THE PERPETUAL NURSERY

Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. -- Hebrews 6:1-2¹

“Do I have to go?” Chris whined.

His mother sighed and gave him an “I’m forcing myself to be patient with you” look. “You know you’re supposed to be there.”

“But Mom, I’m fifteen years old!”

“Good morning, Mrs. Clark!” most of the class replied. Including Chris’s mom, who elbowed him when he failed to even grunt in response to the teacher’s greeting.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are, Chris. The government says you’re supposed to be in school, so you’re going to school.”

Chris tried to reason with her. “But Dad doesn’t go.” Which was true enough – while he tromped off to school, Dad did other stuff. Fun stuff. Interesting, not-totally-boring stuff.

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Chris watched his mom’s face fall. She was always working to talk Dad into being involved with the school, and Dad never – literally, never – came. He decided to try another tack. “Besides, I’m not learning anything new.”

Back to forcing-myself-to-be-patient. “It never hurts to be reminded, Chris. It’s too easy to forget what’s important. And besides, you need to get together with other people. The government expects that too.”

“There are other ways to be with people than going to school ...”

“Chris, as long as you live in this house, you’re going to school. Is that clear?”

That was always the end of their argument – “because I said so!” “Yeah, Mom,” Chris replied with a sigh and a shrug.

All the way to school, Chris stared out the window and wished things were different. He’d been in school for ten years, for crying out loud. And they never taught him anything new – it was always the same lessons over and over. It would be different if he could learn something more. Or if he could teach what he’d already learned to someone who didn’t know it – maybe to some younger kids. But only the teacher ever got to teach, and the only opportunity the class was given to help someone else learn was to bring them to school and let the teacher do it for them.

Too soon, they pulled up to the school and found a spot in the parking lot. Chris’s mom said hi to people she knew as they walked into the building. While they exchanged small talk, Chris hunched over and tried to become invisible. He never actually managed to disappear, but it at least got most of his mom’s friends to leave him alone.

Finally, they arrived at the classroom. Chris plopped down at a desk and thumped his book down on it. His mom sat down at the desk next to him, placed her own book in front of her and folded her hands on top.

Just then, Mrs. Clark, the teacher came in. “Good morning, class!” she squeaked in a too-happy-to-not-be-fake voice.


“It’s SO good to see you again today!” Mrs. Clark enthused, smiling big enough to give her ears a strain. “Why don’t we start off this morning with ... the Alphabet Song? Sing it with me! A-B-C-D, E-F-G ...”

As the other people in class sang, Chris – still silent – stole a look at the adults in the room. Most of them were singing along, some with their eyes closed and heads tilted toward the ceiling. Chris’s mom had an exalted look on her face, glowing as if she hadn’t sung this exact same song five days a week for the last thirty-some years. Still glancing around, he saw only a few kids his own age, all sitting next to enraptured parents. One of them, a girl with dark spiky hair and enough black eyeliner to paint a battleship, met his eyes and shrugged, as if to say, don’t they think we know the alphabet by now?

Chris grimaced and shrugged back. What can you do? He turned back to his desk and thought about his mom’s words: “as long as you live in this house, you’re going to school.” Sighing again, he decided that if that was the case, he had to get out of that house, whatever it took ...

Now you may be thinking at this point, “That story is absolutely ridiculous! What kind of government would expect teens – and even adults – to keep attending kindergarten year after year, repeating the same lessons over and over, and never giving them the chance to either learn more or teach others? That makes no sense at all! If any government tried to enforce that, there would be a revolution faster than you can say ‘A-B-C’!”

For the most part, you would be right. It is absolutely ridiculous, and it does make no sense at all. But nonetheless, there are many governments that expect exactly that of their citizens, absurd though the premise may be. And for the most part, their citizens have been happy – or at least resigned – to obey the government’s dictates.

Those governments are the denominations and staffs of American congregations. Their citizens are the vast majority of American Christians. And it’s been going on for centuries.

