The Trellis and the Vine (18 page)

No, if it was to be done, you would need help. You would need to start with ten of your most mature Christian men, and meet intensively with them two at a time for the first two months (while keeping in touch with everyone else by phone and email). You would train these ten in how to read the Bible and pray with one or two other people, and with their children. Their job would then be twofold: to ‘pastor’ their wives and families through regular Bible reading and prayer; and to each meet with four other men to train and encourage them to do the same. Assuming that 80% of your congregation was married, then through these first ten men and those that they subsequently trained, most of the married adults would be involved in regular Bible-based encouragement.

While that was getting going (with you offering phone and email support along the way), you might choose another bunch to train personally—people who could meet with singles, or people who had potential in door-knocking and evangelism, or people who would be good at following up new contacts.

It would be a lot of personal contact, and a lot of one-to-one meetings to fit in. But remember, there would be no services to run, no committees, no parish council, no seminars, no home groups, no working bees—in fact, no group activities or events of any kind to organize, administer, drum up support for, or attend. Just personal teaching and discipling, and training your people in turn to be disciple-makers.

Here’s the interesting question: after 18 months, when the ban was lifted and you were able to recommence Sunday gatherings and all the rest of the meetings and activities of church life, what would you do differently?

To help you discuss the ideas in
The Trellis and the Vine
with others in your church, we’ve written a discussion guide. You can download it here:

www.matthiasmedia.com/rd.html?sku=the-trellis-and-the-vine

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Appendix 1.
Frequently asked questions

As we’ve shared these ideas with many people over the years, numerous questions have come up. Here are some of the most common.

Q1. You say that every Christian is called to be a ‘vine-worker’ and a ‘disciple-making disciple’. I am not very good at teaching or speaking, and I don’t feel that I know very much about the Bible. How can I live out the calling you are talking about?

Perhaps the best way to answer this is to pass on a conversation I had recently with some Christian friends who were in sales—one sold real estate and the other sold software.

I started to tell my friends that I sometimes find it difficult to talk easily about Christian things, especially with non-Christians, because I don’t have a natural ‘salesman’ sort of personality—not like they do. But one of my friends pulled me up short.

“No, you don’t understand sales”, he said. “It’s not about having a particular personality or having the gift of the gab. I’ve got all these guys working for me who think they’re great salesmen, because they’re fast-talking, ambitious ‘sales’ guys. But they’re actually not the best salesmen. The girl who’s bringing in the most business is much more laid back, but she’s genuine. She communicates real concern and sincerity. She gets next to people, understands and listens to them, and then works really hard to help them get what they want. She’s bringing in the business, but if you asked her, she wouldn’t say she was a natural salesperson.”

“It’s really about whether you love the product, and know it well, and whether you actually care for people and want to see them satisfied. If you really believe in it, then you’ll sell it.”

My other friend the salesman chimed in at this point as well.

“Yes, that’s right. You can have someone who knows the technical details of the product perfectly, but who has no passion for it, and no empathy or ability to relate to people, to listen to them. Selling is just as much about listening as anything else.”

The lesson here is that although we all have different gifts and abilities, the most important factor is how much we love the message of God, and how much we love the people all around us who need to hear it. You may not be the person who is going to preach to crowds, or lead Bible study groups, but if you really long to see other people become disciples of Jesus, then you will find ways of doing that within the gifts God has given you—like Dave, the young man with schizophrenia that we mentioned in chapter 2.

Q2: I’m a pastor, and I’m convinced by your argument that in the long term, training people will not only build the ministry but also help with my time. But I barely have time to get things done now! How do I start making a start?

The first thing to say is that ‘training’ really is a mind-shift and not simply a new set of responsibilities or tasks. Training is mostly relational and done on-the-job. It’s the kind of thing that can permeate all the different aspects of your ministry, rather than being an extra program added onto your schedule.

