Classic Sermon 6048: Toward a Relevant Church

We have been asked to reflect on the area of the integral gospel and the church’s involvement in the community. I have just returned from spending a couple of days in Wisconsin, where I was specifically asked to take part in a training session for church planters being held by the American Baptist denomination.

I was specifically asked to give a presentation on the topic they assigned me. The topic was: “Toward a Relevant Church,” and I was asked to lead this workshop precisely because there is a growing awareness and a growing conviction among denominations throughout the world, and in the life of the church, that the church of Jesus Christ must adopt a more open and dynamic mindset regarding what it means to carry out effective ministry.

How can we become churches and spiritual communities that have an impact on our communities? That topic, “A Relevant Church,” was put before me, and my goal is for us to leave here with an idea of what it means to be an effective church in the world in which we live, and what it means to be a church that has an impact on its surroundings, on the community in which it operates.

I was telling the brothers and sisters that the Spanish word “relevante,” translated from the English “relevant,” is not an adequate translation because the English word “relevant,” translated into Spanish, would mean something more like current or pertinent, in the sense of a church that has a connection with, that has something to do with, the world out there—that is what the word “relevant” means in English. In Spanish, the word “relevante” means something that stands out, something outstanding, something prominent, something difficult to ignore, something that has relief or prominence—hence the word “relevante”—something that stands apart from the crowd. And truly, brothers and sisters, if we look at it that way, then we can say that this word fits what we want for our churches. Specifically, we want churches that stand out.

In what sense? We want churches whose presence in the community, I would say, is difficult to ignore. It is like a mountain you can see; a mountain cannot be ignored because it is there, present and visible. Its presence dominates the horizon, and my goal as a pastor—and I know it is also the goal of many of us here for our churches, whether we are laypeople or pastors—is precisely to build churches that are relevant, churches that have an impact on the life of the community, churches that are difficult to ignore, whose actions, life, and ministries demand the attention and focus of the people out there. That is our goal.

I would say that a relevant church, a church that is current and pertinent, a church that makes an impact—and I am going to point out some characteristics—is a church that glorifies God, because after all, that is the church’s primary purpose. A relevant, impactful church that has an integral gospel is, as I have said, a presence that is impossible to ignore.

It is a church that has a good reputation in the community, where people know that there is goodwill and that the congregation is a resource for the problems and needs facing the community. That relevant church is an agent for the transformation of lives; it is a source of transformation for individuals, families, and the entire community in which it operates. That relevant, impactful church is also a showcase—I could put it that way—a showcase for the kingdom of God.

What is a showcase? It is where you put the things you want people to see so that they will buy them. And I believe that our goal for our churches should be for them to become places where people look at the quality of our lives, look at the gifts manifested among us, look at the character of Christ reflected in the human relationships among the brothers and sisters, and look at the blessing coming upon the members in terms of their families’ progress and their academic and intellectual development.

How beautiful it is when, in a congregation, you see men and women who decide to pursue an education! Or, for example, to start a business, learn English, learn to read and write, or learn about computers; who buy their own homes; whose families are being restored—that is, if there were marital problems—and whose children are growing and flourishing in a powerful and effective way. To me, that is a church; that is the kind of church we are seeking.

Not long ago, I shared with my congregation that passage where Paul says that he has left everything behind because he wants to know Christ, and he says, “And to know the power of His resurrection.” That image had an impact on me, and I took it to mean that we, as a church, want to be a church—and I believe we all share that ideal in one way or another—in which the power of Christ’s resurrection can be seen in the people who come to the congregation, who are impacted by its teaching, who are impacted by its values, and who, with the passage of time, come to exemplify that power which was released when Christ rose from the dead.

That energy in the gospel that improves every aspect of human life—that is what I mean when I say that our churches must be a showcase. May those on the outside who see that church see a community prospering and being blessed in every dimension of its collective life. May they say, “Wow! Give me that; I want that,” and that should be our goal. It is also a church in which the prosperity and shalom—the all-encompassing peace—of the kingdom of God are embodied.

And that is why we say that a relevant church is, above all, a healthy church. God has genetically constituted the church to grow and prosper. Our churches have within themselves all the gifts and all the attributes they need in order to be healthy churches. Our goal is to infuse those values, as in a living organism. If our churches have the proper conditions, they will prosper and grow.