* * *

We are at a crisis point in the American church. Attendance is dropping across the board, not just in the so-called “mainline” congregations but even in more fundamentalist ones. While some congregations are growing, most of the increase is “transfer growth” – people coming from other congregations rather than non-Christians coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus and becoming integrated with a local group of believers. Evangelism and outreach is becoming increasingly ineffective in a world that sees the church – and by extension, Christianity – as irrelevant to daily living.

Moreover, recently there has been a growing movement of longtime congregation members leaving established congregations to develop spiritual support networks via private relationships, multimedia, personal Bible study and the Internet – circumventing traditional attendance at a Sunday and/or weekday meeting. These “pillars of the church,” many of them former deacons, Sunday school teachers, and even pastors, are coming to the same conclusion that many pagans have professed: that the activities of American institutional congregations have little or no relevance to daily life. Worse yet, they are also by their actions arguing that those same institutions have little or no relevance to their walk with Christ.

What has caused this downturn in the size and cultural influence of the American institutional church? It’s become fashionable to blame the shrinking power of the church on the abandonment of traditional Christian values by both the outside culture and by many of the older Christian denominations. That has a measure of truth in it, and it would explain the declines in attendance in (and respect accorded to) many mainline congregations. But it does nothing to account for the more recent shakeout among evangelical and Pentecostal congregations that still profess their devotion to Biblical teachings.

Another theory is that the increasing involvement of Christians in politics (on both the right and the left) has given outsiders a wrong impression of what the gospel is about. Again, this has some basis in fact. Polls by Barna Research and other groups have shown that the greater emphasis among evangelicals and Pentecostals on political activism has been a turn-off for many people, especially younger ones, who might otherwise be interested in what these congregations have to offer spiritually. But it doesn’t explain why so many people already involved in these congregations are either “church-hopping” – transferring from one congregation to another – or cutting ties with local institutions altogether and seeking their spiritual sustenance elsewhere.

The loss of universal acceptance of Christian values in the culture (and the church) and the increased focus of many Christians on political instead of spiritual solutions to cultural problems are obvious factors in the church’s decline, but they clearly aren’t the whole story. In fact, they seem more like symptoms of a larger problem than problems themselves. Why are so many people who have been involved for years, sometimes decades, in “Bible-believing” congregations pulling up stakes and either moving on to other congregations or removing themselves from the entire congregational system? Furthermore, why aren’t those congregations – which are called to be the “light of the world” and the “city set on a hill” that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount – attracting people from the world that they supposedly exist to reach?

I have a theory that may account for all these phenomena. My theory is that the reason the church in America is declining in both numbers and impact is that, for the most part, the church in America is so wasting its energy and resources in activities that have no Biblical basis that it has nothing left for what He has actually called it to. Not only does much of the current activity of the American church do little or nothing to “reach the lost,” it also is hideously ineffective in helping “the found.” In short, it is not successful in promoting God’s kingdom because it is not doing what God wills for it to do – and in many quarters, may not even realize what His will is.

Trying to figure out God’s will has, for no apparent reason, become the Holy Grail for believers – the great treasure, always distant and always unattainable. In reality, at least part of it is not that complicated: look in the Bible – “God’s Word,” as we call it – and see what God says to do. Obviously, some study is needed, the context of Scripture has to be kept in mind, and no finite book can answer every question we put to it. But I suspect that the vast majority of problems Christians in the United States have could be solved by simply cracking open a Bible, reading what God has given us there, and then obeying it.

So if we’re trying to figure out what the church is supposed to be doing (and whether it is or not), the Bible is the logical place to start. And as we look there, two passages tend to stand out. The first is Matthew 28:18-20, one of Jesus’ last statements to His apostles before His ascension:

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

This passage, usually referred to as the Great Commission, is pretty straightforward. Jesus tells his closest associates that God has given Him all authority over heaven and earth, and with that in mind, he tells them that they are to:

a. Make disciples of all the nations,
b. Baptize those disciples, and
c. Teach those disciples to do all the things He told them to do.

You don’t need to do a lot of interpretation or gauge it by the cultural context to understand this. “I’m in charge, and I want you to go out, make disciples, baptize them and teach them to behave the way I taught you to behave.” As the saying goes, it isn’t rocket science.

(But just to avoid any misunderstanding, let’s explore the word “disciple” for a moment. “Disciple” is defined in Wiktionary as “1. A person who learns from another, especially one who then teaches others. 2. An active follower or adherent of someone, or some philosophy etc.” It is a transliteration of the Latin discipulus (learner, pupil), from the Latin verb discere (to learn). Essentially, a disciple is someone who actively learns from and follows in the footsteps of somebody else. What Jesus wanted His people to make of other people – and presumably, still does – were folks who will follow Him just as His first followers did.)

The other passage that should shed light on the question of God’s will for His church is Ephesians 4:11-16, in which Paul talks about the gifts Jesus has given to the church:

And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

So among the gifts Jesus gave to the church are callings to some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, for the specific purpose of training (discipling?) believers to minister to others, and building up their faith. The end goals of their work are to be unity of the church in relationship to Christ and each other, the maturity of its members, and the church’s continued growth. Again, it’s not hard to figure out.

The question is, if these are the things we are called to do in the church, are we doing them? Are we making disciples and leading them in behaving the way Jesus expects them to behave? Are our leaders equipping the people in their charge to minister? Are we developing greater closeness to Jesus and to each other, becoming more mature, growing as a body?

You’re kidding, right?

One can’t help but think that, if an intelligent being from another planet were to read the Bible and then observe the behavior of the American church, it would conclude that we have declared ourselves opposed to its teachings in this area. In most evangelical congregations, the greatest emphasis is placed on making converts rather than disciples. We invest huge amounts of time and energy into altar calls, emotional appeals to “receive Christ,” and “outreaches” to attract outsiders into our buildings, but doing very little to build relationships or spiritual depth once those people come in. Even in those events, most or all of the work is done by a small group of paid or volunteer staff – filling the roles, one might surmise, of the “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers” – who rarely solicit the opinions of the rest of the congregation, let alone involve them in the work outside of asking them to “bring their unsaved friends.” The average congregational member spends little if any time ministering outside (or during) the scheduled congregational meetings, and in survey after survey shows that he or she is almost completely untrained in ministry.

Think, if you will, about the congregations you have participated in over the time you have belonged to Jesus. How much time and effort has been put into elementary teaching of the things of God (or of the denomination) versus more advanced instruction? How many of them had adult Sunday school classes or home “cell groups”? Of those that did have adult Sunday school or cell groups, how many were structured similarly to the regular congregational service (i.e., one or two people talking while all others were expected to listen passively)? How many of those congregations had structures in place for mentoring or lay ministry training? How many times were members encouraged to find new opportunities to minister, and how much support did members receive when they did?

If your answers to any of these questions were something besides “few” and “none,” rejoice and be exceedingly glad – for your experience is sadly a rare one among American Christians. For most congregations, a constant reiteration of only the basics of the faith is standard, with little thought given to moving beyond them. (Contrast this with the Scripture passage at the start of this article, where the writer of Hebrews urges his readers toward “leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ” and “go[ing] on.”) Adult Sunday school is increasingly rare, and often consists mostly of a monologue delivered from a pulpit, just like the standard Sunday service. Only a small minority of congregations has cell groups, and those are usually structured with a speaker-and-listeners format as well. Members are largely discouraged from starting new outreaches unless those efforts are under the direct control of the congregation’s paid staff. And what mentoring I have seen in congregations over twenty-plus years in the church is not only uncommon, but done on a haphazard basis – usually a case of one pastor or elder deciding to help one promising member, rather than a plan in place for edifying large segments of the congregation.

So what do we have? We have mass meetings where a truncated form of the Gospel is presented, over and over and over, for at most a couple of hours a week, with no exploration of the depth and riches of God’s revelation to His people. We have a structure that only allows one person or a few people to teach others, and gives those others little chance to interact with the teachers or each other – a setup that owes more to the pagan temple practices of the Romans and Greeks than it does to the New Testament. We have “evangelistic work” that is largely ineffective because there is no relationship set up to reinforce the message presented. And we have millions of Christians who have little or no ability – or inclination – to impact a world full of people who are going straight to hell.

What we don’t have, in a word, is maturity. And we don’t have it because we’re doing very little to build it, and a whole lot to suppress it.

As the father of two small kids (and the husband of a teacher with a degree in child development), I have had to learn a lot in the past several years about how children learn and grow. Basically, to help someone mature, you need to provide them three things: education (teaching them the information they need for the future), modeling (living out what you teach them, so they have an example to follow) and experience (giving them the chance to apply in real-world situations what they’ve been taught). Give a child those three things, constantly, and they will have the tools they need to become responsible adults and contributing members of society.

Herein lies the problem for the American church: our congregations are not providing these necessities, and in fact are not structured to provide them. Let’s take a look at each of these three items individually:

Education. As we’ve covered above, most sermons are geared toward presenting the basics of Christianity, and they usually do it at least passably well. But because so much emphasis is placed on conversion instead of discipleship, it is rare to hear a sermon that goes past the basics. This is true also of adult Sunday school teaching (when it exists). In both situations, there are few opportunities for anyone but the designated speaker to talk, thus limiting chances for anyone else to ask clarifying questions or expand on the subject matter. If one is to learn anything more than what is in the pastor’s notes, one must hunt it down oneself – even in crucial areas like “how to study the Bible” and “how to pray in the will of God.” Thus, Christian education in America today is largely equivalent to a school that only goes up to the third grade, and the sole instruction given to the “graduating” eight-year-olds is, “the library’s over there – you’re on your own.” And sometimes, there isn’t even anyone pointing you toward the library.

Modeling. Because most of the activity in the American church is centered around the Sunday (and for some, weekday) congregational meetings, and the meetings themselves are centered around what is happening “on stage” (in the pulpit and with the musicians), there is little opportunity to cultivate meaningful relationships, let alone see how someone else lives and follow their example. Ten minutes before the music starts or after the meeting is dismissed is not a large enough foundation to build on if one is seeking to be mentored, or to mentor. So, as in education, any modeling that is happening is done by individual members of the congregation, totally on their own without any guidance or support from the congregation’s leadership. Even when the mentor is a paid staff member, the decision and process of mentoring is entirely left to that person, without any real institutional support.

Experience. Even in the unlikely event that someone is able to gain for themselves the education and mentoring needed to mature in the faith, the American church system is so structured that their only acceptable option if they want to minister to others is, in most cases, to get a ministerial license and hope that a congregation will hire them. For whatever reason, most pastors are reluctant to allow a non-staff member to either preach in the Sunday or weekday service, or to start or oversee a non-preaching ministry that the pastors don’t directly control. And again, mentoring is a pretty rare occurrence. So if a person wants to learn hands-on how to minister to others and live out what they have learned and believe about God’s will – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – they pretty much have to find or make the opportunities themselves, often bucking the congregation’s leaders in the process.

So what we have is an almost universal situation in the church in the United States where, if a Christian reaches a recognizable level of spiritual maturity, it’s more or less by accident. So why are we surprised that most Christians are immature? The whole system seems designed to make sure they are immature! Is it any wonder that so many Christians are sucked into doctrinal errors like the so-called “prosperity gospel,” or are puzzled about what God’s will for them entails, when they haven’t been taught anything but the most elementary bits of theology?

Is it any wonder that so many Christians push for political instead of spiritual solutions to society’s problems, when the only examples of Christian impact on society they get to see in regular action are the Ralph Reeds and James Dobsons of the world?

Is it any wonder that so many Christians just sit in the pews every Sunday, contributing nothing to the life of the church except carbon dioxide, when few of them are trained or encouraged to minister in any other way except to sit in the pews every Sunday?

And is it any wonder that so many non-Christians refuse to consider the possibility of a new life in Jesus, when all they see in the church are immature Christians living the same old life as the rest of the world? Is it any wonder that they say the church is full of hypocrites, when our organizations are so successful at producing hypocrisy?

The word “organizations” is a key to the root of this problem, I believe. Reading the Gospels and Epistles, one finds that when talking about the church, Jesus and his followers usually use organic symbolism – a farmer hiring workers, a crop growing in a field, yeast being worked into dough, a husband relating to his wife – rather than organizational symbolism, such as the Roman Senate or the Sanhedrin. Even when organizational characters show up in Jesus’ parables, their actions tend to be more free-flowing than any organization chart – for instance, a king sending his servants down the back alleys to bring people to his son’s wedding banquet. It seems clear from any reading of the New Testament that Jesus saw His church as being more of an organism than an organization.

Furthermore, when Jesus (and for the most part, the apostles) wanted people to draw closer to Him, the command was not “sit and listen,” but “follow me.” Jesus said “follow me” far more than he talked about “being born again” or any other analogy for surrendering one’s life to God. Implicit in that is that life in God is meant to be walked out rather than just taught, that the life Jesus means for us to live involves not just education but also modeling and personal experience. It’s what educators these days call a “holistic” approach, involving the whole person, not just the intake of facts via a lecture or book.

But how are our modern congregations (and the denominations of which most of them are a part) run? They are run as organizations, with a CEO (the senior pastor), an org chart (even when not written down, still implicit) and fairly strict rules about who has the right or power to do what, when and where. In the vast majority of American congregations, every decision, large or small, is routed through one person, the pastor, who often receives (or in some cases, allows) little input from anyone else in the congregation save a small trusted circle of elders or “board members” (there’s that organizational bent again). Often there is an implied encouragement for pastors to not help people mature in the faith, since in many denominations the pastor is expected to “control” his congregation – and mature believers are more likely to think for themselves and are thus harder to herd.

And like the congregational structure, where everything that happens is in the hands of the pastor, the teaching of the congregation is also routed largely through one outlet: the Sunday (and sometimes weekday) sermon(s). No system for modeling is set up, and almost no opportunity to carry out what is learned unless one is willing to do it on one’s own (and risk the wrath of the leadership if it isn’t done the way they think it should be). And there is only one opportunity for education: a long monologue or monologues with no chance for clarification or input (let alone correction of potential error), from a person we have no chance to relate with, either during the “teaching time” or outside it.

Looking at these twin bottlenecks – all ministry expected to be done by one pastor, all teaching expected to be accomplished by one message – one can see an explanation for almost every deficiency in the church in America. Having congregations largely ignorant of Biblical truth is no surprise when the entire extent of Biblical education for most people is one long uninterrupted speech once a week. Also, when that is the only chance for people to learn, the message itself has to be narrowed down to the lowest common denominators, thus in theory providing “something for everyone” but without room for tougher concepts or advanced thinking that believers need to grow into maturity. Furthermore, with the congregational structure focused on one person, there is naturally the expectation that that person alone will be responsible for most of those monologues – thus eliminating opportunities for anyone else to contribute even via that inadequate outlet.

Even evangelism suffers under this approach – because when all actions are in the hands of the pastor and all instruction is condensed down to the sermon, the only thing that passes for evangelism is an exhortation to “bring your unsaved friends to church to hear this message.” Despite study upon study showing that most people are brought to a saving knowledge of Christ through relationships with Christians they already know, many congregations seem to operate with the expectation that the best way to bring people to God is to have them sit and listen to a total stranger talk for up to an hour at a clip, without even a chance for the unsaved people we supposedly care about so much to ask questions. In many congregations, this expectation has even submarined the weekly sermons, which are treated by the pastors involved as simply long introductions to altar calls.

So we shouldn’t be shocked at the state of our congregations today. The structures we have put in place are near-perfect for delivering the results with which we currently suffer: bored congregations with declining attendance, talented members of those congregations either frustrated with the lack of opportunities to minister or abandoning the system entirely or partially, and stressed-out pastors trying to do it all themselves and often burning out in gaudy and spectacular fashion. It shouldn’t surprise us that this has happened any more than we should be surprised when a shoe factory produces shoes – its design lends itself to that end. If anything, I’m flabbergasted that the state of the American church isn’t far worse than it currently seems (though it may be, and I just haven’t heard).

I would be remiss if I did not offer a concrete solution to this overarching problem, a method to open up these bottlenecks and give greater opportunities for maturity in the body of Christ. But where can we find such a solution? For one, I don’t think we can solve anything by continuing to do what we have been doing, only harder, or louder, or longer – which seems to be the default setting for too many congregations. The way we’ve been doing things is the cause of the problem; doing more of it will not fix it. That would be the equivalent of trying to get out of a deep hole by digging with a bigger shovel.

Nor do I believe a solution lies in parachurch ministries, those without congregational or denominational ties. Parachurch groups can serve a useful function in supplementing the education a believer receives elsewhere. But because so much energy (and money) is tied up in that congregational/denominational framework, parachurch organizations are largely dependent on it for support, and are expected, either overtly or otherwise, to conform their mode of operation to that framework. In most cases, parachurch groups are just as organizationally (rather than organically) minded as their congregational counterparts, and often more so. So while there are good unaffiliated ministries out there, even they are by and large too dependent on the current paradigm to get us out of that hole.

So what can we do? Just as we found in the Scriptures the definition of the problem, we can return to them to find the solution. And the solution is one that, because it is so woven into every aspect of the Bible story, is impossible to miss if you actually look for it. Let me give one example of it, from Exodus 18:13-24, where Moses (having recently led the Israelites out of Egypt) is being visited by his father-in-law Jethro:

And so it was, on the next day, that Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning until evening. So when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said, “What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?”

And Moses said to his father-in-law, “Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a difficulty, they come to me, and I judge between one and another; and I make known the statutes of God and His laws.”

So Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself. Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you: Stand before God for the people, so that you may bring the difficulties to God. And you shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do. Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they themselves shall judge. So it will be easier for you, for they will bear the burden with you. If you do this thing, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all this people will also go to their place in peace.”

So Moses heeded the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said.

See the situation? One man – “alone” – is taking responsibility for teaching all these people and helping them mature. Note that Jethro doesn’t say anything about the quality of the teaching, or the spiritual depth of the teacher. Instead, he says, “The thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself.” And isn’t that a great description of what has happened in the American church? We have pastors who are trying to do too much by themselves, and not only are they unable to do it all, both they and their congregations are left weakened by their effort. But then, what should one expect? If Moses – the leader of the entire nation of Israel, full of God’s Spirit and in such close relationship to God that often his face literally radiated with God’s secondhand glory – wasn’t up to this kind of task, what makes any of us think we are?

Instead, Jethro offers a two-pronged approach. First, he says Moses should teach “the statutes and the laws” of God to the people. And if you’ve ever read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, you know that they go far beyond the basics. Those four books cover a huge amount of in-depth principles and details of God’s will for that people at that time, so much so that they are still referenced in synagogues and churches over three millennia later. Furthermore, he adds that Moses needed to “show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do” – and if you can find a better definition of modeling using only one-syllable words, I’d like to hear it.

Secondly, Jethro told Moses to “select from all the people able men, such as fear God ... and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they themselves shall judge. So it will be easier for you, for they will bear the burden with you.” In other words, since Moses couldn’t do it alone, he shouldn’t try. Instead, he should pick other people to train, and give them parts of the responsibility for leading the people. In these two points, you have education, modeling and experience – all the things necessary to bring people to maturity.

Nor is this an isolated incident in Scripture. Over and over again in the Old Testament, you see great men of God arising seemingly out of nowhere because some leader spent time with them, taught them the things of God (sometimes even using words), modeling (however imperfectly) the way God wanted them to live, and giving them opportunities to gain experience in ministering to others. Whether by intent or accident, they were training them to become great men of God. Moses personally worked with Joshua, the priest Eli with Samuel, Elijah with Elisha, and Elisha with the so-named “sons of the prophets.” David learned leadership in the court of Saul, even though Saul was barking crazy for much of their time together. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

And in the New Testament, the full flowering of God’s plan for mankind, when He personally came down to earth to show us how it’s done, what did He do? He gathered twelve men around Him, taught them, modeled a godly life for them, and had them do ministry work. That’s the example He left for us, and that’s the example most of His disciples followed. As well as those who hadn’t been His disciples when He was on earth – Paul did the same thing, training up the likes of Timothy, Luke, Onesimus and to some extent Mark (though Mark took a lot longer to get it together).

And what happened when these people followed what clearly appears to be God’s plan for leading people? They changed the world.

