Recent Articles

Pastor, you were never meant to fulfill the Great Commission by yourself.You can preach evangelistic sermons, plan outreach events, and remind your church that lost people matter to God. You should. But if evangelism stays mainly on your shoulders, your church will never become what Jesus intended.Your job is to equip people who reach.Ephesians 4:12 says God gives pastors and teachers to the church “to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ” (NLT). That means pastors are equippers. We build the church by helping God’s people make commitments that move them toward maturity and mission.So how do you help your church become more than an audience for evangelism? Start with three commitments.1. Equip people for the missionIf people in your church are going to grow spiritually, it’s not enough for you to pray that they grow. There is work you have to do as a leader. You need tools that help people make and live out commitments that change their lives.At Saddleback, we used a simple class process to help people live out God’s purposes: membership, maturity, ministry, and mission. The point was to move people. Through that process, people were baptized, developed spiritual habits, discovered their SHAPE for ministry, and were sent out on mission.Purpose driven is a people-development strategy. It moves people from unbeliever to believer, then through the stages of knowing Christ, loving Christ, belonging to his family, growing in Christ, serving Christ, and sharing Christ.2. Give people a next stepPeople rarely drift into mission. They need to be asked.A lot of times we think people will just know what to do. We think the message, the music, or the ministry environment will automatically move them. But Jesus didn’t expect people to guess. He asked them to make commitments. Time after time, he said, “Follow me.”So ask confidently. Ask specifically. Don’t just say, “You ought to be more mission-minded.” Give people a step they can take this week:Invite one neighbor.Pray for one coworker.Share your story with one friend.Join an outreach team.Participate in a mission trip.Take the next class.Begin discovering your life mission.Nothing becomes dynamic until it becomes specific. If you want people to make a commitment, tell them what you’re asking for and why it matters. Then allow baby steps. People move from crawling to walking to running. Sometimes the first small act of obedience opens the door to a lifetime of mission.3. Build structures that carry the missionThe New Testament church didn’t grow only through large gatherings. Acts says they met in the temple courts and from house to house.You need both. Large-group worship is “come and see.” House to house is “go and tell.” The early church gathered and scattered. They worshiped together, and they reached out through relationships.Small groups were never meant to be only Bible-study groups. In the New Testament, groups fulfilled all five purposes. They studied the Bible, fellowshipped, shared communion, prayed, helped each other in practical ways, worshiped, and invited others.They were evangelistic. Every group was evangelistic.Acts 2:47 says the Lord added daily those who were being saved. How do you add daily those who are being saved if you only have weekend services? You can’t. You need people living on mission during the week. That’s why we used to say, “Each one, reach one.”Send the whole churchPastor, you may feel the pressure to keep outreach alive by your own effort. But Jesus never asked you to be the whole body. He asked you to build the body.So keep preaching the gospel. Keep planning outreach. Keep calling your church to care about lost people. But don’t stop there. Build a process that helps people belong, grow, serve, and share. Ask for specific commitments. Give people structures where mission can happen through ordinary relationships.

Monday morning has a way of handing you the whole week's worries before you've finished your coffee. The email you haven't answered. The board meeting. The family in crisis. The giving report. The sermon that still isn't coming together. If anyone knows the pull of worry, it's a pastor.But here's the honest truth: "Don't worry" may be the hardest command in the Bible to obey. Every one of us has broken it, probably already this morning. Worrying comes naturally to us.Jesus put it plainly: "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34 NIV). So that naturally leads to this question: Are you spending today's energy replaying last week's mistakes and rehearsing next week's problems?Worry never actually fixes anything. It can't undo a hard conversation. It can't guarantee the outcome you're praying for. All it can do is quietly steal the peace God wants you to have today.At its root, worry is a focus problem. When you worry, you're staring at your fears instead of trusting your Father. You start carrying the church like it all depends on you, as if you have no Father who has promised to provide for you. But that weight was never yours to hold alone.Breaking the habit of worry isn't about gritting your teeth and trying harder not to worry. That never works, because you're still focused on the very thing you're trying to avoid. Instead of trying not to think about your problems, you need to put your focus on God. In the Bible, God's people often refocused through prayer, and sometimes fasting, letting their need draw them closer to him instead of deeper into themselves. You can do the same.Scripture says it this way: "If people's thinking is controlled by the sinful self, there is death. But if their thinking is controlled by the Spirit, there is life and peace" (Romans 8:6 NCV).You get to choose your focus. Fix your eyes on your problems, and worry will trail you all week. Fix your eyes on God, and his Spirit meets you with life and peace.So don't just tell yourself, "I won't worry." Change the channel. Don't fight the worry. Refocus. Turn your attention back to God, and trust his love and his promises for you and for the people you shepherd.

