Lead Time
Lead Time
Discussing Church Growth - From a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Perspective
This episode dives deep into the importance of multiplication over mere growth in church leadership. We explore humility as a foundational quality for leaders, the biblical basis for raising up other leaders, and practical steps for cultivating a culture of discipleship.
• Emphasizing humility as a key trait for effective leaders
• Understanding multiplication versus addition in church growth
• Learning from Jesus and Paul’s models of leadership development
• Encouraging a shift from a pastor-centric model to community-based models
• Highlighting the importance of discipleship as a holistic apprenticeship
• Providing actionable steps towards fostering a culture of multiplication
Discover how to make a profound impact in your community through intentional leadership development! If you're interested in consulting from us: click here.
Breaking down faith, culture & big questions - a mix of humor with real spiritual growth.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Join the Lead Time Newsletter! (Weekly Updates and Upcoming Episodes)
https://www.uniteleadership.org/lead-time-podcast#newsletter
Visit uniteleadership.org
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kauberg. This is going to be a shorter conversation today. I think this will probably be released on a Friday, just the next step for you on your leadership journey. A lot of these podcasts are going to be focused on, maybe, best practices and clarifying even some of our language.
Speaker 2:You know, jack, as you go on the leadership development journey, as you start to become a church that is focused on maybe building a hospitality culture or learning new things like the church engagement model, there's one thing that is required on this journey, and that is humility, because there's never an end to this. I mean, there's always someone. There's worthy rivals who are all around you within our denomination, outside of our denomination, there's people that are at a different place than you are theologically, on different points. Anytime. I'm focusing on getting feedback right, I never should be surprised that someone has a difference of opinion or amplified opinions around a certain topic, because the more I know about a certain thing, that means the more I don't know, and someone else is leaning into another point of emphasis, and I just have to have a curious heart, and we're gonna lean into that curiosity today. Any observations, though, to just kind of maintaining humility as we go on this leadership development journey. There's never there's. The ceiling is very, very high, jack, as we continue to learn.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is very high, and I think you nailed a couple things here. I mean, first is there's always more to learn, right? So we are on learning journeys and you know, even quoting good old Martin Luther, he would say it takes a hundred years to become a good theologian, right? So there's always opportunities for us to learn and for our audience to learn. Everyone is constantly learning. And then number two is there's always an opportunity to be more clear with our language. It's very easy for messages to get confused. Language is not always precise, it doesn't always mean the same thing to different people, and so we're constantly trying to monitor our language and understand. Are we being as crystal clear as we possibly can when we're trying to communicate about certain topics? So that kind of brings up today's topic that we're talking about multiplication, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:that's right. I had an email that was sent that we're talking about multiplication, right. Yeah, that's right. I had an email that was sent. Maybe it was a text because I think it was in response to the podcast I did on the line, a partner podcast and great Brian Stecker doing a wonderful, wonderful job with that podcast, welcoming a number of different people with a variety of different perspectives. It was almost like a he wants to be like Joe Rogan. You know it was like almost a three-hour conversation, so you'd think in three hours I would have been able to clarify a term like multiply and leadership development leading toward multiplying leaders. The listener asked you throw around multiply a lot. Could you be more precise with what that means Over?
Speaker 2:the next 10, 15 minutes we'll see how long we go. We want to give a kind of a masterclass deep dive. When we use, in our context, in the ULC, multiplication, we mean this Jack, why don't you kick us off? What do we mean when we talk multiplication?
