Did you ever stop to consider that at the heart of everything Jesus did was mobilizing His followers to do ministry?
I believe the purpose of the Church—the “big C” Church—is to equip its members to do works of ministry. This follows the Apostle Paul’s teaching that each believer is God’s masterpiece, created for good works. We are saved by faith but made for good works.
I spent much of my life as a pastor lobbying for others to plant churches. I was living under a couple of false impressions. The first was that church planting was a special calling reserved for a select few, as if God had called us to plant churches but not others. The second false impression was that I could pressure pastors into planting churches as a programmatic effort.
As I matured, I began to realize that every church is called to reproduce itself and that our effectiveness in multiplication came from perseverance in reproduction. However, as I continued to grow, I came to understand that disciple-making is at the root of everything we do. I then realized that if we didn’t first make friends, we couldn’t make disciples. Finally, I came to see that disciple-making begins before a person accepts Christ, not after. Friend-making and disciple-making are intertwined in a “follow me as I follow Christ” process.
Recently, however, I was taken aback when a friend described our disciple-making efforts as “mobilizing the saints for the work of ministry.” He said this publicly, portraying it as something heroic. Yet, I felt far from a hero because I hadn’t fully grasped the impact of what we had been doing so productively for so many decades. Honestly, I was embarrassed by his pronouncement.
In reality, mobilization has been at the heart of the simple disciple-making model used in the churches I started. We intentionally connected challenging teaching from the platform to the small groups in our church, which we called MiniChurch. The process was so simple that I couldn’t understand why other pastors wouldn’t be willing to give it a try. We even eliminated a “discipleship class” by relying on friends to disciple their friends. In our MiniChurch gatherings, we followed up on the weekend teaching by asking three simple but powerful questions—questions I have repeated countless times because they have been so effective and can work for others as well as they did for us.
We taught through the Bible, always striving to communicate in a way that resonated with a younger audience. We went chapter by chapter teaching with a simple and often humorous approach, aiming to instill both sound theology and a full understanding of Scripture. Every teaching challenged our members to action, which is why my friend observed that we were mobilizing the saints for ministry. But the real action happened in MiniChurch. We would gather around food and fellowship and then ask:
- What did the Holy Spirit say to you during the weekend service?
- What are you going to do in response to what the Spirit spoke to your heart?
- How can we help you or pray for you as you seek to obey the Lord?
The power of what we did was in linking a mobilizing message from the pulpit to an interactive relational setting, where friends ultimately held each other accountable for what the Holy Spirit was speaking to their hearts. Without being overly mystical, we strongly emphasized the Spirit’s role in our midst.
As I look back on my life, I realize that pressuring people into planting churches did little good. Even focusing on disciple-making could hit a dead end if our goal was merely to develop strong believers. What we had actually done was link what was happening in church and MiniChurch to the mandate of Acts 1:8—constantly keeping the vision of reaching beyond our walls, all the way to other nations, in front of our people. We mobilized our members for ministry where they lived, worked and played.
Ralph Moore is the Founding Pastor of three churches which grew into the Hope Chapel ‘movement’ now numbering more than 2,300 churches, worldwide. These are the offspring of the 70+ congregations launched from Ralph’s hands-on disciplemaking efforts.
He travels the globe, teaching church multiplication to pastors in startup movements. He’s authored several books, including Let Go Of the Ring: The Hope Chapel Story, Making Disciples, How to Multiply Your Church, Starting a New Church, and Defeating Anxiety.
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