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Mar
6
E Leader , F Leader , I Leader , L Leader , Paul Wilkinson

The Necessity of Reproducibility

By Paul Wilkinson

The question is simple, yet profound: Are we leading in a way that those in our group can readily imitate? If we are not, then we are stifling the multiplication of our work and we are falling short of the blessings the Lord intends for us.
As we look at what Jesus did with the disciples following the call of Matthew 4:19, we see the reproducible pattern of Jesus: preach, teach, heal. Preach the truth of the kingdom of God; teach the truths of God’s character and will; heal the sick, etc.[1] Paul writes to Timothy, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Timothy 2:2)
For many years I did not operate with the idea of leading through achievable, mimicable patterns. I taught doctrine and apologetics for at least three years to hundreds of Brentwood Baptist members and contacts. For me, the content was king, and if I gave sufficient content coupled with challenging application, then a movement of faith would necessarily ensue.
Far from it, the teaching stopped when I stopped. I never reproduced myself. In my zeal to share the depth of my philosophical learning and my excitement to tie these great truths to the work of sharing our faith, I set the bar so high that no one was willing to follow. Moreover, I never asked anyone to follow! If you didn’t have 4-5 years to devote to philosophical study, you wouldn’t be able to do what I was doing.
So, was I discpling well? Was I leading well? I would say no, because those groups and classes don’t exist anymore because I have moved to other things. It is exciting to do inductive studies on our own to plumb the great truths of the Scriptures, but if we are not apprenticing one or two people, then all of our learning dies with us. It is fun to develop our own lessons around interesting topics like apologetics and ethics, but if we are not apprenticing one or two people, then all of our learning dies with us.
We only have two options if we want to be faithful to Jesus’ reproducible model: take apprentices to learn to do what you do or get on a base curriculum that people can handle in your absence. But it’s not just teachers: prayer list leaders, follow-up leaders, outreach/mission leaders, and fellowship leaders all need to be reproducing themselves by inviting someone else along to learn to do what you do.
Pray, pray, pray . . . and pray some more for the Lord to bring you apprentices and for you to be faithful to them. I begged the Lord for the bulk of last year to send me a handful of young men that I could lead; the cabinet was bare. When the Lord convicted me over Christmas break that I didn’t have a reproducible model for them and I submitted to that conviction, I have found myself knee deep in young men hungry for the Word and hungry to learn to lead people toward Christlikeness in the first two months of this year. I pray the same for you.



[1] If you haven’t thus far been able to heal people, as is the case with me, then minister to them through presence, nurture, and the rest. Note that Job’s friends are indicted not for their lack of healing their friend, rather they were indicted for speaking falsely about the Lord.
 
 

Jan
15
F Leader , L Leader , Paul Wilkinson

Engaging the Whole Person “in the Community”

By Paul Wilkinson

The mission of Brentwood Baptist Church is to engage the whole person with the whole gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere, anytime with anybody. What are some possibilities for “engaging the whole person” in our LIFE Groups?
We must internally engage the whole person. We have group members who live as chaotic lives as we do. They carry the same guilt and shame from poor decisions, broken promises, and sporadic failures as the rest of us. On the other end of the spectrum, we have people who are incredibly, dangerously comfortable with the status quo. Life is good for them and they are perceiving, undiscerningly, material fruits as God’s favor. And we ourselves, as leaders, are perpetually moving back and forth across this spectrum.
As Mike Glenn says (my paraphrase): we’re either coming out of a storm or about to go in one. We leaders have the advantage because we are steeped in Scripture as we prepare to teach the Bible each week. Are our group members diving as deep as we are; are they diving into the Bible at all? We are perpetually praying about our groups, that we lead them to rich springs of faith and that they are quickened by the Spirit; are they praying like that? We spend time alone thinking through the content of the text in solitude with the Spirit; are they having Sabbath like that?
The Holy Spirit intercedes and compels us to become our whole selves that the Lord designed. We are remaining in tune with the Spirit through our prep work each week. We must help our group members to do the same: give them homework, let them struggle with theological tension, forever challenge them to be “in the Word” coupled with a commentary or the like. The first step in engaging their whole person is getting them in tune with the Holy Spirit: repentance leading to worship and obedience.
A second level of internal whole person engagement is that we are caring for one another materially. James asks, “If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16) Do we personally know the material struggles of our group members? More strategically, do we have the substructure in place such that care groups know the material struggles and needs of our group members? If our LIFE Groups are primarily social space discipleship elevating community, mission, and practice through Bible and prayer, then how are we creating personal space discipleship elevating closeness, support, and challenge through deeper Bible, more personal prayer, and sharing/confession? Does your group have a set of care leaders that regularly follow up with assigned members to see how they are and in what ways the group can support them? If not, then strongly consider creating such a ministry.
Part of reaching people spiritually is caring for them physically. We must help them get in sync with the Holy Spirit so that they can respond to the Spirit’s conviction and prompting. We must create healthy communities that are welcoming and hospitable so that they can readily receive the lost and searching. We must organize the necessary substructures to care for people’s material struggles, coupled with the Brentwood Baptist Church benevolence team. As Allan Taylor is wont to say, if we want to reach people with the gospel, then it’s going to cost us time, money, and effort. May we be willing to count the cost.