Speaker 3:Well, to start off, you know, obviously it's like it's a mathematical term, right? So some churches grow and other churches multiply, and when you know, if you're a math nerd, like our buddy Trey who's got a doctorate in mathematics and curriculum design, right. But if you draw a curve of something that's on a growth model, it's like a straight line, right, growth is linear, right. But multiplication means that you know, 10 becomes 20, 20 becomes 40, right, there's this amplification that happens, and so that's exponential. So the question is how does a church expand, a church movement, a collection of churches, let's say the church in a city, how does that movement of Christianity expand in a way that is exponential rather than linear? Because when you hear a lot of biblical language, you hear Jesus talking about more of an exponential growth model as an explanation of his desire for the church and even modeling out in certain ways. I was just looking at Luke, right where Jesus is praying. He gathers all the disciples, he goes up in the mountain to pray and he comes down and he picks 12th right, and then he goes on a journey where he's going around preaching and he's got the disciples just watching him, just watching him do it right. Then later on he sends out the 12th Right. Then later on he sends out 72. Right, so what he's doing is he's raising up people to do what he does. And then those people are raising up people to do what they do. And you even see that with Paul, when he's, you know, saying, hey, the things that I'm, when he's, he's the things that I'm teaching, you, make sure you're, make sure you're raising up other people to teach what I'm. The wisdom that I've given you, right?
Speaker 3:So this is an expectation of raising up leaders in the church is that it's not just about a pastor being a really good preacher. It's important. You know the pastor has to be the. You know he has to preach the gospel, he has to do the word and sacrament. That is important. We're not saying that's not a thing. That will always be a thing, but that's not the end of your job description If you're leading the church.
Speaker 3:If you're leading the church, there's more things that go into that job description and we call those things multiplicative discipleship actions. Can you raise up people to do what you do or portions of what you do? Right, you, pastor, will always have a limit to the number of people that you're going to be able to communicate to. But if you equip the local church and you raise up leaders and you shift the identity of the local church so they see themselves part of the priesthood, right Now you have more people speaking to more people than you could have ever spoken to. Right Now you've got the beginnings of a multiplication movement. Now, how do you do that? That's the question.
Speaker 2:Well, let's pause. Let's just pause. Yeah, let's talk. We'll get to the how. But I think we need to get just drilled deeper into the why this is so important. Not only is it what Jesus did, but I think of the explosion in the early church and the apostle Paul. He is obviously an equipping, releasing, mission-oriented leader. He's trusting the Holy Spirit. He's obviously trusting the word of God to work mightily. But then, at the beginning and the end of a lot of his letters, he's referring to all of these leaders scattered across the known church. And who are these? These are apostolic leaders who have heard the word and are carrying out their apostolic functions in their local areas, meaning they're raising up other men who can teach, who can raise up other men who can teach.
Speaker 2:Second Timothy 2.2 is really a life verse here, Find others who can teach and raise them up to find others who can teach. You see, actually and there's a lot of people who have written a lot about this but in second timothy 2 2 you want to open it up, he's. He's talking about timothy, his, his final, his final letter. Jack is like his greatest, he's in the maritime prison in rome and he's doing for one what he wishes he could do for many people. It's kind of, in some respects, second timmy, at respects 2, timothy's last will and testament, right, you know. So in that we have to understand the context. In that context, knowing that death is imminent, he's mandating Timothy, charging him to find other men who can find other men to teach. He's saying I received this authority from Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, like I've met with Jesus. So there's one generation, two generations down to me. Timothy, I'm interacting with you, now you're finding another one who can you can interact with, and then they're going to find another one. So there's five different generations, five different movements of the word that moves out of Paul's ministry.
Speaker 2:How formative would that have been to Timothy? We don't know a lot of his story. I can't wait to meet Timothy. It's like how did you actually live this out. He's going to say. I'll tell you what. It was messy. There were fits and starts. I thought I could trust this guy or whatever, but the Holy Spirit worked and I had to release it. I had to move from a doer to a developer of people for any of this to have a possibility to saturate. And you know, in the early church, jack, last point, and then we'll get into the how. But you know, jesus is charged. You will be my witnesses. It's not just a command, it's a promise, and it actually happened in the book of Acts, right From Jerusalem, judea, samaria to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 3:And so they're like we got got to go, we got to release, we got to start. It was just in the DNA of the early church and I think we need to reclaim that multiplying spirit today. All right Done with the. So, that being said, discipleship multiplication is different than discipleship growth. Right, A very let's say, a very effective communicating pastor that does a really great job at communicating the gospel, he can absolutely attract a great number of people to his church, but it will plateau because there is a limit to the span of care that a pastor can do.
