[0:00] These sessions were recorded at the Church Planned Conference hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church. It is our desire that you'll be able to learn from these great speakers as they talk about the topic of church planting.
[0:14] Alright, if we're going to get done so I can get on the way, we're going to have to get started. So we're going to talk about developing pastoral leadership for church planting today in the first session.
[0:25] And we'll get in the scripture here in just a moment. Let me see if I can... Yeah, here we go. We got it going. One of the greatest obstacles that we have in planting churches is having the right man to pastor the work.
[0:41] We really have struggled in this area throughout my ministry in the last 18 years in getting good men. There seems to be a shortage of good men.
[0:51] And not only for guys to pastor works, but for established works. I've looked at a couple of intern programs.
[1:02] If you know of a good intern program, Pastor, I think what you're doing here is much like an intern program. And I think this will help. I must say I am impressed with what the pastor has done here.
[1:14] I want to spend some time with him. I get a chance to pick his brain on what's happening and what's being done to help other guys. Obviously, I will never be able to do something like this.
[1:26] But maybe I can influence others to do something along this line. The sad thing is that many of our young men struggle when they either plant a church or take their first church.
[1:38] And training leadership must be a part of our philosophy of ministry in order to successfully reach the world for Christ. Now, I have a session. I'm not going to be doing it here. It's called Not a Novice.
[1:49] Not a Novice.
[2:19] I'm going to be doing it here. I'm going to be doing it here. Church planting became a ministry of the Jerusalem church. Now, I really believe that I've proven that over yesterday, that if the Jerusalem church had any ministry at all, it was a church planting ministry.
[2:33] You know, if you had read their bulletin, it would have been right at the top. The one thing they focused on was church planting. And I tell you, we need churches today to get back to focus on church planting.
[2:44] However, when we do that, we have to put in place the infrastructure. I know that's a good political word, you know. But we have to have the infrastructure in place to supply that church planting.
[3:01] And there are some who have done that. Now, of course, we know the Jerusalem church was forced to leave Jerusalem because of persecution, that God brought on the church. But they had been taught and prepared to leave and plant churches.
[3:12] Because obviously, in Acts chapter 1, verse 4, and Luke 24, verse 49, the Lord Jesus had done a lot of the preparation because they were prepared to go.
[3:23] They were looking to leave. I think that's clear from those two passages of Scripture. And, of course, we know what happened. Revival comes, and they get caught up in that. And I would have, too.
[3:34] I mean, let's just face it. We would have gotten caught up in the same thing. Who would want to leave Jerusalem? Jerusalem. And it may be that it wasn't something that they did intentionally. It may be just something that they got caught up in the work.
[3:47] And they said, well, this needs to be done. And that needs to be done. And we're going to get to it. You know, we're going to get to it. But we've got so much to do here.
[3:58] And sometimes that's the way we get in our ministries. Well, we're going to get to church planting. But, you know, we've got this to do. If we get this in line and this in line and this in line, then we'll go out and we'll do it.
[4:09] But once, of course, God forced them out. But once rest came in chapter 9, verse 31, the leadership must have reevaluated the results of dispersion.
[4:21] In chapter 8, they were scattered. By chapter 9, verse 31, they must have looked at this. These apostles who were still in Jerusalem. The only ones that we know that left during that period of time that the scripture tells us, Peter and John went up into Samaria in chapter 8.
[4:41] We don't have any record of the others ever leaving. But I'm sure that they met together and said, okay, let's reevaluate this. And what the Lord, in light of what the Lord Jesus has taught us and where he has brought us to this place through this persecution and all these people leaving.
[4:56] And now look at all the churches that are being planted, which is obviously what the Lord Jesus wanted. Okay, let's reevaluate this. And it's at this point that I believe they began to develop a plan for reproducing churches through the Jerusalem church.
[5:12] Now, I use that term reproducing churches. Most of you probably have never used that term in church planting. It's more gone out and plant churches. But the reason I use that is because of the church as an organism.
[5:25] And I still catch myself saying at times, well, that church closed. Oh, you idiot. It didn't close. It died. You know, we've been trained that way.
[5:37] We've been trained to think that way. That the church is like a business. And part of it is because we have a building and we have doors. And, you know, you close the doors and leave the building.
[5:48] That kind of thing. But the fact is we reproduce churches. Now, so they began to develop this plan and the Jerusalem church carried this out in the trip to Antioch for the purpose of planting the church there.
[6:00] Now, I think when we go back and look at chapter 11, and we're not going to take the time to do so, but we look at that chapter, I think you can see that the Jerusalem church was actively involved in that church plant.
[6:12] Because verse 22, they sent word back. It's obviously these people who had gone up to Antioch and these other places, they felt a responsibility to the church of Jerusalem to keep them informed about what was going on.
[6:25] And so they sent word back and said, look, we've had people saved here. We need a pastor. And what did they do? They sent, they sent, that didn't come up, did I?
