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Look two years down the road at your church. Somebody who fills a role that matters right now won't be filling it then. That leader will move, wear out, step back for a season, or God will send them somewhere else.Say it's the woman who’s taught the same third-grade Sunday school class for six years, the one you never worry about because you've never had to. Then her husband’s job moves them in the spring, and she tells you on a Sunday morning between services.At that point you'll do one of two things. You'll scramble, begging somebody else to take the class, or even teaching it yourself. Or you'll turn to a person who has been quietly getting ready for the last year and a half, and hand it to them.Which of those happens has mostly already been decided. It gets decided in ordinary weeks like this one.Somebody trusted me before I earned itI was still a teenager when Dr. W.C. Bryant hired me to lead the youth ministry at First Baptist Church of Norwalk. I had no track record. There was nothing on my résumé that could tell him I'd be able to do the job, because I hadn't done anything yet.Here's what he said to me: "I wouldn't have invited you to be a part of this staff if I didn't trust you. The very fact that I trust you means you are free to do whatever it takes to get the job done. I will back you 100 percent."I would have charged hell with a squirt gun for that man.That year we baptized more than 100 students. It wasn't because I was gifted. It was because we tried things that had never been done before, and I knew that if they flopped, he wasn't going to drop me.Notice what he did. He didn't give me the youth ministry because I had proved I could handle it. He gave it to me so I could find out. The proof of trust isn't what you say about somebody in a staff meeting; it's what you're willing to put in their hands.Paul trusted Timothy the same way. He sent that young man to represent him to the church at Philippi, confident that Timothy would care for those people and bring word back to him: "I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare" (Philippians 2:19-20 NIV). If you don't trust someone, you don't have confidence in them. And without confidence, nothing of real value ever gets done.Mistrust will keep your church right where it isMistrust creates stagnation. If you wait for proof before you trust somebody with real responsibility, you'll wait forever; the only place that proof can come from is the responsibility you're withholding.So the same four people carry everything. Your most reliable volunteers get more tired, the willing ones out on the edges never get asked, and the bench stays empty. Then a chair opens up and there's nobody standing behind it, not because your church is short on people but because nobody was ever handed anything they could fail at.Aim for one good mistake a weekIn my years at Saddleback I told our staff I wanted everybody making at least one good mistake a week. As long as it wasn't the same mistake twice.That sounds careless until you think about the alternative. When nobody in a ministry is making mistakes, it usually means nobody is attempting anything. If there are no mistakes, there's no creativity, and people will only be as creative as you allow them to be.Everybody makes mistakes, and Scripture is clear about it: "For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again" (Proverbs 24:16 NIV). Even a righteous man falls, and he falls more than once. What marks him is that he gets back up. Every volunteer and staff member in your church will need to do the same thing.Somebody once asked Thomas Edison about the 200 chemicals he had tried that didn't work: Wasn't all of that a failure? "No," he said. "I've had an education." Don't call it a failure. Call it an education.We did more things at Saddleback that didn't work than things that did. I would rather attempt something and fail than attempt nothing and succeed.So when the new teacher you handed that class to tries something and it lands flat, you have a decision to make that morning. You can treat it as evidence you moved too soon, or you can treat it as tuition on a leader your church is going to need. Leave her free to keep trying, and she may end up teaching that class better than you would have taught it.Start with one name this monthDon't wait for a vacancy to make you develop somebody. Pick one person this month, maybe the man who sets up chairs or the woman who always fills in at the nursery in a pinch. Then hand them something new, a class or a team, for example. Something with their name on it that they could genuinely do badly.Then tell them what Dr. Bryant told me: “I trust you. You're free to do whatever it takes, and I'll back you.” Say that last part out loud, because they will not assume it.The bench you'll wish you had in two years is the one you start building this week.

