Gaining by Losing

Last updated on: July 2, 2015 at 10:40 am by Guest Contributor

Gaining by Losing 2015-07-02T10:40:37-04:00 Guest Contributor

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by JD Greear

I sat at a table with our four church-planters-in-residence for the year, listening to them give their final report before being sent out from our church. We had given them a head-hunting license, and they had recruited 200 of our active members to go with them. I knew I was supposed to be excited, and I was… but I was also feeling an involuntary lump form in my throat, a mixture of sadness, fear, and, quite frankly, panic. Their lists included big givers, key volunteers, and leaders—of small groups, of ministries, and even of our pastoral team. People I did not want to lose. Leaders whose absence would leave significant gaps. This was going to be much harder than I had thought.

“Sending” preaches well, but it can be painful when it’s really executed. As I listened to those four leaders give their reports, I put my hands under the table and literally forced them open to God. Opened in surrender. Opened as a sign that I must take my hands off of one of the most precious earthly things to me—my church. Open as on offering of praise to Jesus’ worthiness and faith in his promise. Open in the belief that God builds his kingdom as we let go, not as we hold on.

Those open hands represent one of my greatest, and most difficult, acts of faith.

But it is Jesus’ way of extending the reach of his kingdom. His vision for prevailing against the gates of hell never did not consist of platforming a few hyper-anointed megapastors to pack an auditorium with their electrifying sermons, but in empowering ordinary believers to carry the gospel with them everywhere they went. Most of us in church leadership think of successful ministry as a big attendance with big conversion numbers and a big budget and even bigger attention for the leader behind it all. But Jesus said, “Except a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The kingdom of God works on the principle of the harvest: we reap only as we send out; living comes by dying; gaining comes by losing. Jesus calls us first not to a platform, but to an altar.

The New Testament strategy for completing the Great Commission is not addition, you see, but multiplication. That may seem obvious enough, but it’s not an easy lesson for those of us in ministry to learn. Kingdom multiplication comes at great cost to us. And if we want to see ministry multiply, we have to take our hands off of our desires for ministry and empower our people to go out into the world.

In our day, this has become more important than ever. Even those in our own backyards will likely have to be reached outside the church. The “nones” in Western society (those who check “none” for religious affiliation) grow each year at an astounding rate. “Nones” don’t casually make their way back into church because the pastor is engaging, the music is cool, or the guest services are Disney-esque. They have to be reached outside the church. In the future, we will likely see fewer and fewer megachurches competing for larger pieces of a rapidly shrinking pie. Those who want to “grow the pie” will have to reach people outside the weekend services, which means training up their people and sending them out, not just gathering and counting them.

I want to equip church leaders to meet that challenge. Sending has always been at the heart of the church’s identity, but far too many churches in America have forgotten what Jesus told us about the success of the church. Sending capacity, not seating capacity, is the heart of the church’s greatness. I want to prepare pastors to lead the charge in the terrifying and exhilarating process of sending. I recount the exciting and painful story of how God transformed us into a sending church, and the principles for establishing a sending culture in any church.

All churches want to grow; all believers want to reach the world. But success in ministry happens not when we hoard what God has given us—and that includes our people—but when we are willing to send out our best, to give our most dedicated members and most gifted leaders away. Bringing in large groups of people to hear a message is good; training up disciples and sending them out is far better. It’s time for us to start engineering our churches to build up and send out leaders.

The irony in all of this is that we won’t need to choose between gathering and sending. Churches that focus on sending will experience multiplied ministry that glorifies God and expands his kingdom. In other words, the big “senders” turn out to be the best “gatherers.”

Effective churches don’t need to choose between reaching their communities and reaching the world. The good news is that they can, and must, do both. But the first step is often the hardest: we need to open up our hands.

J.D. Greear is the author of Gaining by Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches That Send (July 2015, Zondervan) and the lead pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

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