[6:38] I just got a phone call there on my phone. I had to decline. They sent Barnabas up there to pastor that church. So we understand then that the Jerusalem church, the leadership of the Jerusalem church developed strong leaders.
[6:56] Now, I believe strong leaders develop strong leaders. Thankfully, the two churches that I started from scratch in Pickle Lake, there were two men. One pastor to Baptist church for a while and then went back to his Mennonite roots.
[7:12] And another is today the president of a mission board that was in our church in Pickle Lake. And God has used him in the mission field and done some great things.
[7:22] And then in the second work that we started, we had one of our deacons who was called there and is now in Scotland. Had planted a church over there.
[7:34] And I'm thankful that God allowed us to develop that kind of leadership. And these were just small, struggling works. I mean, these were not large works or anything like that. And then in Winnipeg, we branched out even more.
[7:46] But we see that the leadership of the Jerusalem church developed these strong leaders. The apostles had been taught by the Lord. And they knew that they were to teach others.
[7:59] We'll see that here when we get into Timothy in a moment. So in Acts chapter 5 and verse 42, the leadership was teaching and preaching in every house. This was a daily thing, much like your pastor is doing here.
[8:13] A daily thing of teaching. I was quite impressed last night where after the service we went into the, I don't know what kind of room you call it. It was the afterglow service, I guess. So I don't know.
[8:26] But I thought, my, wouldn't it be wonderful if every pastor had a group of men like you that he could get together and they just would pepper questions. And that's not because you did that.
[8:38] That's because he did that. All right. That's not because you guys said, oh, preacher, come on, let's get together and chat. No, it's because he said, okay, he made himself available to you. I'll be honest.
[8:50] I haven't seen many preachers who do that. And that is very impressive to me. But I believe that the leadership in the Jerusalem church did that. I think they took those men.
[9:01] I had one of my staff. I haven't been able to develop the material yet. But I had him go through Acts, all the way through Acts and the epistles and list the name of every person who was involved in church planting in the ministry of Paul.
[9:20] So I'm working on that now. And you'd be surprised in the churches that were started where these men came from that were involved in church planting. And how they followed Paul and how they worked together in that.
[9:35] We may talk about that a little bit here. But this led to the church appointing other leaders. Acts chapter 6, verses 1 to 7, which were full of the Holy Ghost and able to preach. Were these men deacons?
[9:46] Maybe. You know, really, in Acts chapter 6, it doesn't say they were deacons. It doesn't say they were deacons there. Now, were they?
[9:56] Maybe they were. But I'm telling you what. They weren't deacons that sat around and just, you know, tried to control the church. These were guys who were out. These were guys who were out preaching. And look, those are the kind of deacons.
[10:08] If they were deacons, those are the kind of deacons we need today. That's the kind of deacons we need. Guys that are out there, full of the Holy Ghost, and that are willing to stand up and say, I don't care what you think.
[10:19] This is what the Bible says. And if you want to stone me for it, stone me. All right? And that's what they had. And Stephen was one of those men.
[10:29] And, of course, he was the first martyr for the cause of Christ. And others were preaching. But they had all been trained to share the gospel. Acts chapter 8.
[10:40] By the time we get to chapter 8, verse 4, the believers, the laymen in the church, they were able to go out and share the gospel and see people saved. And churches were planted.
[10:52] Now, I'm going to stop right here, and, you know, I don't know if there's a microphone around, whatever, but I'll repeat it. But is there any, and, hey, is there any discussion on that?
[11:06] Is there any question about that? Is there any question that these laymen, these were laymen that went out, and they went out preaching the gospel, and that churches were planted? From the teaching that I've done yesterday, from Acts chapter 8 all the way through chapter 9, verse 31, that the laymen of the church were scattered out according to Scripture.
[11:27] They were scattered. They went out preaching the word, and churches were planted. Now, what I did from that, what I've taken from that, is developing a methodology where we take churches and take their laymen and go out into a community, knock on doors, hold Get Acquainted meetings, and start a new church.
[11:50] Okay? It doesn't mean they go out by themselves, you know, or anything like that, but we're just trying to follow a pattern that seems to be laid out here in Scripture. That's all we're trying to do.
[12:00] And, but these people have been trained to go out and do that, and I think we need to do that for our people as well. Went the wrong way there, sorry. Oops, I'm going to have to.
[12:21] I made a mistake there, went backwards, and we'll get caught up here in just a second. All right, Stephen.
[12:34] Oops, can't go until that thing stops, right? All right. Many of the believers, after, in chapter 8, chapter 9, many of the believers returned to Jerusalem following the church planting.
[12:51] I mentioned that as well. Now, what happened was, the Bible says they were all scattered. Once rest comes in chapter 9, verse 31, I believe that many of these believers returned to their homes in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem church to continue the process there of planting churches.
[13:09] And so, it was during this time, of course, that Paul was saved and discipled at the church of Damascus. Let's go to that passage of Scripture, Acts chapter 9.
[13:20] Acts chapter 9 is a wonderful chapter in the life of Paul, I think, that really reveals a great deal to us about the church and about discipleship and so on.