You can fill a room every weekend and still wonder whether anything is really happening. People show up, sing, listen, and head home. The question that follows you on the drive back is the one that matters most: Is any of this actually making disciples?The crowd is not the goal. Disciples are.So here's the question that should drive everything you do: What is your strategy to turn the crowd into a core? At Saddleback, we answered that in one breath. We bring them in, build them up, train them, and send them out.We bring them in to membership. We build them up to maturity. We train them for ministry. We send them out as missionaries. That's the whole ballgame in four sentences, and we pictured it on a baseball diamond so anyone could grasp it.That's the version the whole church needs. But if you're a leader, four sentences aren't enough. You need to understand the 10 steps that actually move a person around the bases, from first curiosity about Christ to a leader sent out on mission. Here they are.1. Explore — Help your community investigate Christ.The first step in any ministry is to get your community curious enough to investigate Christ. Jesus' first words to his disciples were simple: "Come and see" (John 1:39 GNT).Everything starts there. Ask yourself: What events, programs, and tools are we using to help people explore who Christ is?In our children's ministry, it was a fun community gathering for kids, an easy, non-threatening way to tell the community, "Come check us out. We're not freaks or kooks. There's something real here." When our music ministry put on a concert out in the community, that was a come-and-see moment too. We're inviting people who aren't ready for church yet to take one low-pressure, positive step toward Christ. You can do that through advertising, community events, and programs that lower the bar to a first look.2. Enlighten — Turn on the light of salvation.This is the salvation step, where we introduce the crowd to a relationship with Christ. Paul prayed, "I ask that your minds may be opened to see his light" (Ephesians 1:18 GNT).That was my only job on Sunday morning: to turn on the light. I wanted people walking out saying, "Oh, that's what life is all about. That's what Christianity is all about. That's what Jesus is all about." Through the music and the message, we worked to replace people's wrong assumptions about Christianity with the truth.Jesus said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12 GNT). When the light comes on in someone's life, that's as good a description of salvation as being born again. I've been enlightened. I've seen the light. I've come to know Christ.3. Enlist — Move new believers into the family.Once someone becomes a believer, we don't leave them standing alone in the crowd. Every believer needs a family. "In Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others" (Romans 12:5 NIV).So the next step is membership. Ask yourself: How are we moving the Christians in our ministry into real belonging?The payoff is real. A woman came up to me one time after our membership class (CLASS 101) and said, "I was so embarrassed. I'd been coming for a couple of years and never taken it. I never understood why membership mattered until tonight, and I'm so glad I'm here."4. Edify — Make growth intentional, not incidental.Now we lead members to commit to spiritual growth. For a lot of churches, membership is the finish line. You're on the roll, and that's it. They assume that if people just hang around, they'll grow.In a church that takes discipleship seriously, we don't assume anything. Growth is intentional, not incidental. We pursued it through planned programs like small groups, our spiritual-growth class (CLASS 201), and other Bible studies, thinking hard about the character and conduct we wanted to see. We taught people to become self-feeders, where they learned about the habits that lead to spiritual growth (such as a regular quiet time).That's why we measured it. I was never satisfied just knowing how many people showed up. I wanted to know whether lives were actually changing, whether more of our people were having a quiet time, sharing Christ, and getting into a small group than the year before. That's still the right question for your ministry: Are we getting the job done?5. Examine — Help people discover how God shaped them.After someone is growing, we help them find their place. In our ministry-discovery class (CLASS 301) we interviewed people for ministry based on their SHAPE: their spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences. Paul's counsel fits perfectly: "Your thoughts should lead you to use good judgment based on what God has given each of you as believers" (Romans 12:3 GW).This might be the step I get most excited about, because so few churches do it. The institutional approach starts with empty slots: "We need more Sunday school workers, so go recruit some." We start with the person and ask, "How has God made you?" Then we help them find a ministry that fits. The goal was never to plug programs. The goal is to develop disciples; the programs just help us do it.6. Employ — Place people where their SHAPE fits.Once we've examined people and helped them discover their SHAPE, we place each one in a ministry that fits who they are. "Each one, as a good manager of God's different gifts, must use for the good of others the special gift he has received from God" (1 Peter 4:10 GNT).Notice the purpose of a spiritual gift. It isn't for my own benefit. It's for the other person.7. Equip — Train them on the job, not on the sidelines.Now your job shifts. As you examine people and move them into