You likely have a big launch coming some Sunday this fall. A kickoff weekend, small groups restarting, one hard push to gather people back after a scattered summer. Let me tell you what that day can do for you, and what it can't.The room will be full on that launch morning. But then October will come, the crowd will settle back down, and you’ll start wondering whether any of it mattered. It did, but not for the reason you were hoping. Big days create momentum; they don't keep it. So the real question isn't: How big can your launch be? The real question is this: What catches the crowd once it gathers? Momentum is far easier to keep than to create.Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives" (John 12:24 NLT). The harvest is real, but something has to be buried first. In a church, it's rarely a program. It's usually somebody's tradition, or somebody's sense of control.A big day creates the crowdBig days work by pyramiding. You're down at one level, and then you go high on a big day. When it's over, you come back down, but not as far down as you were before. Then you plan another big day, and when it’s over, your numbers are a little higher again.Before our first public service at Saddleback, we were running about 20 people in a home Bible study. We did a big mailout for Easter, and 205 people showed up. Then we averaged 120 for the rest of that month. So, during that Easter month of April 1980, we ended up picking up 100 people.After that, we tried to make Easter the mental picture of what we wanted to be averaging a year later. That's the real work a big day does. It hands your people a photograph of what you're asking them to believe in.New units catch itBut a photograph doesn't hold anyone. A crowd with nowhere to go on the second Sunday is just a good memory by the third. So you have to create new units so there's somewhere for new people to go. That might look like new classes, new small groups, or new services.The loudest objection to starting a second service is usually the exact reason you need one. When people say, "If we go to two services, I won't know everybody anymore," they've just told you what the real ceiling is. A church of 80 or 90 people probably has eight small groups of about 10 people each. Once a small group gets past 10, it stops working, because somebody quietly stops talking.This is why new groups have to keep coming. Consistent growth is the result of a consistent process, not of an unrelated schedule of big events. Churches that pull off the big event and open nothing new afterward watch the church sit at the same size and wonder why they even bothered. Growth happens month by month by month.So before you print anything for your fall launch, count the new places a person could land afterward. If the answer is none, you're about to spend six weeks of energy filling a room you can't hold.Control is what drops itIf the answer is more than none, brace yourself. Those new places will fill, and the first complaint you hear won't be about the crowd.Right when growth starts working, you'll hear something that sounds like a shepherding failure. "Pastor just isn't around anymore. There are so many people here now, I don't feel like anybody cares about me."I call this the care/control conflict. People often complain about not being cared for when the real issue is that they're losing control. What's often underneath it is this: “I used to be a big fish in a little pond, and now the pond got bigger and I didn't get bigger.”The average person knows 62 people, whether the church has 70, 700, or 7,000, so nobody needs to know everyone to feel like it's their church. Care is legitimate, and you meet it by multiplying small groups. Control is a need you cannot meet in a growing church.The worst thing you can do is turn all the decision-making back into a bureaucracy to soothe it. That feels responsive. It's how a church chooses its old size on purpose.So if you can't hold a crowd by caring harder, and you can't hold it by handing the church back to a committee, how can you hold it?People are what hold itPeople are what hold a crowd. I learned this the expensive way. In our first year, I worked 18 hours a day with no staff, and on the last Sunday of that year I stood up to preach and fainted in front of everybody. I was in my mid-20s and completely emotionally and physically out of gas.In January of 1981, I took a month off and went out to the desert. At the end of it, God said to me, "Rick, you focus on building people and I'll build the church. It's my church." What we later called “purpose driven” was never a church-growth strategy. It's a people-development strategy, and growth is the byproduct.So plan the big day, pastor. Fill the room and let your people see what a crowd looks like. Then go build the small groups and classes that will still be there in October, and loosen your grip enough that God has room to work. That's what catches a crowd.You already know how to create momentum. It costs six weeks and a mailing list. Keeping it costs a few new classes and a looser hold on the church. The crowd is God’s to keep. The people you build are your job.