[13:32] And we find in this passage, Paul is saved, he's baptized there, he's added to the church. Verse 19, verse 18, 19, Immediately there fell from his eyes there had been scales.
[13:46] He received sight for with and rose and was baptized. And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples, which were at Antioch. He was a part of the church there. He was discipled there.
[13:58] He grew there and began to preach. Verse 20, and so on, in his ministry. Now, he, in turn, then ends up going to the church in Jerusalem.
[14:10] Look over at verse 26. And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he is saved to join himself to the disciples. They were all afraid of him, believed not that he was discipled. Now, just as a side note for your group discussions in the afterglow, you'll notice here there must have been a vote.
[14:33] They decided not to let him join the church. Okay? They said they were afraid of him, believed not that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, declared to them how he had seen the Lord of the way, and he had spoken to them, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.
[14:51] And he was with them, coming in and going out to Jerusalem. So, there was this period when he first got there, they said, Oh, no, we don't want anything to do with them. Barnabas takes him, and we're going to get to Barnabas here a little later.
[15:03] Barnabas takes him and begins to work with him, takes him to the apostles, gets his thing cleared up, and then he becomes a part of the church in Jerusalem. So, in this passage of scripture.
[15:17] So, he was with them, coming in and going out of Jerusalem. He was still under the process of learning. He was being trained in that church. He went out and spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus.
[15:32] But he was still learning. And so, the church clearly was developing, the church was clearly developing leadership within the local church for the purpose of church planning.
[15:44] I think everything they did was for church planning. I honestly believe that. You can be thankful for that. Not that I believe it, but you can be thankful they did that because that's the reason we're saved today.
[15:56] Now, notice thirdly, the church was willing to allow their best men to leave. I wrote an article in The Cultivator.
[16:07] If you, maybe we can do this later in the day, put up the website. But if you go to our website, you'll be able to go back and read the articles, which should be some fun for you, for some of you.
[16:21] But you can go back and read the articles that have been written over the years. And I wrote an article about this very thing. I have a real problem with guys who, boy, I might step on some toes here.
[16:36] Hang on for a second. I have a real problem with guys who have a college. And guys come to the college. And then they hire the best for their staff.
[16:50] And send the others away. You know. I have a problem with that. And that often happens. You know. They go there. They spend four years at a college.
[17:01] And the staff looks at them and says, Boy, he's sharp. He's really good. Oh, is that what he said? Should we take a vote?
[17:13] Should we take a vote on that one? I don't want to get off on this. But look. I really do think.
[17:24] It's written. So anyway. I won't even go in there. But I think the church. This church was willing to let their best men leave. We have to train our best to leave.
[17:35] Not to stay. We have to train our best to leave. Barnabas was a key man in the church in Jerusalem. He's first mentioned in Acts chapter 4, verse 36 and 37.
[17:47] Where we see his desire to sacrifice for the cause of Christ. We then see him in chapter 9, verse 27. Where Paul comes to Jerusalem for the first time as a believer. Barnabas is the one.
[17:59] His name is exhorter. He takes him under his wing. It is obvious. It is obvious that his leadership is influential in persuading the early church to accept Paul into the membership of the church.
[18:11] And not only was it his leadership, but it, I mean, here's somebody who was willing to take a risk.
[18:23] You know, Barnabas was willing to take that risk. When others weren't. Now, when the church, when the church is planted in Antioch, he is sent.
[18:37] And that word sent means dispatched. All right. To go and pastor the church there. Now, in Acts 13, there's two words in Acts 13.
[18:50] Sent by the Holy Ghost. Then they sent them away. That's two different Greek words. One means dispatched by the Holy Spirit. Then when it says they sent them away, that means release. The church released them to go out and do their work.
[19:04] We may talk about that later, even in this session. I'm not sure. His first decision, after getting to Antioch, looking at the situation, what did he do? He goes and gets Paul.
[19:15] He goes over to Tarsus, gets Paul, brings him to the church there. You see, when God, and then when God chooses men to take the gospel to the regions and beyond, he chooses Barnabas and Paul for the task.
[19:31] Now, that doesn't mean the other guys that were serving there weren't good guys. They were. But I believe these were the top of the heap. I believe these two guys were the guys that had worked together.
[19:43] They were the first two in the church in Antioch. The other three come on board as a part of the training program there. But the best were sent. The best were sent.
[19:56] Not kept there in the church. Now, somehow, they established a training program in the church, for men in the church.
[20:11] I believe this is implied throughout the early church ministry. We don't have anything, you know, that I can think of. Maybe some of you can help me with that. I mean, they didn't have a Bible institute or a Bible college where they could send their leaders.
[20:25] But it's obvious that these men were trained. They were trained in the church. And they were prepared for pastoring churches. And if there's ever an example of this, I think Barnabas is that example.
[20:39] Barnabas is an example. And you say, well, do you have more than one? I don't think I need more than one. I think one's all I need. I think if I could look at the life of Barnabas and see from chapter 4 all the way through his life where he comes to Antioch to be the pastor, I think you see some things there that happen in his life.