ministry, your task as a staff member is to equip them, not to do the work yourself. Why? "So that the person who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good deed" (2 Timothy 3:17 GNT). We did this through monthly, on-the-job ministry training.Here's where we were different. We didn't pile up pre-service training, because on-the-job training matters far more. The person who wants a 30-week course before they'll lift a finger isn't a minister yet; they're a professional student. By the time most people finish all the hoops, they've lost their fire.All you need to start a ministry is a SHAPE. Your spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences have already equipped you to begin. People are more teachable once they're in the work anyway. They finally know which questions to ask. So get them in, and let the training sharpen their skills along the way.8. Endorse — Commission and affirm your lay ministers.We commissioned and affirmed our lay ministers in front of the people they served alongside. We made it a monthly feature, ending each training session with a commissioning for everyone moving into ministry and into the core.We recognized them, handed them a name tag with their lay ministry printed underneath, laid hands on them, and prayed over them personally. People wept, deeply moved. Don't underestimate what it means to a person to be affirmed and sent.9. Encourage — Keep the fire of the Spirit burning.After people are sent out, they need continuous support through communication, recognition, and awards. "Let us have real warm affection for one another . . . and a willingness to let the other man have the credit . . . and let us keep the fires of the spirit burning as we do our work for God" (Romans 12:10-11 PHILLIPS).That's part of your job description: keep the fire of the Spirit burning in everyone who serves alongside you.10. Evaluate — Give honest feedback that produces excellence.The final step is accountability, the feedback that produces excellence. "Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account" (Hebrews 13:17 NIV).That verse is talking about you. As a church leader, you will give an account to God for how well you cared for the souls serving under you. That's not a responsibility to take lightly.People deserve feedback. It's the only way any of us learns, and that includes the hard kind of feedback. People left in the dark are far more nervous than people who are being told the truth. So lead them, love them, and train them through honest feedback.So keep running the basesThe whole church only needs four sentences: Bring them in. Build them up. Train them. Send them out. But, as a church leader, you carry the ten steps that are behind those four sentences.So keep asking the question every week: How am I moving people from a crowd to a core? Most churches get stuck on a single base—stopping after they’ve brought people in or built them up, but never rounding the bases to send them out. Don't settle for one base.

God has given every one of us a responsibility to pass on what we know to those who are younger than we are. It’s not just a responsibility for parents; it’s for all of us. But, pastor, it is especially important in ministry.One of the greatest things you will ever do is invest in people whose lives and ministries will outlast you.God has shown you things through his Word, through ministry, through pain, through mistakes, and through the people you have shepherded. He never meant for those lessons to stop with you. He wants you to pass them on to the next generation.So how do you know what you need to pass on? Look at what Jesus passed on to his followers.Jesus built knowledge, perspective, convictions, skills, and character into the leaders who followed him. And for decades at Saddleback, we tried to build our ministry around those same five building blocks. Every pastor ought to be thinking about how to help people grow in these areas.1. Help people grow in knowledge.The Bible says, “It is better—much better—to have wisdom and knowledge than gold and silver” (Proverbs 16:16 GNT).In other words, it’s better to be wise than wealthy; it’s better to have knowledge than money.How do you help younger people grow in knowledge? There are a lot of ways. You take them places with you. You expose them to new experiences. You put good books into their hands. You pass along the resources that have shaped your life.I have planned to pass my library on to my children. Why? Because what I read has shaped who I am. Passing on those books is one way of passing on what matters to me.But the most important way you help someone grow in knowledge is by modeling a love of learning yourself. Learning is contagious. If you stop learning, the people around you will eventually stop learning and growing too.For years, I told our staff, “All leaders are learners.”That is true in every area of life, but it is especially true in ministry. If you are going to build into the next generation, they need to see that you are still growing, still reading, still listening, still learning.2. Help people gain perspective.Perspective is seeing life from God’s point of view.That’s not natural for any of us. We all tend to see life from our own limited viewpoint. And that’s one reason we get into trouble.Knowledge answers the “what” questions of life. Perspective answers the “why” questions. The more you help someone see life from God’s viewpoint, the more they will understand what matters and why it matters.So how do you help younger people gain perspective?First, introduce them to the Bible. God’s perspective is found in God’s Word. If people are not learning