So when you go to visit a newcomer or a member of your congregation, take someone with you. When you’re preparing your sermons, spend part of the time talking over the issues with a co-worker (it will help you and them!). As much as possible, include others in what you are doing and train them as you go. Let them see you in action; how you’re thinking and reacting; how you’re bringing the Bible to bear on the task at hand.

Secondly, make an honest and thorough audit of how you spend your time. What are the activities, programs and priorities that prevent you from devoting some time specifically to training? Are there good reasons for these things to be of a higher priority than training? Or do the reasons stem from unhelpful motivations—for example, a desire to meet the expectations of members, performance anxiety about preaching (leading to excessive preparation), fear of missing deadlines, personal insecurity, and so on?

Thirdly, take the long view. It may feel like there is no time for training now because of your high workload, but failing to train will only lock you permanently into this high workload trap. You feel like there’s too much to do and no time for training, and so you don’t train. But this means that you don’t raise up helpers and co-workers who can labour alongside you in the ministry. And so you continue to bear the workload and stress alone, which over time wears you down. You end up falling victim to short-term, reactive planning and living.

Fourthly, steel yourself to say ‘No’, and to be disliked as a result. In most situations, saying ‘Yes’ to more training will inevitably mean saying ‘No’ to something else. And as a natural consequence you will be resisted and disliked by some of your own people, or by denominational officials, or both. Some people may even leave your church. This is hard, but unavoidable. Not everyone will share the priorities of the gospel. However, it certainly helps in this regard if you develop a set of priorities and make them public, and if you work hard at taking your elders or parish council with you (see step 2 of ‘Making a start’ in chapter 12).

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but being disliked, and even having people leave, is not something to aim at for its own sake! We should always be checking our motivations, actions, presentations and priorities when such things happen. But sometimes we need to allow these things to happen in order for right priorities to flourish. When right priorities are kept—when you say ‘No’ to some people and some things—people will not like you.

Q3: I already have leaders in place. Should I still consider employing the pastor-as-trainer model?

A number of pastors I chat with assume that training is happening because they run certain programs or have small groups in place. Of course, to a degree this may very well be true. However, it is well worth evaluating your current practices with some diagnostic questions like these:

• Is there a culture of one-to-one disciple-making in your congregation?

• Do the Bible study leaders at your church know what it means to shepherd and lead the people in their groups?

• Are your leaders themselves ‘training-oriented’—that is, are they seeking to raise up and train more leaders themselves?

• Does everyone in your church know a basic way to share the truth of Christianity?

• Do all of your people know how to encourage someone, with and through the word of God?

• Do all the people at your church understand what it means to serve Jesus and act out their Christian faith in everyday life?

• Do you have a group of people at your church who can teach a Bible study and get the point of the text across?

• Is there a core group of people who understand the priorities of the church and can effectively train others in those priorities?

• Are you identifying, recruiting and training those with gifts for evangelism (‘lay missionaries’), and releasing them into your local community with the gospel?

• Is the next generation of gospel workers being raised up? Are you seeing new ‘ministry talent’ emerge?

Q4: How can I communicate a captivating vision for ministry training?

Giving people a short summary of what you—as a church or leader—are on about is important. As we’ve said throughout the book, we want all people to be disciple-making disciples of Christ. You will need to express this in your own way and in terms that work within your context, but it’s worth putting in the work with your key leaders to craft a statement that focuses your goals. Perhaps after you have worked closely with your elders or parish council for a year or so, you could set yourself the joint task of re-casting the vision or mission of the congregation in a way that signals a shift in emphasis.

Matthias Media, for example, has recently rewritten its mission statement like this:

We want to persuade all Christians of the truth of God’s purposes in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible, and equip them with high-quality resources, so that by the work of the Holy Spirit they will:

• abandon their lives to the honour and service of Christ in daily holiness and decision-making

• pray constantly in Christ’s name for the fruitfulness and growth of his gospel

• speak the Bible’s life-changing word whenever and however they can—in the home, in the world and in the fellowship of his people.