[20:59] We don't see it all, of course. But they certainly didn't have a Bible college sent it to. It had to be done through the local church. Now, my feeling is this.
[21:09] If you send a guy off to a Bible college, you ought to go back to his home church and spend four or five years working with his pastor and then decide what he's going to do with his life. The problem with that is this, for those watching the internet.
[21:22] The problem is most pastors are too stinking lazy to spend the time with their men to do it. Burns me up.
[21:36] I won't go there. We're on the internet. I might get in trouble. All right. All right. Let's move to point number two here, the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Now we have the example, Paul's example during his missionary journeys.
[21:50] In Acts chapter 14, verse 23, we find that Paul is now leading this, at this point, it could be that he is now the team leader.
[22:04] But in verse 23, and when they ordained them elders in every church and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed. That just didn't happen. They, I mean, they had worked with these leaders.
[22:14] So Paul and Barnabas planted churches, taught these churches to follow the example of the Jerusalem church. Now, this might, this is a side light on this.
[22:29] Some people take their church planting from the Apostle Paul, from the Paulian example of church planting.
[22:41] And they say, well, Paul was sent out from a church. He goes to a community. He reaches a few folks, gets a group together, starts a church, and then goes and leaves them and goes out and starts another church.
[22:53] And that's true. He did. Now, you will find, though, that Paul didn't leave them with a pastor to begin with. But he did leave them with enough training that they knew that they were to reproduce churches.
[23:08] I think Philippi is a good example of this. Philippi is the chief city of Macedonia. Thessalonica is the capital city of Macedonia. All right? For some reason, in Philippians chapter 4, he didn't consider Thessalonica a part of Macedonia.
[23:27] I don't know why. But he seemed to separate those two regions. When he says this in chapter 4, he said, Now ye Philippians know also that at the beginning, this is verse 15, the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.
[23:51] For even in Thessalonica ye sent once again to my necessity. But Thessalonica was the capital city of Macedonia. But so it must have been some division there in Macedonia.
[24:01] I don't know. But when you look at 2 Corinthians chapter 8, it says the churches of Macedonia. Not church.
[24:12] The churches of Macedonia. I believe the Philippian church launched out and reached that area around them and planted churches. It was 50 miles between Philippi and Thessalonica.
[24:24] And I believe that Philippian church just branched out and began reproducing themselves just like the Jerusalem church had done. We don't have any reference of that. We don't need any.
[24:35] We find the first mentioned principle of church planting is found in Acts chapter 8, chapter 9, and so on. And that's where we ought to draw our initial plan for church planting from.
[24:49] Now, let's go back here. Paul's example to the church. Now, the word ordained means a setting apart to an office by the imposition of hands.
[25:01] So they ordained them leaders, men that were mature in the ministry, men that had ability to lead the church. Now, Acts, of course, we know is a transitional book.
[25:14] And I believe God did some miraculous things during that time to give leaders in these churches. And I think we also understand we were dealing with people who were different than people today.
[25:25] These were people who were, how would you say, they were, first of all, they were extremely religious people before they were saved. They knew the scriptures.
[25:36] You know, most of these being Jews. And some were not. But they, it wasn't as though they were dealing with people like, you know, we have to deal with sometimes today in our churches.
[25:48] But they still had to be trained. These men still had to be trained to do this after God led Paul and Barnabas to select these men. So these men were trained. Now, when you look at 2 Timothy chapter 2, if you want to go over there, please, with me.
[26:03] And when you look at this passage of scripture, we see Paul's counsel to Timothy.
[26:16] Thou therefore, my son, be strong. Excuse me, that's verse 1. And the things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Thou also endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
[26:29] Now, in verse 2, it is fourfold. The things that thou hast heard of me among many which commit to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.
[26:39] So, it's fourfold. Barnabas trained Paul. Paul trained Timothy. Timothy was to train others. In this. And so, as these...
[26:53] It's clear that Paul was encouraging Timothy to train men for the ministry. Prepare them. Now, this passage sometimes is often used for our discipleship program. And it's okay to use that.
[27:04] But the primary reference of this passage of scripture... Uh-oh. I lost it, brother. Uh-oh. Let's see.
[27:18] Maybe it's going to come back. No connection. All right. You can get that. And you can just follow along here.
[27:31] You can switch that back there as we go, all right? So, it's clear that this passage can be used for discipling Christians. All right.
[27:42] But the primary emphasis of this passage is training leadership. Pastors training other men and training them to train other men who train them to train other men.
[27:54] For ministry. All right. Because he's writing to Timothy here in this passage. So, when he's talking about these faithful men, he's talking about leadership. He's talking about pastoral leadership in that passage of scripture.
[28:09] All right. Thank you. Blank page?
[28:20] Blank page? Oh, okay. Great. All right. Good. All right. Now, let's look at Paul's counsel to Titus. Titus chapter 1. Verse 5.