And that is why, in reality, when we speak of a relevant church… look, we have so many different goals for our churches: we want our churches to _____ a large number of people; some want their church to be a church with a social impact; others want their church to be a church that promotes discipleship; others want their church to promote spiritual warfare.

No matter what it is, I actually prefer to think in terms of creating a healthy church that has the nutrients God has ordained for His people, and then that healthy church will carry out the work of the gospel in a powerful and effective way. I believe the problem is that there are often so many impediments and so many obstacles in the church’s path to becoming that flourishing, strong, healthy people that we are not making use of or entering into the character God has truly ordained for His people.

That is why imitation is not the path to health. We have to abandon the idea that if I imitate Brother Rivera’s church, which has social activities, or imitate Pastor Miranda’s church, which has other social activities, or imitate some church over there that is organizing cell groups, or imitate the church that has a service for newcomers—that seeker service—somehow that will turn my church into an impactful and relevant church. None of those things actually makes the difference.

For a church to be relevant, effective, and powerful, it must understand that this concept is something organic. It is something related to many different parts; it is something dynamic. It is not a matter of mechanically imitating a model.

Creating a healthy, relevant, and effective church that has a community impact is like raising a child to grow up healthy. It requires effort, it requires time, it requires intentionality: you must know that you have to work hard and set certain goals for yourself. You must always be thinking about that church and how you want it to reach that level.

You must constantly give your congregation feedback, sharing the vision with them, infusing and inseminating that congregation. The church must have a clear goal regarding what it wants to be and what God has called it to be. That community must have well-defined goals. One does not arrive at an effective church that impacts its community without setting a goal, without establishing a vision, without understanding what God has called us to be as congregations and communities.

All I intend to do here is initiate in us a way of thinking, a paradigm—that is, a mindset, a mental model—that we can use to understand what it means to be an effective church and to have an integral gospel, a gospel encompassing every aspect God wants it to encompass. In reality, attaining that kind of church is the work of a lifetime. It is not simply a matter of using Scotch Tape to attach a model you picked up somewhere else.

We will never become a socially effective church merely because those people introduced an English class, so I am going to introduce an English class; or, “Oh! They have what they call contemporary or lively worship over there, so then I am going to change and bring in musicians with electric guitars.” No. There must be a new mindset, there must be a change in sensitivity, there must be a change of soul.

Okay, what has God called us to do? What does the Word of God say? What pleases the heart of God when a church carries out ministry? A church is relevant when it is a church of an integral, complete gospel. I would say that one of the most important characteristics of all is that it is outwardly oriented. It has an outward-looking mind and vision. It is not inward-looking.

It is one of the most treacherous things in the life of a church: with the passage of time, the church that began with vitality and aggressiveness gradually turns into a conservative church, a church oriented toward satisfying its members—keeping the founders happy because their needs are being met, and making sure they do not bring in people who are too strange and too different, because they do not like that, because they come on Sundays to feel comfortable and to feel that they are in a homogeneous community where they can see themselves reflected in others; where there are not too many young people who are rowdy and cause trouble, because, well, you have to keep an eye on them; and where there are no children who cause problems, because if there are, they will dirty the walls—and no!

The church God has in mind is an aggressive church that is always thinking about those who are outside: bringing in the people from outside, serving the people who are outside, and seeking relevant ways to bring them into the church’s sphere so that they can be impacted by the word of the gospel. It is a church with a global mindset. One of Jesus’ final words, recorded in the Gospels, is, “Go into all the world.” “Go” is an utterly dynamic word.

I believe that a church that wants to have an impact on its community must forge for itself a vision and a mindset like an arrow, always traveling toward its target. It is a pilgrim church; it may have a building, but its field of work is the entire city. It is a church with what I call an entrepreneurial mindset. Do you know what an entrepreneur is? I like entrepreneurial people. I like people who never rest, who are always thinking about the next project. As leaders, we have to be like that. If you lead a ministry, you should always be thinking, “What is the next stage?” “What is the next way I can enrich the ministry?”

Do not settle for what is static; do not settle for yesterday’s triumph; go and seek the next triumph. An outwardly oriented church is always developing creative ways to carry out ministry, to reach the world. I believe that we leaders must be people with that kind of mindset: creative, aggressive, with a salesperson’s mentality—and we are selling the best product in the world, which is the Word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is no product more powerful or more transformative than the one the Lord has left us, and therefore, brothers and sisters, we must do everything possible to expose people to the beauty and the use—the usefulness—of that product. Brothers and sisters, we must abandon that sedentary idea, that passive idea of the church: the pastor, the leader, who is simply marking time there until retirement arrives. He will not be blessed.

