"I will make you fishers of men."
"The harvest is plenty, the harvesters are few. Pray for more harvesters!" John 4:35
Jesus told the church to go make disciples not just pew sitters.
Small groups, though they are excellent at maintaining the harvest, are not the answer: they come and go, rise and fall. Without a purpose and growth they eventually stagnate.
Unless small group members are continually converted into small group leaders little long-term fruit or impact will remain.
Churches do not reap the harvest because they have small groups, they reap the harvest because they have harvest workers. Churches that have no plan to develop harvest workers have, by default, planned to lose the harvest.
Harvest workers gather the harvest. Without them the harvest is never brought in. Small groups maintain the harvest. Without small groups with open spaces, the harvest is bounced out of the church. Mentoring equips the cell members to become Harvest Workers thereby increasing the harvest. Without mentoring to become cell group leaders, small groups and small group members will eventually stagnate and are lost from productivity. All three are necessary ingredients to advance and multiply the kingdom.
The growth of the church / cell movement depends on the raising up of capable leaders from within. The highest priority of the cell leader is to help members bocome harvest workers, that is, identify prospective leaders and begin the mentoring process.
Cell leaders are not primarily called to maintain a cell group but rather to find, train and release members into leadership themselves.
Our priority is in converting non-church goers and Sunday pew fillers into cell leaders who are reaching their neighbours for Christ. Our yearly goal is 'how many cell groups we are going to start' which is equal to 'how many leaders we have developed.'
The secret weapon of the cell church is the focus on developing an army of committed cell leaders to reap and train the reapers of the harvest.
You all are yet as babes, who should be teachers now.
Raise up faithful leaders who can teach the word of God with soundness.
Church discipleship courses often teach people how to live the Christian life or faithfully fill a pew rather than lead them to follow Jesus or be leaders for Jesus. Ten percent of the church ends up doing ninety percent of the work. Ninety-nine percent of the work gets focused on Sunday morning.
1. Provides a significant role for lay people. Small group ministry prepares a person to pastor, evangelize, administrate, care for others, and use their gifts and talents to serve and build up others for the Kingdom.
2. Cells provide the perfect, on the job, training ground for future leaders.
3. Cells provide significantly more one-on-one pastoral care to many more new Christians than a single Pastor could possibly care for.
I encourage cell leaders to view all cell members as potential cell leaders and sponsor all of them to become cell leaders. We do not speak of cell members anymore, only cell leader trainees.
Many cell groups fail to develop new leadership because of an inward focus. The same leader and members stay together for years and eventually stagnate.
The church will only expand its influence on the world by reproducing its most powerful unit, the cell group leader. Just as a family guarantees its legacy though producing children who go on to start their own families and produce their own children, so too, the church must reproduce by forming new cell group leaders.
The natural tendency is to desire the warmth, intimacy and communion of a small group continue forever... but it never does. Unless provision is made for a cell member to become a cell leader out on his own, he never has the chance to exercise his spiritual muscles and truly live for God.
It's a growing conviction that cell reproduction is the chief motivation behind leadership development. [or rather that leader training drive cell multiplication which drive evangelism.] Cell multiplication is so central to the cell's ministry that cell leader's training is not considered complete until that new cell leader has multiplied their group.
Once the theme of cell multiplication guides cell ministry, then leadership training becomes focused. To multiply a group, a leader must depend on God.
With an Intern's and the group's help the leader must:
This underlines the need to have an intern in the group right from the beginning. The cell leader delegates responsibility as much as possible. He must stimulate others in the group to fulfill these functions. This helps them develop leadership skills.
This underlines the need to be chiefly committed to the building of God's Kingdom above and beyond our own.
If cell multiplication is the principle goal of each cell leader then the leadership training must fulfill that purpose and truly equip leaders into their role! This is purpose-focused training so that the church can multiply.
Again, the first goal of a cell leader is to train up the people in the cell to be leaders of new cell groups and not to build up or maintain the group indefinately. Small groups are the best developing grounds for leaders and are not an end in themselves. People need to be healed, equipped, trained and released into leadership.
Those churches reproducing leaders quicker and better will grow the quickest. The time to develop a leader varies between 3 months and 3 years. The average is one year. The fastest growing cell church does it in 6 months. The newer Christian the leader, the quicker the multiplication takes place. These 'new believers' still have contact with their non-Christian oikos relationships and often plant cells (and lead them) within their own oikos.
Why couldn't the most committed become leaders within a month or two? Your treasure is where your heart is, your heart is where your time, effort and resources are. Are you putting your efforts into the harvest or into maintenance?
Willingness to Fail
Right Reception of Criticism
SUCCESS=how many leaders have I spotted, trained and released?
direct correlation between how often the cell leader contacted his people and the successful multiplication of the cell group 5-7 per month -> 80%; 1-3 -> 60%
"go make disciples of all nations... teaching them everything I have commanded you [to do]" Matt 28:19-20