[28:32] For this cause lest I thee in Crete that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city as I have appointed thee. Titus is given the same responsibility. He was to select men for leadership in the churches in Crete.
[28:46] And it was to be done following the training within the church. This is through the local church. So, they were to be training and ordaining in every city.
[28:57] A clear indication that these churches were reproducing churches in their country. Here was a group of churches in Crete. And Titus was overseeing this church planting effort.
[29:08] But not only the church planting effort, but the training of leadership. Now, let's take what we find here and apply it to our churches today. So, let's look at the application today for local churches.
[29:23] Stand up with me. There we go. Great. First of all, notice planning by the leadership.
[29:33] If we're going to apply the principles of the scripture, we have to have leadership that plans. Pastors should determine the overall objectives for their church.
[29:47] I'm surprised how many pastors don't do that. They have no idea the direction they're going. What they want to accomplish. Where they want to be in five years or ten years. This should include ministries within the church that lead to the successful fulfillment of the Great Commission.
[30:04] Everything we do in the church should be about the Great Commission. Everything we do should be about the Great Commission. Our pastors should develop a plan for training and preparing young men for the ministry.
[30:22] Now, we were talking earlier about the contemporary movement and so on. I'm telling you, they're eating our lunch on some of that stuff. Those guys are training people. They're doing it.
[30:32] And that's what's drawing some of our people to them. You know, they've got the right methodology. They're having right now. How many have heard of Exponential Church Growth or the Exponential Church Planning Movement?
[30:47] Down in Orlando. Is that where they have their big meeting? I believe it's Orlando. I just got an email this morning from them. They will have $2,000 or $3,000 at their church planning conference.
[31:01] That pay $350 to go. Look, we have church planning conferences around the country for independent Baptists. And we have them for free and we can't get guys to come.
[31:13] I'm telling you. I'm telling you. It says, and part of it has to do with leadership in our churches. So we not only need the planning by leadership, but we need the preparation of the church, of the local church.
[31:27] The local church should be taught what the objectives of the ministry are and what will result by meeting those objectives.
[31:38] So you guys, even on other fields around the world, you need with your people to explain to them the direction you're going, the objectives you've got, how you're going to get there.
[31:49] And when it comes to church planning, you need to say to them, look, our goal is to reproduce our church in these areas. We're going to go at it this particular way.
[32:02] A lot of times the reason, and if I had stayed and pastored a church and I sometimes wish that I had, I know I would never have been able to accomplish the things that I've been able to accomplish in church planning.
[32:13] And I know that it was not God's will. The great envy that I have in the ministry, the one great envy I have is being able to not stay in one place and pastor the same church for 30 years.
[32:25] If there was anything I wish I could have done, that would have been it. God didn't have that for me. He had this for me, and I'm quite satisfied with that. But I readily admit that I wish that that were the case.
[32:37] I wish my kids could have grown up with one town that they could have called home. And it just didn't happen for us. But, you know, when I was pastoring, if I'd stayed there, this is the direction we were going.
[32:50] Our people knew the direction we were going with this. So this should include ministries within the church that lead to the successful... All right. We got that?
[33:02] All right. I want to make... My number... Okay. They should know the philosophy of the ministry of the pastor and leadership of the church.
[33:13] I got sort of sidetracked there. Excuse me. The church should. Pastors should give the philosophy of the ministry of the church. You'd be surprised at the number of churches where people...
[33:24] You said to them, where are we going as a church? I don't know. Cracker Barrel? You know? Golden Crow? Well, you know, where are we going after...
[33:35] I don't know. Where are we going after church today? You know? They have no idea. No idea. In our churches. We'd be surprised. They ought to know what is expected of them as a body and individually.
[33:50] You know, sometimes our people don't give because they don't know what they're giving for. And I'm not talking about... I mean, they know that the offering is for a particular thing. But they don't know what the end result is going to be down the road.
[34:01] Five years or ten years down the road from that offering. Or work that they put in. They should be instructed as to how to fulfill their role in the overall plan for the ministry.
[34:12] This is a part of training in our churches. We should train our people. They should know. Here's a role that I can fulfill. Many church members do not get involved because they do not see the direction the leadership is going.
[34:25] And they don't see it because the leadership, they don't even know the direction they're going. So as you men get out there and develop a ministry, a church ministry, sit down, figure it out, and go someplace.
[34:43] When I was pastoring, every year I had a staff retreat in June. We took four days. We took anybody who led anything in our church.
[34:53] The chairman of the ushers, nursery, every ministry that they led, all of our deacons, all of our school teachers, every staff member. We went away for three or four days.
[35:04] And I'm telling you, we just beat our heads together to figure out where we're going and how we were going to implement it and how we were going to get the church on board to do it with us. But yet, I don't know too many pastors that do that kind of thing.
[35:17] And, you know, hopefully there are more that do it than I know of. C, we need to develop leadership from within our church. When planning and preparation take place within the church, leaders will begin to develop within the congregation.