And may God deliver our congregation from that kind of leadership, from that kind of ministry. It requires heroic people, I would say—people who know that the gospel is something agonistic, and churches that also know, churches that also know, that we were not made to be comfortable. The church, the Lord Jesus Christ says in one of His famous passages, “is like leaven—a tiny bit leavens the whole lump.” And therefore, the church must always be asking itself: How can we inseminate these values and distribute them throughout the entire community?

I think of those who bake—and every now and then, when I have some time, I like to make a cake, or a sponge cake, as Caribbean people call it—and you know that when you are mixing the dry ingredients, such as flour and sugar and salt and yeast, you have to take the flour and, let us say, you take the yeast, add it, and make sure that yeast is distributed throughout all the flour before mixing it with ingredients such as eggs, butter, and everything else. Why? Because if the yeast is only in a little bit of the flour, when the cake is made, only a small part will be leavened and experience the rising effect of the yeast.

I believe that something like that sometimes happens with our churches. We are like the yeast that is confined to one corner, where it was poured into the flour, which is the community. But when that happens, then we have to take that mixture and sift it, making sure that it is thoroughly integrated.

And that means that the church must always be looking for ways to penetrate the outside world. The church has not been called to be comfortable. It is an invading force; it is a force that is always invading; it is a force I would call imperialistic, because the empire of Christ is being carried everywhere. Its goal is to impact individuals with the message of the gospel, but also institutions, structures, and values. To me, the concept of evangelism absolutely and primarily includes impacting people with the word of Jesus.

Hello, God bless you; this is Pastor Roberto Miranda speaking. Thank you for listening to our messages, and it gives us great joy to know that this program is blessing your life. I want to leave you with Moses’ words of blessing to the people of Israel. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. It is a privilege for me to be part of your life; I hope you will continue listening to our program, “An Appointment with Christ.” I bless you in the name of Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, do you know what? When I look at the gospel, I see the word of God and the values of Christ seeking to reach and evangelize every dimension of the community. When the Lord Jesus Christ issued His Great Commission, He said, “Go into all the world,” and added, preaching the gospel, “and make disciples of the nations.” You know that our Spanish translation says, “Go and (inaudible).” I looked up the original because it seemed to me that the Lord Jesus Christ meant something different.

And I neither speak nor write Greek. Since I am not in seminary, I never had the opportunity to discern (inaudible). There are so many resources nowadays (inaudible), and I found there that what the original Greek actually says is, “Go and make disciples of the nations.” What did the Lord Jesus Christ mean by that? When you disciple someone, you impart your values to that person, yes or no?

When a master painter takes on a disciple to teach him to paint, in the relationships of old—in the Middle Ages, for example—the disciple would come to live with the master. The master was constantly talking to the disciple, imparting to him his vision of art, his technique, his concept of colors, his way of painting, and so on. And that disciple would emerge as a prototype, almost a photocopy of his master, with his master’s values and way of seeing the world—although later he might perhaps surpass him through his own talents.

When Christ says, “Go and make disciples of the nations,” what He is saying is: “Go and impart to the nations and peoples the values that I have taught you. And obey those values.” So the goal of the church, brothers and sisters—the Great Commission, which we so often limit merely to a service in some park somewhere—does not fulfill, I believe, the vision Jesus Christ had. Because what Christ called the church to do was to take the nations, to take the peoples, and bring them under the values of the gospel in every dimension, in all their institutions.

Do you know what? We evangelicals are the only ones with this mentality of standing on a corner and thinking that effective evangelism is simply giving some treatment to a person who happens to walk by. While I was giving that treatment, 200 or 300 people were born in the world. We are already behind. The church must find much more effective, systemic ways of evangelizing.

Do you know what? The devil is not as foolish as we are. Satan is a very wise being, with demonic wisdom, but wise nevertheless. And his wisdom consists in impacting systems and institutions; that is why the devil has sought to take over music and art, the family, journalism, literature, politics, economics, and philosophy.

Why? Because that is the source from which multitudes of people come. Satan would prefer a thousand times over to seize a journalist and imbue him with his satanic mentality than to seize little children when they are enclosed within four walls, because through that journalist he reaches 100,000 people and takes them to hell.