How would you adapt a statement like this to express your ministry goals?

Q5: Why won’t people commit?

Lack of commitment from church members is probably the most common reason pastors and leaders give for the lack of training at their church.

Now, there isn’t a simple cure-all solution to this one. It’s fundamentally a spiritual disease, but there are numerous cultural, theological and historical factors that contribute to its spread and virulence:

•
Professionalism of the ministry:
in many churches, the average Christian thinks that ministry is a profession, and since it is not
their
profession, it is not their role as a Christian. Pastors may bemoan this, but they should also take a close look in the mirror on this issue. In many churches, the ministry is completely controlled and centralized among the pastors and/or elders, in part because they like it that way. They have control. Things are orderly and predictable. Mobilizing and releasing the congregation for ministry is exciting, but it will also inevitably increase messiness and chaos.

•
A clericalized view of ministry:
this is emphasized in some denominations more than others but is pervasive in them all. Ordination is a special anointing on a special person for special work, so the laity are inclined to just let the ordained staff get on and do the ministry.

•
Niche ministry:
in his book
The Deliberate Church
, Mark Dever argues against specialized ministry positions because they take the ownership of those ministries away from the congregation.
[1]
If there is a youth minister, then the ownership of youth ministry is not with the parents of the youth (as it should be) but with the youth minister. The structure acts as a disincentive for people to get involved.

•
Spiritual immaturity:
wanting to serve others, and to grow in that, is a function of Christian maturity. The more we become like Jesus, the more we will want to pour out our lives in love and service of others. If people in your congregation do not
want
to serve, then how effectively are they being taught and discipled? How effectively and clearly is the gospel itself being preached? Do your people know that laying down their lives for others is an integral part of being Christian? It may be time to go back to the foundations and challenge the strength of people’s commitment to Jesus as their Lord. It may be time to pray that God would do a deep work in people’s lives by his Spirit so that they would want to live sacrificially.

•
Not spending time with the right people:
we tend to be all-inclusive in our attempts at training and discipleship. Further, we tend to spend a great deal of our time with those in need—such as newcomers or the sick and suffering. These people are all important, but they are not the ideal people to really invest in at the outset. Instead, pick some people—or even just one person—who have a heart for growth, and start there.

•
The right people in the wrong places:
are the kinds of people you would like to start training and working with already up to their ears in committee work and other ‘trellis’ activities? You will need to get them out of these structures—or dismantle the structures!—if they are going to have the time and energy to devote to training.

•
Spiritual gifts:
people tend to do only what they think they are gifted at. ‘Spiritual gifts inventories’ were all the rage in churches in the 1990s. But getting everyone through an inventory class hasn’t really helped with the 80/20 problem (80% of the work done by 20% of the people). Why not? Because the root issue is not people’s lack of understanding about what their spiritual gifts are, but their motivation and understanding of ministry.

The other thing we can do to motivate participation in training is to work with live ammunition. That is, rather than simply saying, “Who’d like to come and do some training in children’s ministry?”, you cast a vision for a new kids’ club or a ministry in the local schools. And when people are grabbed by the possibilities of this new ministry, and want to be involved, and start to be involved, they will be desperate for training. If they have to front up before a bunch of 13-year-olds every week to teach the Bible, then they will be very keen to be helped, trained, equipped and mentored in whatever way possible!

Leadership, after all, is vision—not coercion.

Q6. In your ‘Making a start’ section, I’m struggling to get past step 3—that is, I have a few people I could possibly start to train as co-workers, but how do I persuade them of the importance of getting involved? How do I fire them up with the desire to be trained and to minister to others?

How does this kind of personal transformation take place, such that people’s hearts burn within them to want to serve Christ and other people? How can people be transformed from a worldly-minded, self-centred way of living (even as Christians) to a heavenly-minded, other-person-centred way of serving?

It can only be through the miraculous work of God in their lives, as he applies his word to their hearts by his Spirit. How do we participate in God’s work?