow workers. Here are some blunders to avoid:

•
Compromising on core beliefs and values:
You have a person in your congregation who has been a Christian for some time, is warm and sincere, has obvious gifts and capacities, but thinks differently on some important areas of theology. They may have a charismatic understanding of the Spirit’s work, for example, or a more liberal view of the authority of Scripture. To take this sort of person on as a co-worker almost guarantees division and damage to the ministry. A co-worker must be completely dependable in rightly handling the word of truth. You must be able to trust them to teach others.

•
Being impressed by flashiness over substance:
It’s very easy to be dazzled by the enthusiast with the outgoing personality, the up-front skills, and the charisma to lead people. But it’s far more important to look for someone who really loves and obeys Christ, who lives a godly and disciplined life, whose family life is exemplary, and who has a servant heart.

•
Ignoring their track record:
Does the person serve when they don’t have a formal position? Do others respect them as godly disciples of Christ? If they are not a servant at heart now, are they ready to lead others?

•
Choosing those who aren’t good at relating to people:
Is the person you’re considering socially awkward, or dominating, or prickly? Do they put other people on edge? Do they have a sense of humour? Christian ministry is inescapably relational, and some people are just not gifted relationally.

•
Recruiting in desperation:
The burden of ministry is sometimes so heavy that you will be tempted to recruit
anybody
as a co-worker, just to ease the load. This is a big mistake. It’s much better to keep your team small, tight, unified and effective than to pull people on board who aren’t ready or right.

•
Selecting the unteachable:
Some people are doctrinaire and dogmatic, and just not willing to think or grow. You need people who have a hunger for the truth, who tremble before God’s word and who want to conform their lives to the Scriptures.

•
Choosing ‘yes’ people:
It’s always tempting to recruit our admirers and supporters, the people who make us feel good by always seeming to be on our side. But they may not be the right people.

•
Calling for volunteers:
Recruiting fellow workers is not like asking for a few people to stay behind and stack the chairs. It is something that must be done by personal invitation, after careful thought and prayer.

So much for what not to do.

Tips for training co-workers

Once we’ve selected some likely people, and we’re sitting down with them—individually or as a group—how do we set the task before them? What are we inviting them to do?

At the most basic level, we’re inviting them to give up their lives for the service of Christ. We’re just inviting them to be disciples, in other words. We shouldn’t undersell this! We’re not asking people to contribute to a little club that they happen to be part of—as if we’re trying to find someone to be the secretary of the local junior rugby club for the year. We’re inviting people to join us in the most significant work in the world—the work that God is doing to gather people into his kingdom through the prayerful proclamation of the gospel of his Son. So we’re recruiting people to be part of a cause that is worth giving their lives to, and we should set this vision before our potential co-workers in all its glory and grandeur.

And yet, it’s also important that we outline what the specific goals and aims are for the next 12 months. The vision might be as big as heaven and earth, but the steps we’re going to take along the path in front of us need to be visible and attainable.

This means giving people a clear understanding of what the time commitment will be, what preparation is involved, what training they will receive and what ministries might ensue.

For example, you might decide to run a two-hour fortnightly team meeting with six people in your congregation that you think have the potential to be co-workers. Your two hours could be structured like this:

With a group like this, you might set out the following expectations for the year:

• attendance at each team meeting for the year

• an hour’s homework/preparation in relation to each meeting

• willingness to start meeting one to one with at least one person in the second half of the year.

You might also put a vision before each member of the group of what you hope to achieve in conviction, character and competence. For example:

•
conviction
—a deeper understanding of the cross of Christ, the Trinity, and the purpose of church

•
character
—establishing (or re-establishing) a godly discipline of prayer and Bible reading

•
competence
—training each person how to meet one to one with someone else to read the Bible.

These are just brief examples to illustrate what we hope is a self-evident principle—namely, that if we are going to call people to labour alongside us in ministry, then we need to enthuse and excite them about the magnitude of what we are doing (making disciples for Christ!), and to set clear, realistic and attainable goals and expectations for their training.

Co-workers, vine-workers and the bigger picture

Let’s summarize where we’ve got to.

1.
What is God doing in the world? God is calling people into his kingdom through Spirit-backed gospel preaching. He is growing a great worldwide vine, which is Christ and the people who are joined to him.

2.
Everyone who by God’s grace becomes a disciple of Christ is not only part of the vine, but also a vine-worker, a disciple-maker, a partner in the gospel. Although some Christians have particular gifts and responsibilities for teaching and oversight, all Christians have a role in prayerfully speaking the word of truth to each other and to those outside.

3.
Training is the process of growing mature Christian vine-workers—that is, Christians who are mature enough in their faith to look for opportunities to serve others by prayerfully speaking God’s truth to them. This is our aim in people work. It involves not just ministry skills and competencies, but growth in convictions (understanding) and character (godliness). This is a fundamental aspect of church life, and might involve a shift in the way we think about church (especially with respect to our reliance on sermons as the only means of growth).

4.
Training (understood in this way) is the engine of gospel growth. People move from being outsiders and unconverted through to being followed up as new Christians and then growing into mature, stable Christians who are then in turn trained and mobilized to lead others through the ‘gospel growth’ process.

5.
Recruiting and training a smaller group of co-workers is the first step towards recruiting and training all Christians as vine-workers. You can’t personally minister to and train 130 people. But you can start with ten, and those ten can work beside you—not only to minister personally to others, but to
train
others as well, who in turn will minister to others. The ‘co-workers’, in other words, are not a different category—they are just a bunch of gifted potential ‘vine-workers’ who work beside you to get things moving. It’s ministry multiplication through personal training, and it is one of the great needs of the contemporary church.

Say we have a large number of people to be ministered to, ranging from non-Christian contacts through to new Christians and Christians in need of help. We want all of them to make progress, to grow in the gospel. We want all of them, in the end, to get to the point where they are disciple-making disciples (or ‘vine-workers’). In many churches, the number of ‘disciple-makers’ is very small. It might just be the pastor and his assistant, plus a couple of very keen lay-people. So it might look like this:

The path to growth—and not just numerical growth, but real, spiritual ‘gospel’ growth—is to start training people as disciple-makers; to select some of the mature Christians and excite them with the vision of disciple-making; to select what we have called in this chapter ‘co-workers’. So it starts to look like this: