Group items tagged

Have we somehow misunderstood or twisted the truth of what Jesus came to do? Well, this is a huge question that would require survey of Gospel accounts let alone a wide-ranging study of Gospel presentations today. Neither of which did Love Wins provide. So, it is certainly an overstatement.

many Christians sitting in our churches are secretly asking them, but afraid to raise them publicly.

I’d be shocked if we conducted a survey of people in our churches and not many of them were either pluralistic or universalists. There is the official teaching of the church and then there is what the Christians who sit in the pews believe. Often these are two very different things.

It is the Pastor/Teacher who will raise up the next crop of leaders who will fulfill the roles of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor/teacher.  The laborers come out of the harvest, and the Pastor/Teacher is the farmer who carefully tends the sheep of God; protecting them, training them, deploying them in partnership with the evangelism team, identifying those with potential and making sure they are trained as the next generation of leaders though knowledge, practice, teaching others and replication.

A Movement usually only needs one or two apostolic types, a handful of prophets, and several dozen teams of evangelists.  But for the movement to succeed, it needs a pastor/teacher type for every 10 new groups started in order to complete the good work started.  The biggest challenge of the leadership of Movements is the training of the pastor/teacher role from within the movement.

When this element of movement is in place, and when it continues the learning processes used by the startup team, then workers emerge, pastor/teachers develop, and a very healthy self-replicating church is born.  The startup team moves on to the next place without church, but the pastor/teachers stay in place, maturing the church and developing an army of leaders who will extend the Kingdom of God. It is the responsibility of every Movement Strategist to make sure that the Pastor/Teacher development role is in place and that it is strong.  Without this element, movement will falter and fail.