"Then the people of Judah said, 'The work crews are worn out, and there is too much rubble. We can't continue to rebuild the wall.'" Nehemiah 4:10 (GW)Pastor, when discouragement hits, you probably reach for a passage that has helped before. Next time, I suggest you try Nehemiah.Discouragement is curable, but you can't cure it until you know what's causing it. Nehemiah led people who were doing good work. They were rebuilding something that mattered, something God had called them to. And partway through, they wanted to quit. Nehemiah understood there were four reasons for that. And their reasons may be the reasons for your discouragement too.First, you get fatigued. The work crews in Nehemiah 4:10 were simply worn out.Human beings wear out. You can't burn the candle at both ends, and ministry gives you a lot of ends to burn. If you're discouraged this morning, you may not need to change anything major. You may just need rest. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap.Second, you get frustrated. Nehemiah's people said there was too much rubble. Debris piled up everywhere, getting in the way of the actual building.You know your rubble. The email thread that won't die. The maintenance issue nobody else will handle. The meeting that could have been a text. None of it is the work you were called to do. All of it eats the hours you meant to give that work. Rubble doesn't clear itself. You have to recognize it and get rid of it, or it will quietly stop your progress.Third, you think you've failed. Nehemiah's people couldn't finish as fast as they had planned, and their confidence collapsed. They probably thought they had been foolish to believe they could rebuild the wall at all.Maybe the attendance goal didn't happen. The program didn't take. The family you invested in left anyway. Missed the date? Set a new one. That's it. Don't quit over a calendar. Everybody fails. The issue is not that you failed; it's how you respond to it. Do you sink into self-pity? Do you start blaming other people? Do you decide the whole thing is impossible? None of that gets you anywhere. Refocus on what God intended and start moving again.Finally, you give in to fear. Nehemiah 4 suggests the people most affected by fear are the ones spending time around negative people.You may have a few of those in your congregation. Maybe your fear sounds like, “I can't handle this; it's too much responsibility.” Maybe it's the fear of the next criticism. Maybe it's the quiet conviction that you don't deserve for this to go well. Fear will wear you down if you let it. Spend less time around negativity, and pray honestly: "God, help me get my eyes off the problem and keep them on you."You don't have to stay stuck. Before you dive into this week, ask God to show you which of the four it is: fatigue, frustration, failure, or fear. Name it, deal with that one thing, and get back to work on the wall.

Pastor, you can preach a sermon that's completely accurate and still fail to help your people become more like Jesus. That's an uncomfortable thing to admit, and I've felt it myself. So how do you preach in a way that helps people become more like Jesus? That's what I want to show you.The Bible says, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29 NIV). That's God's purpose for every person he's ever made: to shape us into the likeness of Jesus. If that's God's purpose for the people in your pews, it has to be your purpose every time you stand up to preach.Many ministry leaders have said, “If there's a mist in the pulpit, there's going to be a fog in the pew.” A sermon without a clear purpose is a misuse of the Bible, a waste of people's time, and a frustration to the preacher who gave the week to it.Information alone doesn't change peopleAfter decades in the pulpit, I've learned that the problem in most churches isn't a lack of information. People already know far more than they're doing.George Gallup put it plainly after a national survey: Never before had the gospel made such inroads in America while making so little difference in how people actually live. People walk out with full notebooks and empty obedience.D. L. Moody said the Bible wasn't given to increase our knowledge, but to change our lives. If your sermon explains the text but never calls people to obey it, you've just given a very good lecture.Build the whole bridgeThe best picture for preaching is bridge-building. On one side are the people sitting in your congregation this weekend; on the other side is the ancient text. Your job is to build the bridge that gets them from one side to the other.Some of us can spend six days studying the text but never show our people how it applies to their lives. Others are quick with a fresh illustration but light on Scripture. Neither approach builds the whole bridge. Biblical truth must reach the lives people are actually living.Change starts in the mind, not the willThe bridge connects the text to people's lives, but information alone still won't change them. Change begins when God's Word renews the way they think. Romans 12:2 says to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (NIV). Not your willpower. Your mind.The Bible's word for that is “repentance,” or metanoia in the Greek. It means changing your mind. Lasting behavior change begins when God's Word changes what a person believes.That's why preaching for life change calls people to repentance. You want them to leave believing God's truth and ready to obey it.Ask yourself before you preach againHere's my challenge to you, the same one I've had to ask myself more times than I'd like to admit: Are you preaching to be understood, or are you preaching for people to be changed? You can succeed completely at the first and fail completely at the second. Before you step into the pulpit this weekend, decide what response God's Word calls for, not just what information you want to explain. Then build the whole bridge from the text to obedience.