Speaker 3:Now you think differently about your role and you can say I'm going to raise up people that can do what I do I can. You know, we can have multiple directors, multiple people serving in paid and unpaid jobs that are able to help do discipleship in this context, able to share the gospel with their friends, able to communicate that right. So now we've got way more voices raising up more people doing life-on-life discipleship than just a pastor-centric model of discipleship for the church. We're not in any way denigrating the role of the pastor. We're actually saying as more important right, this is more important in addition to preaching and we're in sacrament. You're doing people development. You're doing leadership development. You are raising up not just any type of leader, but spiritual leaders.
Speaker 2:Amen, and I think discipleship needs to. We need to clarify what discipleship means to us. There's a lot of folks Lutherans, non-Lutherans who have done a lot of work here. I think my favorite synonym for the word disciple is apprentice. Yeah, Absolutely Someone, and let's use the three W's from Jesus someone who knows and can speak the words of Jesus. So that's like a little bit ahead here. This is like holistic formation. Apprenticeship is holistic formation. So those who understand the words of Jesus, understand the work of Jesus, so they know he went to the cross and they're carrying their cross as well. They understand this is not a way, a path of glory, this is the way of the cross. And then, third, they know the way of Jesus, the rhythms of Jesus. Then you know I think we don't look at the way of Jesus nearly enough like how epic of a leadership development guru, multiplying leader, he was. It seems kind of silly to say.
Speaker 3:And it's much, much more than a formal seminary education, although those things are extremely important as well.
Speaker 3:But, you know, a school is not the fullness of discipleship, it is a very much lived out life on life. It is iron testing, iron right. It is bearing each other's crosses. It's like you said, it is role modeling and having people that follow. What's role modeled? Yep, and this is exactly when you say that there's 12,. We see 12 disciples in the Bible. These are 12 apprentices. They're literally apprenticing under Christ so that when he's ready to give the great commission, they've been apprenticed to do this Right.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. So talk. We've done the Don ratio before. We need one pastor for every 500 people in our Valley, like we need exponentially more pastors. You may be in a rural setting and you don't have the same sense of urgency, but I bet there's still room for growth to satisfy the Don ratio. We know that for gospel saturation to occur, one pastor for every 500 people, and this is one of the big reasons in a community. So this is one of the big reasons why we're lovingly challenging our thought process right now in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
Speaker 2:Regarding formation yes, Are we raising up leaders just to satisfy the current need and maybe a declining need in churches? Or are we looking at our community and saying we want to be about gospel saturation? We need to rethink it, jack, yeah some people.
Speaker 3:So you know our context. Christ Greenfield, it's a relatively large Lutheran church. We can celebrate that, but there's nothing, there's no laurels to rest on. We are in the Phoenix metro area with 4 million people and for Christianity, you know, and ideally, what we would love is Lutheran Christianity, we love the orthodoxy of the Lutheran faith. For that to be normative in a community, you need one person who can disciple and teach for every 500 people. This is research by the Dawn Initiative. So what does that look like for the Phoenix metro area? Well, we need about 12,000 more people, 12,000 more churches, 12,000 more pastors in our Phoenix metro area, right? So even if we were a massive mega church, right, with 10,000 people showing up, we are just tiny, scratching the surface of what this metropolitan area needs. We need to think radically different on our scale. We need to think about the church as a movement that raises up people, to fulfill that ratio, to make Christianity normative for an entire region. Right.
Speaker 3:The scale, the scope of what we're doing has to be rethought. We have to have a different lens on how we think of mission in America, and so it starts with rethinking the role of the local church. We believe that the true church is found where there's preaching and sacrament, right, but the role of the church has to be a training institution. We have to think of every single type of church as a type of seminary, where life-on-life discipleship is happening, where people are being challenged to live out their vocation, not in your, not just their daily vocations as police officers and, you know, managers and tech consultants and stuff like that. But, priest, right, what does that look like to carry that vocation with you into every single environment? And then also, how do I take the leadership skills that I've learned in the business world and apply that in the church and become a spiritual leader? Right? And what does it look like then to start planting more churches, or raising up more in our case, more campuses to reach more people? Right, this is the multiplication movement. So this is where you see exponential growth rather than the linear growth. It's a different model of thinking.