[35:34] Okay? That's where you get your leaders. And I'm sure that's happened around here. From what I can tell, I honestly believe that you've sensed where your pastor's going, what your pastor is wanting to do.
[35:46] Because of that, leadership has developed. And hopefully some of you men that have come from other places, that's true as well. But the plan must be in place to develop this leadership and prepare men for the ministry.
[35:57] I mean, real leaders. Leaders who follow leaders. And by the way, that's what a leader should do. A leader should get leaders to follow them.
[36:09] All right? You're going to be a real leader. You're going to have leaders following you. And, but you prepare those men. And these leaders are unwilling to follow someone who doesn't know where he's going.
[36:25] So you're going to have leaders in your church. What you need to do is you need to be the kind of leader that attracts leaders who are going to follow you.
[36:37] And eventually, to the place that you can branch them off to do what you're doing. Okay? And that creates some hardship. We're going to talk about that here in a moment.
[36:48] But you, some of these will be married men with families. Some will be young men growing up in the church that can be developed. And, and, and they, and they see how the church will use them to prepare for leadership.
[37:00] I, I really, I think it's great. And we have this at our, our church a good bit. Um, we want, we want our guys to come back home after college.
[37:11] We don't come back home. We got a place for them. We, we, we try to plant a church every year, every other year out of our church at Heritage. And we've been, I don't know, 15 churches the last 20 years or so, uh, out of our church that we have reproduced.
[37:25] Uh, we're working on one right now for next spring. We just finished one, uh, a little while ago. We had one, one of our deacons went to Trinidad. Uh, you know, so we, we, and, and over the years before I got there, pastor, 1985 pastor told me, he said, before I was there, he said, look, I'm going to plant church every, every year.
[37:44] And, um, for the next 15 years, I didn't think he'd do it. He was close. He, he, but many of them did not survive because he didn't know what he's doing. But now we've got to the place where we've got everything in place where, you know, these churches are all doing extremely well.
[37:59] And, and, uh, we're, we're, you know, we're, we're seeing some really good things happening. And so our guys that go away to college come back home because they know there's going to be a place for them. Okay. There, there's a plan in place.
[38:12] So there's developing leadership from within. Then there's adopting leadership from without. There will be others that God may bring to the church because of your philosophy of ministry.
[38:24] When you develop, when you, when you start putting in place as a leader and you show your church where you're going and people say, yeah, man, I'm on board. All of a sudden word gets out and some guy calls you on the phone and says, preacher, I understand you've got this church planning ministry.
[38:39] You've got a way of, uh, you know, getting these things that you think I could be a part of that. You think I could come there. Can I get in on that? And so there may be others that God will bring to the church because of this philosophy of ministry.
[38:55] Maybe Bible college grads who hear about the church that they want somebody to mentor them properly. All Bible college does for guys is help them to understand that their socks do not miraculously end up in the door clean every week.
[39:11] That doesn't do a whole lot more than that. I mean, yeah, I know they learned some, a few things, but you know, if they're really going to learn it, they got to get under a pastor who says, get out there and do the work.
[39:23] And I know your pastor believes that and that's what's happening here. But I'm telling you, I'm just, man, I'm just, never mind. I don't want to get, I don't want to get off on it. I get in trouble.
[39:33] I'm in enough trouble as it is. Um, but there are other men. If, if the guys came back to their church, they'd say, pastor, what can I do?
[39:45] I don't know. I, you know, I, well, I guess you could maybe start a bus route or something or we've probably got to, how about work with the seniors?
[39:55] I, I'm tired of doing that. These men can help the church reach their goals of church planning as, as, as, as it's, as it's planned right.
[40:07] All right. Now let's go number four reasons for pastoral leader. The reasons pastoral leadership does not follow this pattern. What kind of time am I looking at? Okay. First of all, fear of failure.
[40:23] Many pastors are unwilling to reproduce churches because they're afraid it may not work. Um, they don't want to attempt something publicly that may not succeed in their church family, see them as unsuccessful.
[40:38] If there's one thing I think, and we talked a little bit about this last night and my wife and I talked about it afterwards, but I think the one thing that's helped us through cancer more than anything else.
[40:49] is seeing God do so much in our lives. I mean, I could not tell you the number of times we have looked at a community.
[41:02] I remember we were in Minnesota. We drove into this community. My wife and I were together. We didn't have any other staff. It was just, just us. We drove into this community and I said, honey, here we are. We're driving into community.
[41:13] We don't know a single person in this town. And we expect in six months for there to be a church that believes like we believe, that stands for what we stand.
[41:26] This is crazy. And six months later, when they had the first service for that new church, there were 53 people in the service.
[41:42] Only God can do that. Only God can do that. And we've just seen God do this time after time. And it's been good for us because to lead a ministry like this, to work with pastors, because we've been able to say, pastors have said to me, boy, I don't know if I want to do this.
[42:02] What if this doesn't work? I said, yeah, I know I've been there. I've been through that. As a pastor, I've been through that. I've had those same feelings. Look, trust God.
