All organic, healthy things reproduce.  In fact, in a sense, you are reproducing even as you read this!  Your 10 trillion cells are “mitosis-ing” all over the place, and you might want to quietly ask them to find a room.

The Kingdom of God, like all living things, reproduces itself.  Interestingly, this is done in stages developing from the smallest level to the largest.

So if churches, and disciples and even leaders are part of the Kingdom of God, why don’t we see more of them reproducing? Here’s a few reasons:

(1) They are trying to clone themselves.  Ever see the movie Multiplicity?  Michael Keaton makes a clone of himself to make life a little easier, but before long, his clone  makes a clone, who makes another clone.  And everyone knows what happens when you make a copy of a copy – its not quite as sharp as the original. (“I like pizza!”)  That’s kind of what happens with franchised church plants.  (Check out this 10 sec portion of the Multiplicity trailer to see what I mean!)

(2) In addition to scary clones, most churches are just not interested in multiplying!  It’s too painful! It feels more like division than multiplication.  It usually takes upwards of $250-$500,000 to plant a church in the first year.  It is so difficult and complex its undeliverable!

And its difficult not just at the church level – discipleship is under attack from high-level curriculum and a culture that is religiously educated beyond their obedience, and leaders must now go through seminary for the better part of a decade…meanwhile we are only copying ourselves, we have forgotten its about reproducing Jesus.

Inorganic things may PRODUCE, but they can never reproduce.  A coffeemaker may PRODUCE great coffee, but it can never make another coffeemaker.

Reproduction is FUN!

Imagine with me for a moment a world where reproduction was hard to hold back.  Where you had to teach classes in school about abstinence and contraception.  Not so hard to imagine, eh?  People want to reproduce!  Its fun!

Now imagine if disciple-making, like baby-makin’ – was just as fun. Imagine passing out “church planting contraceptives” or holding whole conferences on waiting to plant a church because people were so excited to get out there to do it!  First, that’d be awesome!  But I think that also gives us a picture of what I’m aiming for – where disciple-making, leadership development, and church planting becomes a veritable movement that cannot be stopped.

Mentoring

If Life Transformation Groups (LTG) as a part of the Micro Layer are the “wineskin” or infrastructure for reproducing Jesus-centered disciples, then mentoring helps reproduce Jesus-centered leaders, churches, and movements.

It’s important to remember NOT to put on the “mentoring hat” in an LTG.  LTG’s are for peers – people who are mutually self-disclosing/confessing, etc.  Mentoring should be done at another time, or risk the “priest/confessor” hierarchical relationship trap!

The two most central skills necessary to mentor well are: (Luke 2:46-47)

1. Active Listening
2. Asking Good Questions

If you simply spent the rest of your life working on these two skills, you’d be amazed at what would happen.

Through the lens of the above two skills, your mentoring style must be (1) Personalized to the person you’re mentoring, (2) Just-in-time (not “just-in-case”) — people don’t learn linearly like our good curriculum suggest. (3) It must also be “on-the-job” — people only learn to swim when they’re in the water, (4) and mentoring must be holistic – (a) skills — doing, (b) cognitive (knowing) — and (c) character (being).  You can’t teach character – you’ll just get behavior modification.  If you want to teach character, be a mirror and a model.

Men are looking for better methods, God is looking for better men. — E.M. Bounds

Also important to remember about mentoring is that the only way to really move forward in a mentoring relationship is through fruitfulness.  If there is no fruit, then you are mentoring is a waste of time.  This process of the bearing more fruit is a sign that the person being mentored is taking the mentoring seriously.  While you cheer every person on, mentors invest in proveness, not potential.

Bifocal Vision

A mentor has the ability to see you both as you are today, and the person you are developing into.  This allows her to view not only your personal development, but the influence you will have later on others.  Not only is she mentoring your life, but she is considering the countless lives you will touch, the churches you will plant, and even the apprentices you will one day mentor.  You know you’re a healthy mentor, not when you’ve successfully mentored someone into a godly life, but when they begin to mentor someone else in healthy ways.

A Simple Tool

So all this mentoring/coaching stuff is fine and dandy…but how do I actually DO it?  Neil Cole and CMA put out a little tool that has been helpful for them in their mentoring sessions – a Mentoring 2 Multiply Guide. Its a simple sheet of NCR paper on which you would write your notes from your mentoring session.  Then at the end of the meeting, tear off the copy and hand your notes to the apprentice.  (But don’t make a copy of a copy! See above).  The key to remember in a mentoring session is that you are educing not educating. You are not pouring your skills and expertise into a bucket — you are drawing out what is already planted in the one you are mentoring.

Acorns…not buckets… That will keep you from feeling “used up” and it will encourage the apprentice to reach his/her own potential rather than becoming your clone!

MAWL Them

M odel

A ssist

W atch

L eave

That’s a great “pathway” for the process of mentoring leaders, and assisting church plants…to see a movement take off.  This is a process of cultivating a catalytic-style of leadership.  I pray for the day when church leaders do not end up on the evening news for bad-behavior – or end up in the fetal position as they resign to cynicism from a church they could not drag behind them to fulfill their personal ambitions.  I am anticipating and already seeing the green-shoots of organic leadership – where a catalysis of love will flood the earth – and each of us will participate in the unstoppable movement of God!