Speaker 3:So the challenges for us, tim, because people will ask well, why do we challenge the existing pastoral formation for our synod? Number one, we are not advocating for the elimination of the existing system. We are looking for addition to the system so that the local churches can be equipped to raise up people locally. In order for this system to happen, we are going to have to Think of the national body as a body that exists primarily to equip local congregations with excellent leadership development content. Imagine how things would look different if that was the culture of our church body, if the culture of the church body was you, pastor, are expected to raise up spiritual leaders of all different kinds, including future pastors, future directors, future whatever that is, and we're going to equip you locally to do that. How that would look different for the scale and growth of our church. It would be amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we're praying. We're praying for that day. Honestly, our district shout out to the Pacific Southwest District. I mean we're trying to live into that reality A hundred new starts in the next 10 years. Some of them are churches, not all of them are. They're places, gospel stations, micro church expressions, all different types, and so, yeah, the training for all of those different communities are going to look different.
Speaker 2:Here's what I do know You're a product of this, jack, I am.
Speaker 2:You came out of the marketplace and you have a deep love for Lutheran theology and you want to multiply leaders. You don't want it just to be about you, you want it to be about others that we're in life with and we're just seeing a robust explosion right now is as culture and things change, like deep theology and our Lutheran theology, our tension filled theology, law, gospel, centered, like there are way more lay men and women who, around their respective gifting If there are, I see in you conversations could imagine the day we're living in our, in our context. I guarantee they're there. They could imagine the day where they're helping, they're helping the pastor, they're bearing the burdens. You know the load of the pastor and I'll tell you what it is so much fun to live into that right now, to have so many different proclaimers in our community. And for those that say well, how do you maintain theological, appropriate Lutheran theology, integrity, there we go, that's the word. And I have never okay, I've been down this path for a long time.
Speaker 2:It's not like there's not nuanced ways that we can but, it's the body of christ, the holy spirit that's within the body of christ. If one of these brothers is like teaching a word that is inappropriate to our lutheran lens for scripture, I would hear about it. But here's the reality. They're in learning community right now. That's not happening. It's not happening happening, these guys are robust Lutheran theologians. It's great.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you this question right now, because we've been on this leadership development journey, raising up people in alternative pathways, but very Lutheran right. So, as we have done, this, would you say, christ Greenfield has become more or less Lutheran by doing that, exponentially more Lutheran, exponentially more Lutheran.
Speaker 1:Exponentially more.
Speaker 3:Lutheran.
Speaker 2:Exponentially more confessionally Lutheran than we were before we started going down this path. And that's the power of the Holy Spirit and the word right. It's not about any one of us. Like the church is going to maintain her theological integrity, like I have so many lay leaders that have been listening to Lutheran preaching for their entire lives Like if we start going off the rails, we're going to hear about it, but here's what I know they're celebrating these men who are going deeper into their theological formation, receiving the word from them. So, yeah, nothing could be further from the truth of us becoming less orthodox, less confessional. Only it's going the other way.
Speaker 2:Actually, I got to watch out from time to time that pharisaical tendencies could even be like in our community because we become so robust. This is the Lutheran way, like that's the ethos that I'm a part of here, and it's super, super fun.
Speaker 3:Jack, absolutely so. Yeah, I mean, if done well, you will see more thirst and desire to be a confessional Lutheran church, while maintaining that missional fervor that's necessary to move the church forward. You and I were talking earlier today and I was talking about hey, I wrote a little paper to help people going through a new member class understand the difference between synergism and monergism, right, yeah, it's great. Wouldn't you like to have a whole bunch of lay leaders that could do that kind of stuff, right For sure, that could be able to enter into conversations of this type of thing where they can actually articulate these key things about faith and actually compare and contrast it with other denominations out there and actually have that level of understanding Like this is the type of thing that's possible in the local church if we empower the local church to train and multiply, right.