[42:12] He'll get you through this. But a lot of them just simply have a fear of failure. They don't want somebody to think that they're unsuccessful. The second problem that leads to is a lack of faith.
[42:23] Really part of it. Church planting is a massive step of faith. It's a step of financial faith. It's a step of faith to have the right man.
[42:34] And training men is also a big step of faith. Faith is attempting something only God can finish.
[42:46] And my wife and I have lived that for a long, long time. I had a preacher. When my wife had developed breast cancer, I had a preacher who was preaching for me.
[43:02] He was doing a... In our church planting ministry when I was pastoring in Canada, we had an independent audit, if you please, of our ministry, of our church planting ministry.
[43:12] Because we had other churches that were investing in it. And so we had an independent audit every year of our church planting ministry that would be sent to all the churches that supported our ministry.
[43:23] Because it was through our local church. And so this particular preacher came up, preached for us, and did the audit. It was during September when my wife was dealing with cancer. And he said something to me that I'd never forgotten.
[43:35] He said, Brother Jessup, always have something supernatural in your ministry. Always be doing something God has to finish. And from...
[43:46] Well, even before that, we had done that. But of course, we were dealing with something at that time that only God could finish. And he did. And I guess that's one of the reasons maybe we haven't reacted like a normal reaction to cancer should be done.
[44:08] I don't know how you react to that. I really don't. But I'm telling you, I've got a God who knows what he's doing. And he can do it. He can do whatever he wants to do.
[44:19] And church planting has been a great thing for us. But the sad fact is, many pastors have never attempted something only God could finish. They're afraid. They're afraid.
[44:31] Step out by faith and do it. Thirdly, there's a third reason that pastoral leadership does not follow this pattern. It's a fear of losing members to another leader. That can happen.
[44:43] There is a possibility that one of these leaders will turn on the pastor. We've seen enough of that for some pastors to say, I'm not willing to do that.
[44:56] I've lost guys. You know, I've tried to train a guy. I've tried to mentor a guy. And boy, he turned on me. And he took three or four families and went out and started a church across the road. And it's been a thorn in our flesh for all these years.
[45:10] It can happen when mentoring men for the ministry. There are times when we will be disappointed, betrayed. Leadership will be betrayed. But it should not keep us from doing what's right.
[45:23] Paul said, look, at my last answer, no man stood with me. Look, but he kept doing right. I've had guys betray me. I've had guys turn on us.
[45:41] Sadly, many pastors have problems with trusting God to meet their needs just as their flock does. We preach about that. We preach about faith. We preach that our people ought to have faith and step out by faith and walk by faith.
[45:54] But sometimes we don't. Now, here's the problems created by not following this pattern. Now, if you choose, as a leader, not to follow this pattern, and I've seen it.
[46:07] I've seen it. What I'm giving you right here, I have seen happen. And it's so sad that the church that this happened to really never, ever got back on track.
[46:20] All right. But problems are created by not following this pattern. First of all, there is stagnation within the local church. If a church does not allow young men to leave to either pastor or plant a church, there's no room for growth of others.
[46:33] This keeps them from developing further unless the church develops other ministries within. What I mean by that is, here's a church much like yours. And if pastor said, boy, I tell you what, man, I've got all these guys here.
[46:46] Look at this. This is great. We're going to start this kind of ministry, this kind of ministry. And I'm going to have this one look after this, and this one look after this. And just keeps you all here.
[47:00] Pastor, I'm thinking about going to the mission field. Well, you know, you pray about that. But look, I got this for you right here. All right. And so, and during this time, you leaders, and you are leaders, you leaders begin to build ministries and bring up leaders along with your pastor.
[47:22] And you mature these other leaders. Well, when they get up, they can only go so far. Why? Because you're still here. You're still here.
[47:35] You've got to get out so somebody else can come up. Or it stagnates from the top down. So when you have leadership in the church that does some training, if you don't develop a system of church planning or getting them out to the mission field or whatever, it all begins to fall apart from the top down.
[47:59] So there's stagnation within the church. And then there's problems within the leadership. People are going to follow one who leads.
[48:09] And sometimes this may not be the pastor. Look, I've got right now guys following me that are good leaders.
[48:24] Good leaders. And I want guys to follow them, particularly with my situation. You know, when I was pastoring, I had men that were good leaders under me. In fact, the guy, one of them, ended up giving me a problem when I first met with him.
[48:38] In fact, this guy was a deacon in the church. And he's the one who called me and asked me to consider coming. And eventually the church taught me into coming.
[48:48] And God called me to the church. And the first thing I did when I got there was I took this man and his wife out to eat. And I said to him, look, I want you to know I'm a stronger leader than you are.
[48:59] And I am going to lead this church. Yeah, that's what I want. You know, I really want you to do that. And it worked for a while. He wanted me to be that leader. And I wouldn't back down.
[49:13] And I made a mistake later on. I'm not going to go into that. Now, I want you to, and eventually he did split the church. Okay. But now let me tell you this. He is still my friend.
