Rise Up

Expansion by Multiplication

In 2000, Haley Joel Osmont, Kevin Spacey, and Helen Hunt teamed up for the movie Pay it Forward.  This movie isn’t the cornerstone of any of their careers.  It’s not necessarily a fantastic movie, but if you’re a big sap like me, it has its place when you’re in the mood for a tearjerker.  In this film, Spacey’s character assigns a class of youngsters a year-long project of coming up with an idea to change the world and put it into action.  Not your garden variety middle school project, but Osmont’s character returns with an idea that catches even the brilliant teacher off guard.  The model that this young student returns with is one where an individual does one big favor for three people that cannot be returned, only “paid forward” to three others and so on, and so forth.
However cheesy the movie may be, this is the multiplication model that we desire here at Brentwood Baptist in regard to discipling leaders.  Think of your own story.  Think of those around you that encouraged you, that sparked the idea in your head and in your heart that you are more than capable of leading, of shepherding, of loving and edifying.  Who can you pay that blessing forward to?  We desire and are called to growth here at Brentwood Baptist and, while addition is always welcome, multiplication is so much more expansive and empowering to those around us.
With Group Connect on the horizon, we have the goal of initiating 30 new LIFE Groups this fall.  After surveying the need, there is potential to be at least 250-300 people at this event on August 23, which is wonderful that so many would be so hungry to plug in and go deeper with Christ.  With such a need for harvest before us, we find ourselves in deep need of leaders like yourselves to rise up and steward these groups to come.  It is no easy task to do what you, and to have leaders like you is such a blessing, so you can sympathize with the reverence that we carry into this search for new leaders to rise up and lead these new Group Seekers.
We ask you to once again join us in prayer for Group Connect, for our passion to see those not plugged in here at Brentwood Baptist to jump in with both feet and find rich community as you have.  Along with that, we ask that you pray with us for solid leadership to rise up and look to care for these people seeking to plug into a LIFE group.  We ask you to pray for those who embody and live out 2 Timothy 2:15:

¹⁵ Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

As said earlier, it is not easy doing what you do as leaders, but we invite you to pray that there be a spark that ignites a fire in the souls of those who are called to leadership, that boldness would well up inside of them to the point that they know clearly that to follow through in obedience is to step forward as a leader.
Things to Pray for:

• That leaders would rise up in obedience.

• That disciples continue to be made with true and genuine hearts for Christ.

• That as people are poured into, they obediently pour outward and slosh out the love of Christ that fills their hearts.