This is the third section on my reflections based on the content the Greenhouse Story 2 Training Weekend (Feb 19-21st).

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Take a look at the back of almost any Bible and you’ll see a map of the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea.  You’ll see four squiggly lines drawn in different colors and a little key at the bottom indicating that these lines are the apostle Paul’s missionary journeys.

As a kid, it always reminded me of those scenes out of Indiana Jones movies, where there would be a soft fade from a smirking Harrison Ford onto a parchment map, with a red line moving slowly over a map, indicating a plane’s path from Germany to Austria or some other beautiful locale.  It helped convey the story’s progression and the vastness of the tale.

But merely showing each movie’s mapped journeys would no doubt strip the Indiana Jones tales of their richness – the time between journeys, the relationships built in each movie, the enemies defeated…and of course, the explosions!

As nice as it is to have a map of Paul’s journeys spanning 30 years smashed on top of each other, we need to carefully consider the lives and happenings of Paul throughout Acts and the New Testament Epistles to see what those journeys mean – and it might just reveal how God develops a leader in the harvest that finishes well.  (As a side note, I highly recommend the 1981 TV movie Peter and Paul.)

First Journey

Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13:1-14:28) from 47-48 CE took place in Southeast Asia and was the start of the churches in the Galatian region.  See Paul during this time as a learner, and not a teacher.  A team covered 1500 miles as traveling evangelists leaving clusters of undeveloped disciples behind who were desperate for leadership.

The team felt that it was necessary that they revisit these churches several times to provide leadership, nevertheless, the churches suffered from immaturity and vulnerability, a weak understanding of the Truth, and was influenced at the hands of very strong and legalistic leaders.  Even though the team saw fruitfulness, it did not see its churches multiply.  The sickness of these churches and personality differences in the team seemingly caused frustration and division.

Lessons:

• The First Journey leader often tries to do it all himself, which leaves behind weak churches who are open to other “do-it-yourself” leaders who want to dominate others.
• The apprentice leader on his first journey beings to flex his own leadership muscles and become a leader in his own right, stepping away from his mentor.
• First Journey leaders are often in a hurry to move on.
• The First Journey leaders is where the leader gains the know-how to pass on to others – you cannot skip the first journey.

Second Journey

God begins the team’s second journey through the disagreement over John-Mark’s readiness for another mission trip.  It can be read about from Acts 15:36-18:22.  As it turns out, this spurs Paul to multiply his mission team and cover more ground.  This time, Paul’s team is much bigger, dropping a member off in each city rather than leaving churches alone.  This worked out well at first — Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke…which became… Paul, Silas and Timothy…which became…Paul.  Stuck again – alone and frustrated.  One night in a dream, Jesus gives Paul the answer to his perpetual loneliness and frustrations with the finiteness of his mission teams.

In Acts 18:9-10 Jesus teaches Paul a valuable lesson in multiplication growth.  Stay in Corinth and develop a team from the harvest!

Lessons:

• A Second Journey leader realizes that his plans are not God’s plans.  Learning to listen to God makes him more flexible and prepared for producing spiritual fruit.
• Don’t be surprised if the Second Journey emerging leader steps out from under their mentor and starts doing things on his own – a seasoned, godly mentor will allow this “rebellion” and pray for the emerging leader’s success.  Over time, they will be restored and their relationship will be even stronger than it was before.
• The lesson of the Second Journey is learned through aimless confusion, emptiness, pain, conflict, loneliness, and fear.
• You can’t skip the Second Journey either.

Third Journey

Paul’s third missionary journey (Acts 18:23-21:16) is very different from his first two.  He is learning the role of an organic, catalytic missionary. This time no team is mentioned, and he doesn’t travel from Corinth for over 3 years!  This time, he didn’t even start any churches – instead he recruited indigenous followers of Christ to start the churches, which kept them from being overly dependent on him. In 3 years, all of ASIA IS REACHED with the Gospel! (Acts 19:10,26)  All this, and Paul does not even leave the school of Tyranus.  How??

1. Paul established a regional base for church planter development in a global city (Acts 19:8, Acts 20:18)
2. Mentoring one-on-one became central to his strategy, by life example, and by formal teaching.
3. Missions, evangelism, and discipleship became less ethereal and more “on-the-job” training. (Acts 20:21)
4. Now the Holy Spirit was allowed to pick the teams and to call people to mission.
5. Paul empowered leaders to connect directly with God, so that he was no longer necessary (Acts 20:32)

Lessons:

• Third Journey leaders attract more quality leaders.  God gives his best to Third Journey leaders because they now give everything to the emerging leaders.
• Third Journey leaders have an ever-expanding influence as others take their message further than they could ever go themselves.
• Though they may do less work, Third Journey leaders are now more focused and the work they do is more fruitful and reproductive.