I believe we could change the world again if every pastor and priest, every parachurch leader, decided to spend the majority of their ministry time working with, say, from eight to ten other people – teaching them the depth of Biblical truth, living out an example of a godly life, and sending them out to minister. I believe we could change the world again if leaders spent less time, energy and effort on building maintenance, office functions and even sermon preparation and instead raised up a small group of people who would not only do some of that work, but also “pay it forward” and themselves begin to raise up eight or ten others, who will in turn go and do the same, and so on. I believe we could change the world again if we took concrete steps toward not just affirming the core Protestant doctrine of “the priesthood of all believers”, but actually living it out in the life of our congregations by training and releasing “all believers” to be priests to each other and the fallen world.

That’s what God gives us leaders for – that’s their purpose, in His eyes (which, when you get right down to it, is the only viewpoint that really counts). Review Ephesians 4 again: God “gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry ...” Where are we going to get future apostles from unless current apostles teach others how to go to places where Jesus is not yet preached and raise up congregations of believers there? Where will we get future prophets unless current ones teach others how to listen for God’s voice and speak His words to His people and to the world? Where will future evangelists come from if today’s evangelists don’t come alongside them and show them how to reach out a hand to the lost? What will we do for pastors in the future if present-day pastors don’t train others in how to nurture people in the love of God? And where will the teachers of tomorrow be found if they aren’t taught by the teachers of today? I honestly believe that the entire future of the church in the United States hangs on this, because if today’s leaders don’t get busy preparing the next generation, there may not be one – or if by chance there is, it will be leaderless, directionless and with no ability to reach a dying world, “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine”, just as Ephesians 4 says.

I don’t claim this will be easy. There are many people in the church – ranging from pew-sitters in tiny congregations to leaders of multi-million-member denominations – who will not be willing to support such actions. In every society, including the American church, there are always what I call “natural bureaucrats,” people who are more interested in maintaining the status quo than pursuing what is best for those around them. There will be those who will oppose such a “radical” step and everyone who is willing to take it when they themselves are not. I suspect that nothing can be done about such people, but their presence has to be kept in mind nonetheless, lest those who are trying to do God’s will in this matter lose heart.

Furthermore, there are many who, while discipled in this way, will either turn their back on what they have learned or defect and oppose it. Moses had Joshua; he also had Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Among the sons of the prophets with whom Elisha worked was Gehazi, who ended up a covetous leper. Paul was abandoned by Demas. Even Jesus had Judas Iscariot. But the presence of Judas didn’t deter Jesus from raising up Peter, John and the rest of the Eleven (not to mention Matthias and scores of others), and the presence of a turncoat should not prevent anyone else from following the Biblical pattern either.

Living out this method of discipleship doesn’t require any new organization, only a willingness by pastors and their supervisors to relinquish some personal control over their congregations. It won’t require a significant outlay of funds, only a reallocation of how their time is spent. And let’s face it, for most people, spending time interacting with a few other folks is a lot more fulfilling that spending it with books or paperwork – even for confirmed, armor-plated introverts like myself. In doing so, we will take a huge step toward truly carrying out Jesus’ Great Commission to “make disciples of all the nations” and “teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” Because currently we’re not doing well on that score at all.

If our leaders are willing to take this step – to put in-depth, personal discipleship at the top of the church’s agenda, and each congregation’s agenda – I think we will see the true revival, the “coming to life again,” that we in the American church have longed for. If we don’t, I think the American church will continue to shrink into ineffectiveness and irrelevance. And I believe the evidence, Biblical and experiential, supports this conclusion.

So here we are. On the one hand, the God we are pledged to and Whose Word we claim we believe in calls us to progress beyond basic teachings and behavior into spiritual maturity as His people. On the other hand, the church in America is operating in such a way as to create a perpetual nursery, full of immature Christians who often barely know the simplest teachings of their faith and rarely move beyond them, either in their knowledge or their lifestyle.

We can – and, if we are ever to fulfill God’s will for us, must – do better than this.
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¹ All Scripture references are from the New King James Version, copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

² To avoid confusion, whenever I use the word “church,” it refers to the entire body of Christians in a country, region or the world as a whole. Whenever I refer to a local group or organization of Christians, I will use the word “congregation.” Hope this helps.