So it is important for the church to be much wiser. I believe that is why the Lord Jesus Christ said in one of His famous sayings, “The children of this age are shrewder or more astute in dealing with their own kind than the children of light,” because secular human corporations and institutions know that if you want to reach the world, you go to the sources that feed its mind, its heart, and its sensibilities.

The church must do the same. The church must understand that its mission is to evangelize not only individuals but also institutions, structures, and values; we must find ways to make an impact on the institution of the family, education in our cities, and the media. I love it every time I see someone out there getting an education. I was talking a moment ago with a woman, and whenever I see a Christian woman or man saying, “I want to get an education; I want to go to college,” I tell them: Amen. Glory to God. Do whatever you have to do.

Because we need educated people in strategic positions in order to carry out the work of God on earth. And look, I have told members of my congregation—I am not asking other pastors to do the same—“Look, if you have to step away from a ministry for a while in order to get an education, do it. Because I believe that in this way you are investing in the kingdom of God. Just make sure that, when you are able, you come back again, get involved, and then use your gifts and your position to move forward.”

Because, brothers and sisters, we have to—we have to have a much more open-minded understanding of what it means to be effective. When I see people like Nehemiah in Scripture—think about Nehemiah, a Jewish layman who loves his people and occupies a key position as the king’s cupbearer—he has direct access to the king. He sees him continually, he has the king’s esteem, and there is a need over in Jerusalem.

The people are downcast; they are in trouble; the walls have fallen; there is misery, defeat, and institutional depression; and Nehemiah feels in his heart the desire to help renew his people. It is precisely his strategic position, as a political man and a person of social influence, that allows him to take that ideal of blessing God’s people and translate it into action: he secures funds, obtains authorization, acquires physical resources, gains authority, and obtains a host of other things that then enable him to return to Jerusalem and carry out a powerful and strategic work of restoration.

And we need men and women with clear spiritual, evangelical, and biblical values in positions of authority: teaching at universities, working in hospitals, working in social-service agencies. Because unfortunately, through the church’s lack of vision, its lack of involvement, and its traditionalistic and ineffective mentality, we have allowed all those institutions to be stolen from us, brothers and sisters.

Do you know? For example, until sometime in the 1960s, Harvard University required all its students to attend chapel daily. And many of Harvard’s presidents were pastors. Harvard derives its name from a very godly man who gave a large part of his fortune to create an institution to prepare men—in those days—for ministry.

Nevertheless, today it is a source of anti-Christian and anti-spiritual humanism. They did not steal that university; we allowed it to be stolen from us. Yale, Princeton, and all these great universities likewise—while we were sleeping there with our little tracts and our services within four walls, the devil was doing his systematic work, robbing us of all these institutions.

And the church’s calling is to restore and redeem everything the devil has stolen from us: the universities, the arts, our youth, our music. Who says that music belongs only to the secular world? God is the creator of all the harmonies of the universe, and the church must be venturing into and working in those areas. But we have to change our mindset.

Sometimes people do not like coming to these kinds of workshops. Now invite them to a “come on out” event where everyone is jumping around and carrying on, and they all leave there drunk, with their hairdos falling apart—and happy! Everybody wants to go to that. But invite them to be trained and prepared for ministry so they can be effective in the community, and nobody wants to come, because we have been taught to have a mentality that is traditional, conservative, and uncreative in the way we do ministry.

And we have to instill in our congregations—and we ourselves must embrace—the mindset that we are called to possess the land, that we are called to invade every structure of society. And that also means, of course, that our leaders must be educated people. Brothers and sisters, no, I am not asking you to be geniuses, but educate yourselves in every way you can: by reading, engaging in biblical and theological reflection, and investigating wherever you can. Attend every workshop you can; be a person who is always in a process of growth and development.

Our churches should be the same way. Our churches should always be experimenting with new things. Right now, we are experimenting with everything related to technology. We want to learn to use projectors, computers, and every form of media. We have just submitted a proposal to the federal government for a grant of about 300,000 dollars, for a large technology project to help our young people study technology and move forward. And there we are, stumbling along, but we are learning to use our resources because we have to.

The church must be a church that learns. Nowadays people talk a great deal about “being a learning institution”—being an institution that learns. The secular world already knows about that. The large and powerful institutions that survive in a changing, dynamic, and unpredictable world—the kind of world in which we live—are institutions that are always evolving, always experimenting with new things.

