Skip to main content

thinking about the process

Have enjoyed reading Randy Pope's new book, Insourcing: Bringing Discipleship Back to the Local Church (Zondervan, 2013), part of their Leadership Network Innovation Series. This book, along with Rainer and Geiger's Simple Church, is calling the church back to the process of actually making disciples, rather than merely running programs, maintaining growth, and producing worship services.  Both books are reminiscent of Robert Coleman's classic, The Master Plan of Evangelism

Randy Pope interviewed Ken Blanchard, who shared the diagram below.  In business it is important to follow this process in training new leaders: first, you tell them what to do (directives), then you coach them on how to do these (coaching), then back off a bit and be available for advice and encouragement (support), and finally to release them to do it on their own (delegation).  Blanchard said, never, never, never try to go from directives to delegation.  This produces disillusioned leaders and/or significant failure.


The author realized that many American evangelical churches do precisely this.  They tell Christians what to do and then release them too quickly to attempt to reach their goals on their own.  The result is disillusionment and discouragement, as well as immature and ill-equipped church leaders.  Perimeter Church has for the past few years been attempting to build disciples along the lines of the following model, summarized by the acronym TEAMS:

           

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Howard Hendricks on OT books chronology

When I was in seminary, Howard Hendricks (aka "Prof") gave us a little card with the books of the OT chronologically arranged. The scanned copy I have was a bit blurry and I wanted to make something like this available for our church class in OT theology ("Story of Redemption"). A few minor edits and here it is...

clement quotes hebrews

Clement of Rome wrote to the church in Corinth around AD 90.  This is perhaps the same Clement, companion of Paul, mentioned in Philippians 4:3.  Many hold him to be the first bishop / pope in Rome, aka St. Clement I.   Clement quotes from the letter to the Hebrews.  Origin suggested that Clement was in fact the writer (as transcriber or amanuensis) of Hebrews.  Perhaps this letter began as a "word of exhortation" given by Paul at the synagogue (Heb 13:22; cf Acts 13:15) which then became a circular letter for the churches.  Other possible authors of Hebrews include Luke, Barnabas, or Apollos.  The theology is Pauline, but the transcriber is obviously second-generation (Heb. 2:3-4). At any rate, this early church leader in Rome, is already quoting Hebrews in his letter in AD 90:    CHAPTER 36  ALL BLESSINGS ARE GIVEN TO US THROUGH CHRIST This is the way, beloved, in which we find our Savior, even Jesus Christ,  the High Priest of all our offerings, the defender and he

one-liners

Here are 25 of my favorite one-liners from comedian Steven Wright:   1)  I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. 2)  Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back. 3)  Half the people you know are below average. 4)  82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 5)  A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. 6)  All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand. 7)  The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 8)  OK, so what's the speed of dark? 9)  How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink? 10)  If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. 11)  Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. 12)  When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane. 13)  Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now. 14)  I intend to live forever ... So far, so good. 15)  If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? 16)  Eagles may soar, but weasels don'