Develop Your Leaders or Die
When contemplating planting a church, how many people dream about having a church that needs them? When I say “need,” what I mean is that you are available to them all the time. You are ready to answer their every question. You are ready to be at every moment of celebration and mourning in each church member’s life. You are their spiritual “phone-a-friend.”
Most of us, probably, are not looking to plant that type of church.
So, if we aren’t interested in being needed in that way, why do so many church planters work alone?
The reality is that someone needs to be there to help shepherd people. And I get it. They need Jesus and you should not be their Savior. That’s good theology. But Jesus also calls us to shepherd people toward him, and not assume that people are going to make it to him on their own.
The conundrum is that people need a shepherd, but you can only care for so many people in a healthy way.
What is the solution?
If you read the title of the chapter, you’re probably already clued in on the answer.
Church planters must develop a community of leaders.
Jesus told his disciples to make disciples. This is the essence of leadership. With the help of the Spirit, we are to help to shape and form people to look more like Jesus. As disciples are being formed, they should be taking responsibility for themselves as holistic disciples, and they should be taking responsibility for the formation of others. This is true discipleship.
Planting a church is so much more than getting people to a meeting or to sign onto your plan to transform the community. It is about disciples being trained and then released to lead.
Before my wife and I planted our first church, we were told that we should focus all our time on two groups of people: potential leaders and not-yet-Christians. The latter category made sense to me, but I didn’t quite grasp the importance of investing into potential leaders at the onset of planting. We quickly learned that this wisdom was worth its weight in gold (or however we measure worth these days).
The reality is that if we only focus on not-yet-Christians, then when they become followers of Jesus, they are stuck with us. That is not a bad thing, but there are only so many children that someone can handle. There are limits that we are not able to move past.
We have four children. At this moment, their ages are ten, eight, seven, and four. We live in a 1,000 square foot condo in downtown Montréal. We cannot fit any more children into our family reality at this moment. It’s not that we don’t like kids. We love them! And it isn’t necessarily that we wouldn’t like to have more children, either. Instead, the fact is that in our current situation, we’ve hit our limit. You cannot take care of a family of thirty new babies. You are going to need help. The church family is going to need to step in and take ownership of the church plant.
Now, imagine the opposite issue for a moment—if you focus solely on potential leaders. Who would they lead? If not-yet-Christians are not a focal point for you, then you will have a cul-de-sac of leaders, ready to do something if and when people ever come along.
The dual-focus of not-yet-Christians and potential leaders will constantly keep the church plant moving forward. At certain moments this might look like growth through conversions. At other times, growth will come through maturity and emotional health. Different seasons will require equipping people in a specific area. But the tension of keeping the dual focus must remain.
If you don’t keep the tension, then the church plant will arrive at one of two unintended destinations. If the aim is only on leaders and growing leaders, the church will probably have wonderful theology, programs, and training, but there will not be an influx of new explorers of Jesus. The church can easily become all about itself. The church can also begin to make secondary doctrines, practices, and choices its main priority. It can almost look as though a new gospel has been introduced.
When we center our programs, events, material, and discipleship around those already in the church, we risk the church existing as a group of consumers rather than a family of servants on the mission of God. You may wake up one day to find that the church plant you envisioned reaching so many people has become a breeding ground for complacency and people focused mainly on “what is good for me.” On the other hand, if the church is only focused on not-yet-Christians, then it can become all about those looking for Jesus, and it can quickly turn into an unsustainable thirty-new-babies situation! This way leads to pastoral burnout.
As soon as you think about church planting, you must start thinking about who you would want to plant with you. You probably won’t know the names of these people initially, but you can begin asking yourself the question: what type of people should we be looking for?
Let’s spend the rest of this chapter considering five reasons why one of your first tasks as a church planter should be to develop a community of leaders. In the process, you will also see the kinds of people you should be looking to develop.
Adapted from Primed to Plant: Overlooked Requirements of Church Planting by Dwight Bernier (© 2023). Published by Gospel-Centered Discipleship. Used by permission.
Dwight Bernier and his wife, Jessica, live in Montréal with their four children. Dwight is lead pastor of Church 21, a multi-congregation church in Montréal, that he planted in 2011. Dwight is the Canadian director of Acts 29 and has helped start Movement Seminary as well as Movement Montreal, a church collaboration network. Dwight has a great desire to see churches planted throughout Canada. He enjoys baseball, running, reading, U2, and playing in the city with his family.