to read Scripture, think biblically, and hear God’s truth for themselves, then they are going to let the culture shape how they see everything else.Second, introduce them to wise people. The quality of a person’s life will be shaped by the relationships that person chooses. If you want younger leaders to grow, help them get around people with wisdom, maturity, and spiritual depth.3. Help people build convictions.The people who change the world, for good or for bad, are people with deep convictions.They are not casual about what they believe. They are not drifting with the current. They are anchored.If young people do not develop convictions, then the culture will hand them its own. And the values of the culture have not changed much. They still come down to four basic things: pleasure, possessions, prestige, and power.I want to feel good. I want to have more. I want people to admire me. I want to stay in control.Those are weak foundations for a life. And they are disastrous foundations for ministry.The Message paraphrase says, “Hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute” (1 Corinthians 16:13).So how do you help people develop convictions?First, you share your convictions passionately. Convictions are caught more than they are taught. If what you believe matters deeply to you, the people around you will feel it.But even more important, convictions must be modeled. You must be what you want them to become.Jesus said, “For their sake I dedicate myself completely to you, in order that they, too, may be truly dedicated to you” (John 17:19 GNT). Jesus modeled conviction for his disciples. That is now our job with the next generation.Pastor, people need more than your teaching. They need your example.4. Help people develop skills.Skills answer the “how” of life.The next generation does not just need truth to believe. They need abilities to practice. They need to learn how to study the Bible, solve problems, work with people, manage conflict, lead a group, serve faithfully, and handle responsibility.Hard work matters, but hard work alone does not guarantee success. Ecclesiastes 10:10 says, “If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but skill will bring success” (NIV).Skill matters.So how do you help younger people develop skills? There are three ways.First, help them understand their SHAPE—their spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences. That is how God has wired them. If you want to change the direction of a young person’s life, help that person discover how God made them.This is the way the Lord teaches us to raise children, too. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train a child in the way he should go” (GW). The Hebrew idea there points to a person’s natural bent. In other words, pay attention to how God wired that person. If you try to force someone into a mold God did not design, you are going to frustrate everybody involved.Second, help them practice what they are good at. Skills do not develop in theory. They develop through repetition. Whether someone is learning to teach, organize, write, serve, or lead, growth comes by doing it again and again.Third, trust them with responsibility. At some point, you have to let people do the work.People grow when responsibility becomes real.I have often said that if you treat kids like babies, you are going to have to diaper them the rest of your life. The same principle applies in leadership development. If you never trust people with real responsibility, you should not be surprised when they never mature.Pastor, if you want the next generation to grow, give them room to try, room to fail, and room to learn.5. Help people grow in character.This is the pinnacle.Why? Because character is what you take into eternity.The Message paraphrase says, “Take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you” (Ephesians 4:23-24).One of God’s great purposes in your life is to make you like Christ. That is what character is all about.So how do you help younger leaders grow in character? Let me mention two ways.First, protect their minds. What goes into a mind eventually comes out in a life. Proverbs 15:14 says, “A wise person is hungry for knowledge, while the fool feeds on trash” (NLT). If people are constantly feeding on garbage, they should not be surprised when their character weakens. As Paul taught in Philippians 4, encourage those you lead to feed on “whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper” (Philippians 4:8 CEV).Second, do not protect them from every difficulty. We grow through hard times. We build character, not when everything goes our way, but when it does not.Failure is not fatal. Everybody has to learn that.If you rescue people from every struggle, you may spare them some pain, but you will also keep them from some growth. God often uses pressure, disappointment, and hardship to deepen character in ways comfort never can.Pastor, one loving thing you can do is walk with people through difficulty without always removing the difficulty.Any time you are around someone younger than you, you have an opportunity to do these five things. Whether it is a young person in your church, one of your own children, a younger staff member, a new believer, or somebody in your community who needs an older, wiser voice, there is probably someone in your life right now who needs help growing in knowledge, gaining perspective, building convictions, developing skills, and forming character.A lot of what fills our days will not matter five years from now. Some of it will not matter five minutes from now.But when you build into a life, that lasts.It has eternal implications.