It’s All About Releasing People
Dave Ferguson is the lead pastor of Community Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois — and led the conversation in our final session day one of the AND Conference.
- Although the church is in decline, there is a missional impulse alive and well throughout the world. There is much to be hopeful about.
- I often hear people in my church say, “I want to do more.” I recently got an email where someone said, “Can we do something for people who won’t go to church?” That is a missional impulse. It is alive in our people.
- Missional people PLUS multiplying churches EQUALS a missional movement.
- How do you get to missional people? You ordain every follower of Christ.
- As leaders, if we want missional people, we have to say “yes” as often as we can.
- There’s a business strategy that we’ve used too long in the church — it is to identify your target market, do only what will reach your target market, and say “no” to everything else. That is a brilliant business strategy. But it is not what the church is about. We need to release people.
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Kevin
These are some great points. I call it "launching" people, and have written a blog post on it. Why is it that our natural tendency is to want to hoard people, as opposed to investing in them and sending them out? It is the difference between molding people into what you need them to do for you, or unfolding them to fully operate with the gifts that God has given them.
brad
I serve in a church that is fantastic at releasing people. Hands-down the best I've ever experienced at releasing. There are no artificial boundaries for serving, there are flat hierarchies, etc. But it's very bad at empowering.
Releasing people without empowering them turns them each into solitary gladiators. They fight increasingly insurmountable odds until they die (well, okay, burnout), and then? Next!
Empowerment means accountability (including always asking the hard questions), support (at the presence, passion and purpose levels), and publicly celebrating wins.
Releasing is indeed huge, but it's only the start.