The following is from Kent Smith (emailed to me some time back by Mike Steele) on "A Lifestyle of Spirit-Led Leadership." Kent is a missions professor at Abilene Christian University and has been involved in training leaders of simple churches:
The great soccer player Pele was quoted saying, "I have just three moves . . . but I do them very, very well."
That brought to mind one of my favorite quotes from Peter Drucker: "Effective people focus on a few areas where outstanding performance will produce outstanding results."
We want to be an expert at:
1) Loving, hearing and obeying Jesus.
2) Leading others to love, hear and obey Jesus.
3) Leading the leaders of others to love hear and obey Jesus.
If we do these things well, we believe we will fulfill the Lord's purpose for our relational family and the peoples and cities God calls us to bless and encourage around the world.
In light of this . . .
We don't assume that the challenge and task we face is first and foremost church planting. We assume rather that the focus must be to find those who are open to God's life and to train them to center their lives in Jesus.
We believe that both of these points of ministry will produce something that may be called a church—but only the second will produce a vibrant family of Jesus, that is to say, a healthy community where Jesus is actually embodied in a particular setting.
We further assume that mature apostles/missionaries will understand that their work will only be healthy and enduring if it:
- is centered and built upon the foundation that is Jesus Christ. At a practical level this means the people involved are listening to Jesus and doing what he says.
- embraces and calls forth the full spectrum of healthy functioning in the body, not merely, for example, the reproductive function. For a body to be healthy and mature all the parts must be free to do their work, including those with other equipping gifts.
The work of mature apostles/missionaries therefore is first and foremost a work of "eduction", of calling forth the latent grace of God in each person and community God calls them to serve.
This is a work of profound humility that steadily discovers and submits to the new thing Christ is doing in each person and place as he builds his Church.