Look at McDonald’s. McDonald’s began by selling hamburgers. Nowadays you go to McDonald’s and you find chicken sandwiches, Batman figurines—everything. That is because it is always thinking about the next technique for taking people’s money and for evolving. And you see Disney doing the same: it buys film companies, opens different kinds of amusement parks, and establishes schools for its employees. They are always evolving, always creating, always inventing, always experimenting.

We have to be like that if we want to be powerful churches and ministries. If we want to be impactful leaders, brother, stop sleeping so much, turn off the soap opera, and start investigating. Stop sleeping so much and become a person who is hungry for knowledge.

And let our churches search. The Lord says, “The one who seeks will find; the one who asks will receive; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Come on, brothers and sisters, let us launch out. Someone once said, “I do not want God to [inaudible]; the only thing I want is for Him to put me where there is something.” I believe that; I believe that we must always be placing ourselves in a position where the word of God, the message of God, and the vision of God can seize us and touch us.

Statistically, the more you move around, the better the chance that God will give you a solid hit and that you will discover God’s calling for your life.

Returning to the case of Nehemiah, look at Nehemiah: where does God’s calling find Nehemiah? It finds him asking questions. If you read the book of Nehemiah, the very first thing the first chapter says is that “some people arrived from Jerusalem, and he asked them, ‘Tell me, how are the people over there in Jerusalem?’ And then they told him, ‘Things are terrible, man. The walls have fallen, the people are depressed, and psychiatrists are getting rich everywhere.’” And then, when he heard that, he said, “Wow! Something has to be done,” and the vision, the calling, the mission of God for his life came to him because he was asking questions and staying in touch with the information.

We have to get in touch with information; we have to remain continually restless, brothers and sisters; we have to keep investigating, keep inquiring. In that process of searching, the Lord will find us. I firmly believe what the Word says: “Whoever sows generously will also reap generously.”

If you invest, if you sow, if you are continually placing small sticks of dynamite in little places, one of these days a fire will ignite one of them, and one will catch. One of my favorite passages and a motto for ministry is found in Ecclesiastes, where it says: “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it.” It speaks there of giving portions to seven, or even to eight, because you do not know what lies ahead.

And that means, brothers and sisters—I see this among many other things—that if we want to be people of impact, relevant churches, leaders of impact, we must always be experimenting, always seeking the life of God, inquiring, researching, reading, reflecting, conversing, asking questions. Because all of that is seed being cast upon our sensitivity, and the more seed the Holy Spirit has, the more fruit He can produce. Yes or no?

The more firewood there is, the greater the fire. Our part is to provide the firewood so that the Spirit of God can descend and kindle a great fire for the glory of God. God is not going to provide the firewood; you have to provide it. Elijah had to set up an altar, place stones, lay down wood, and prepare everything, and then call down the fire of God: I sowed, Apollos reaped, but God gives the growth.

God’s part is to give the growth; my part is to sow and water and yearn and cry out and ask: “God, give me a church, give me a ministry, give me a life that is fruitful, that makes an impact, and that reflects Your passion to redeem the world.” Moving forward requires the formation of a missionary mindset.

How can we form churches or ministries? For example, if you are the leader of a women’s ministry or a men’s ministry or whatever it may be, whatever you have in your life; or you are a male or female pastor. How can we form an outward-looking, missionary mindset for our ministries? Well, we have to have a clearly articulated vision. As I have said, what I am developing here before you is an articulation of that vision.

Brothers and sisters, every day I learn more and more about the importance of vision. That is a concept that has taken me years to develop and to properly understand what it means. Nowadays, all major secular institutions talk about vision, about having vision. Many of us do not have a clear vision of what we want God to make of our lives or our churches.

I recommend taking all that time to reflect: What kind of ministry do I want to have? I was telling the pastors with whom I was sharing in Wisconsin, using an image that comes to us from Steven Cobby in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” a key book that I highly recommend to you. It is available in Spanish too.

But Steven Cobby says that we have to live and envision life in such a way that, if one day we could hear people speaking about us in a eulogy before our coffin, what would we want them to say about us? What would I like them to say about my ministry or about the church I pastored? Huh? I would like them to say, “That church was a church that had a profound impact on the community. It was a church that was not there hoarding its little bit of money or its buildings for itself, but shared them with the churches and other institutions. It was a church with a kingdom mindset, rather than a mindset focused only on itself and its own institutional benefit.