Speaker 2:And when you brought that up in our. This is in our new member class, our belong new member class. Like when you brought that up, were the people interested in that topic?
Speaker 3:Absolutely fascinated with the topic. Yeah, exactly, absolutely fascinated with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we don't have to be afraid. We don't have to be afraid of this conversation.
Speaker 2:The Holy Spirit is leading us and we can, we can engage with, engage with love and care and respect for one another. One little thing I would ask everybody that's listening to pray for because I think this will be out before this gathering both seminary presidents, both at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne as well as Concordia Seminary in St Louis. They asked to meet with me around the best practice time, and so prayers that that conversation would be Holy Spirit filled and that we would be open to exchange ideas and, honestly, the goal is that we'd be open to partner and work together to advance the gospel and raise up more leaders at the local level. And I truly believe if there's that open spirit, our on-campus, our residential influence only increases. So this has been fun, Jack. Any final words of wisdom, for we hope we've clarified language around what multiply means.
Speaker 3:So some of you might be thinking okay, that's great, what can I do? How do I take my next step here? What if I want to do discipleship multiplication, which really means raising up leaders who raise up leaders that's really what the goal is. I want to do that. What's the next step that I could do? What's one thing, Tim, that you would say this is the next first step for you. What would you say? What would you recommend?
Speaker 2:If you're not meeting with a group of leaders weekly and pouring into them around scripture and the confessions great place to start scripture and I mean we're interviewing right now Chad the keys you can dig into the word of God and like, pick up a book, like how the light shines through very, very practical. You don't have to do it at 6am on Sunday, on Sunday, like we do it, but find a group of men, elders, whoever they are Actually for a lot of our congregations who have elders who are serving in various spiritual care roles, I think that's the group that we need to start with and then explore. Is there anyone here in this group based on their past, maybe marketplace experience, or they've kind of dabbled in proclamation work Is there anyone here who potentially has the ability to teach others? And if so, then you take your next steps in formation with them.
Speaker 2:And here's the thing too about the residential this leader would probably like, at least in their early years, to stay in that community learning with you. That's why it's hard for us a lot of times to even picture like we're going to send them off for four years into another context. They may eventually, but I bet there's going to be a series of months and years, they'd probably want to dabble, stick their foot in the water. If that's the case, then you audit a Reformation class with Luther House. Luther House loves just having people just come in. Jack, I mean you've been in the Reformation class a number of years.
Speaker 2:Just try it out right, and you can email us. Just look us up at uniteleadershiporg if you want any more help. But is there a group of men that you're meeting with with the potential, with the lens? Like you know, some of these guys can start to do what I do.
Speaker 3:Excellent. Yeah, if you connect with the Unite Leadership Collective, you can check out our website and schedule a conversation with us. There's no cost to have an initial chat with us and we are happy to sit down with you and talk through what next steps might look like for your ministry context. So just let you know you're not alone out there. We have been paying the dumb tax multiple times. We pay a lot of that. We pay a lot of dumb tax sometimes, but the benefit is we are doing this on purpose, to try and bless other congregations, that you can learn from what we're learning and have this wisdom apply directly to you. So we are happy in any way, shape or form to help any congregation that's eager to start a multiplication movement in the local church.
Speaker 2:Amen, this is an awesome opportunity, jack, thanks for the conversation. I hope this clarified. We want to be about not just addition, but those who identify apprentices of Jesus and teach them. And not just teach them, but give them experiences. I do, you watch, I do, you help, you do, I watch, and on, we go, you do, I'm a partner, and then you do, and you know over multiple years, you do and you're doing the same thing for others, inviting them in. That's how. That's how multiplication happens. It's a good day. Go, make it a great day. We'll be back next Friday with another. We got a whole bunch of cool topics. We're going to be Ping and Jack. You sent me a number of other topics technology and productivity, strategic execution, safety and risk management Woo, can't wait for that one. Managing change, conflict and stress. So these are going to be a little shorter form. Hope they're very, very practical and very, very helpful. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Good work, jack.
Speaker 3:Thank you and God bless guys.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.