[49:24] He supports our ministry. We stay with them. We go out to eat together. We have great fellowship. And what happened, God used for our good.
[49:35] Not too many guys can say that. All right. We're very close. You can do just about anything for me. And that's been almost 20 years ago.
[49:50] Yeah. But there can be problems within the leadership. Where are we here? Financial pressures? Leaders.
[50:00] Oh, we've got to go. We've got to move along on those slides. Yeah. Leadership. There we go. I should be watching the screen. Okay. Back that up one, please. If you would.
[50:11] Those guys didn't have time to get that. Do you guys have time to get that note? Leadership. Yes. Must be willing to trust God to meet the needs of the church. Okay.
[50:22] All right. Stagnation within the church. We've already talked about this. Must have fell asleep back there. Okay. There we go. All right. There we go.
[50:32] Problems within the leadership. Number one, people are going to follow the one who leads. May not be the pastor. It's especially true in the church because of voluntary service.
[50:45] What I mean by that is when you pay somebody, they have to follow leadership. When you don't pay somebody, they don't have to follow leadership. All right.
[50:56] And so in the church, you have those kind of problems. It's not the position. Stanley Hofty said this. It's not the position that makes the leader. It's the leader that makes the position. Be a leader.
[51:07] Be a leader and become a leader and train leaders. If pastors do not allow leaders to leave and develop their skills, it could cause problems within the church.
[51:19] And you don't want that. You don't want that. You don't want that. Members. Okay. Number C. Letter C. Members follow other natural leaders.
[51:30] It'll create problems. A person that is a leader will develop followers and it may not be the pastor. And when that happens, Satan can use that to cause problems and division within the church and create splits.
[51:43] Another issue is this. Envy of other leaders by the pastor of the church. If you don't get rid of these leaders, if you don't build a program of training leadership and then taking these leaders and giving them something where God moves them.
[52:03] And God wants to do that, by the way. You know, let me tell you something. God is in the business of reaching this world with the gospel. And he needs you to get out there to do it.
[52:16] He doesn't need you sitting here. And it's great fun. I'll tell you what. We've had a great time yesterday. And we will, I'm sure, today. But sitting together and just talking about things, that's great.
[52:27] I love it. I said to my wife last night. She said, well, are you tired? I said, yeah, I'm tired, but I tell you, I just really enjoy just being with those guys and just, you know, talking about things.
[52:38] And I could have done it for a long time. I would not be, I'm tired enough as it is today. But I could have done that for a long time last evening. But, you know, we've got to have pastors that are willing to get these guys out.
[52:52] But pastors then, if you keep them, if they stay, they begin to envy the one possessing greater leadership and thus begin to hurt or criticize that person. And then that creates problems within the church. You can't have that. Saul and David are an example of this very thing.
[53:07] They're an example. So there are eventual divisions within the church resulting in splits. I saw this firsthand.
[53:21] I wasn't involved at the church at the time. But the pastor said this to me. He said, why do I want to take my good men, send them off to Bible college? Let's just keep them here so they can build this ministry.
[53:34] So what he, and I don't have a problem with training men there. But what he did was he kept those men in that church and they became stronger leaders than the pastor.
[53:44] They didn't mean to. And then, because there was no place for them to go up or out, eventually people started following.
[53:59] And this group broke off. This group broke off. And the church was never the same. It didn't have to be that way. And the people that were under them, they were itching.
[54:10] This church, they had a great soul. And people were getting saved. I mean, this church was a good church. Doing a great job. And there may be people watching and say, oh, I know who that church is.
[54:22] And I'm sure they don't know. They wouldn't know this one. But it happens in many churches. And then other people come up. And because they can't move forward because somebody's above them, they get discouraged and leave.
[54:36] And sometimes those people go out and leave too soon. Because they're not ready. Then they make a mess of their lives. So there, letter E, eventual divisions within the church resulting in splits.
[54:51] Listen, Satan is a master deceiver. And he, when possible, he'll use this to create division within the church that causes a split. And it could be avoided.
[55:02] We follow a biblical pattern of training, developing leadership, and then reproducing churches and getting our leaders out. Will they all be the same? No. I've had some guys say, well, yeah, we want to do this.
[55:16] But if we send that guy out, he's not going to be exactly what. You know, he's just not really what I am exactly. Well, duh, he's 20 years younger than you are. I mean, give him some time to grow up.
[55:27] Yeah, they're going to make mistakes. But simply because of that, you don't not do it. Get them out there. Training leaders within the local church is vital to the Great Commission.
[55:44] It's vital. It's true in the Church of Jerusalem, and it's true today. So if we're going to have qualified pastors for our church programs and churches seeking pastors, we've got to have a good training program within the church successfully developing these leaders.
[56:00] We've got to have that. We've got to have some training in our churches. All right, we're going to take a 10-minute break, and then we'll pick it up. Thank you for listening to the Church Playing Conference hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church.
[56:19] You can find the complete series of record sessions by logging on to www.sermonaudio.com forward slash visionpaptist.
[56:29] Thank you.