What an Equpping Church Looks Like

As I ponder the question of what an equipping church looks like, three words come right to the forefront: Biblical, Intentional, Relational. An equipping church must start with a focus on the finished work of Jesus Christ and allow the grace and promise of the Gospel infiltrate all they do.

Biblical

We live in a day and age of quick fixes, microwave solutions. This often spills over to the manner in which we look at equipping the Body of Christ. I get plenty of catalogs and e-mails promoting the new program or tool to develop leaders. Our goal is to make Jesus the center of all we do, so we better look at the Word of God to be the center of all we are and do. In our haste to produce ministries and leaders we need to see want the Lord is saying before we act. There may not be a step by step process, but we can learn from Biblical examples of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Ezra, Nehemiah, Jesus, Peter, John, and Paul. We are blessed with real-life modeling of Jesus to His disciples; Paul to Timothy, Solomon to his sons (Proverbs).

As we build this foundation of equipping on the Holy Scriptures, we realize our dependence on God and the work of the Holy Spirit in developing leaders for His Church. If we start with a business model, we are sure to stray from our focus of godly head, heart, and hands.

Intentional

Leadership development and general equipping of the Body will not happen automatically. In Charles Hummel’s classic booklet, Tyranny of the Urgent, we discover that the important often gets set aside because of the urgent less important day-to-day stuff of life. Hummel quotes a manager, “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.” Have we let “the winds of other people’s demands” drive “us onto a reef of frustration?”

Being intentional means that we take time to plan, take aim to execute, and close the loop by evaluating how we are doing. These three things will not come by happenstance, but by intentionality. But being intentional is much more work. There is the need to row against the winds of the urgent, focusing our eyes on the destination.

Relational

Equipping the next generation of leaders and ministry partners must be done in the context of relationship. This is not development by proxy, but by rubbing shoulders. When the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians he told them that he not only shared the gospel, but his very life. Some call this, “life on life,” and that is a good phrase. Equipping people must include mentoring and discipleship, working alongside others to show by example and watch as they develop. All this takes time, but it is worth it in the long run.

Jesus is our master model here too. He lived with the twelve disciples, modeled ministry and lived out love before their eyes, and then sent them out, two-by-two, to let them live it out. After, they compared notes and corrective teaching and encouragement followed; All this in the context of relationships.