It was a church that was attuned to the needs of the community: people saw it as a refuge where they could go and find comfort for their pain, education for their children, vision for life, encouragement, freedom to grow at their own pace with the Lord, and tolerance regarding their moral problems and struggles. A person could fall, and instead of ten people trampling them, there would be ten hands lifting them up.” That is what I envision.

I spend time reflecting, writing, and praying, and these are burnt offerings that I raise up to the Lord so that He will make them real. You have to do the same in your life; we have to create a vision, and we have to write the vision down.

Habakkuk three, I believe, will always be the quintessential passage on vision, and it says there, “Even if the vision is delayed, do not worry, because it will come.” It says, “Write the vision so that whoever reads it may run with it.” Our churches, our ministry, our people need to know what we believe, what we envision, and where our passion lies.

What kind of church do we want to create? And then we have to write it down, and we have to share it with our people. We also have to use instructional and evangelistic sermons, as well as pro-evangelism sermons. They are not the same thing; I do not have enough time to elucidate all of this.

But also, if you lead a women’s ministry, gather your leaders, sit down with them, and say to them, “Sisters, what do we want to do with our ministry? Where do we want to take it? What is our implicit vision? What are the values we want to govern it? Do we simply want little ladies sitting there drinking tea, all very elegant, while forgetting that out there there are single women and young women considering abortion and doing nothing with their lives?

We have to have those conversations. One of the things we did many years ago that caused us a little trouble was to change the name of our—formerly it was the Ladies’ Society; that was what it was called in our church—but one day I began thinking, and while talking with some women I said: I picture little ladies in white gloves and lovely little outfits with a very delicate little teacup, having a pleasant chat among themselves while the world falls apart. We decided to change the name to Women’s Ministry because it sounded a little more aggressive and more dynamic and more enterprising to me.

And those are little things like that; we have to ask ourselves what we want. Names matter; everything has meaning, everything has power, and we have to have a clear idea of where we want to go and what values should govern our communities. That missionary, aggressive, outward-looking vision needs to make an impact on the congregation’s very structures.

That is why I like cell groups so much, because cell groups are extremely aggressive evangelistically and holistic, places where people care for one another, love one another, bear with and support one another, and build up and train one another.

So I want our church to have all those elements: elements that promote a vision of mutuality, activity, aggressiveness, evangelism, impact, and vision for the kingdom. There has to be consistency between one thing and the other. In other words, our structures must also reflect that calling.

Our regular program from Sunday to Sunday, from Wednesday to Wednesday, also has to reflect it through calls to action and through purposefully oriented ministries. One of the loveliest things to happen recently is the Hospitality Ministry. For a long time—and recently we have become conscious of this as a church—we have realized that as the church grows, it becomes increasingly important for people to feel that they belong to a family.

Many times, new people arrive at churches and feel lost, like bedraggled little chicks. Everyone is talking to and greeting one another at the end of the service, while those poor people stand there in a little corner, not knowing whether to leave or stay a little longer to see if someone greets them. They leave, and two Sundays later you never see them at church again.

We realized that we were losing many people that way. We are promoting a more aggressive approach to retaining visitors and new believers, and that seems like one of the most revolutionary things—even though it is so simple—for a church that wants to make an impact on the community and reflect that community’s comprehensive and aggressive values. A discipleship and preparation program is needed in which people are trained to evangelize, in which people are equipped.

One of the most powerful ways to make our churches grow is to prepare leaders and have those leaders produce other leaders. That idea of the one-man-band pastor, male or female—the lone ranger who leaves home, drives the van, picks people up, comes back, turns on the lights, leads the devotional, preaches the sermon, then turns off the lights, takes the people home, and arrives back utterly exhausted and depressed—is an abomination in the eyes of God.

If we want powerful churches that make an impact, we have to decentralize our churches. We have to equip people; we have to celebrate the universal priesthood of believers. Otherwise, that powerful and aggressive church we want will not come into being, because one person cannot lead even a handful of people. The more effective that church is, the more demands there will be upon its ministry, and therefore we have to keep preparing people; otherwise, the nets will break when the harvest comes.

We have to have a mindset of institutional development. My only desire has been to stir all of us to develop a new paradigm, a new vision, a new mental model—as people call it—for doing ministry. Brothers and sisters, may our desire, our vision, be not to rejoice here, not to remain on the mountain as the disciples wanted to do, right? Not to build three shelters and stay there, but to come down after beholding the glory of God, set the devil’s captives free, and preach a powerful and relevant gospel.

May the Lord bless you.