Fourth Journey

This is where things go really wacky.  The Paul’s fourth missionary journey is as a prisoner from Jerusalem to Rome. (Acts 21:17-28:31)  Its hard to think of this as a missionary journey, until you realize it was his intention from day one to make it to Rome, and that doing it this way all his expenses were paid by the Roman Government!  As he was under house arrest for 2 years or longer, he spoke with church leaders and helped encourage the largest church network of the First Century.  According to Paul, this was his most effective missionary journey (Phil 1:12-14)…yet he never left his apartment!

Using his influence as leverage to speak to new levels of human authority, he got the Gospel even into Nero’s household!  He used set-backs like imprisonment and a shipwreck in Malta to start new churches!  He even used his confinement to pump out FOUR letters that would carry his message throughout the world, and history.

Another less obvious blessing of the Fourth Journey leader is that they’ve been sidelined, yet their influence continues to grow. Like a former basketball player who became the coach – Paul’s being ‘locked up’ compelled others to take up his work.

Lessons:

• Most Christian leaders never make it to the Fourth Journey – they usually die or plateau on a previous journey.
• Daily provisions and preparing for the future is no longer a major concern. (Phil 4:10-19)
• Their influence now grows also in the eyes of secular world leaders, and they humbly find expansive, possibly international influence.
• Fourth Journey leaders write more than ever before – multiplying their message, wisdom, experiences, and maturity into countless lives.
• …And he’s not done yet.

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Stay tuned for the next part of the Greenhouse Story 2 Coverage!

We ended the last Greenhouse post in the series by considering what it takes to be an “Organic Leader” – we made the analogy that it is much like working as an organic farmer.  What is involved in tending the plants once they have begun to grow?  Creating a “system of spiritual nurture” is essential to seeing vibrant families of Jesus in your context.

The organic church planter in most cases does not see him/herself as the pastor of a single house church being planted, (though each house church will be facilitated and nurtured by loving spiritual parents.

There is plenty of tending and nurturing language in the Scriptures to suggest it is a primary metaphor for God’s people.

The Four Biggest “Issues”

It seems that the four most asked questions in tending organic churches are:

1. Organizing organic churches
2. Children in organic churches
3. Finances in organic churches
4. Sound doctrine in organic churches

Each of these questions deserve their own blog posts and have been answered by others elsewhere.  Suffice it to say that usually the questions we ask regarding these issues are focused wrongly, and end up confusing us further.  For instance, with regards to children, the question is not, “What do we do with the kids?”  A better question might be, “What is our responsibility as a church family to responsibly disciple our children and listen to God as HE forms them as radical agents in the Kingdom?” /// We need better questions.

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.                     —- Albert Einstein

Did you know that your brain PHYSICALLY creates ruts that make it easier to remain in your mindset rather than considering and accepting new irregular information and paradigms?

“Wikicclesia” and Truth Quest

Often, to arrive at these better questions (and ultimately, solutions to complex issues) you need a “community of informed judgment.“  This is a group of diverse experts from various arena coming around a particular issue or question and collaborating to arrive at a matured, multi-faceted solution.  Bring in the architect, the plumber, the farmer and the theologian and ask them “how would YOU take the wisdom of your field of expertise to appropriately organize organic churches (or approach the other issues listed above)?”

CMA Resources introduces the idea of “Truth Quest,” which is a simple theological learning system for proven leaders in an organic church network.  The scope of such a study is systematic theology applied in holistic life.  It would happen one Saturday each month for a year (9am-5pm).  Each learner (8 per year) has two textbooks from two points of view, with no duplicate books among learners.  Each learner prepares in order to (impromptu) teach on their materials. The rest of the time is spent in dialogue with learners prayerfully considering the material to tease out fresh theological insights as well as goals for living out their beliefs in their faith communities and in their mission field.

I see this as another form of a “Wikicclesia” forming in many organic church conversations, and its a great alternative to the disappointing dichotomies of either having (1) untrained church leaders, or (2) demanding that leaders go to a seminary for a decade separating “them” from “us” and condemning them to live in debt to Sallie Mae for the rest of their life!

A New Kind of Leader

The big shift for church leadership is to think of itself as not being monolithic.  Not all are to be pastors and teachers.  Apostles, evangelists, et cetera in the New Testament did their work at a regional level, helping to tend the systems of the church in that region.

1. Not necessarily doing all the teaching yourself, but equipping leaders with healthy teaching methods and shaping learning communities where people can learn together.
2. Where you are not the “pastor” but you are nurturing environments where people care about one another and healing happens.
3. Organic church planters keep churches linked to one another through:

• Content: Biblical teaching that is consistent from church to church.
• Connections: Relational interdependence that allows for time together.
• Collaboration: Mission efforts that allow resources to be maximized for a greater harvest!

The Microscope and the Telescope

Where you start makes all the difference.  Take the simplest organism and multiply it enough and it quickly becomes complex (just look in the mirror for an example).  But under the microscope, your complexity is really just simple cells reproducing at the smallest level.

Reduce the church to its smallest, most basic unit — the Micro Layer.  It is essential that the smallest unit of kingdom life be infused with the whole DNA of a healthy church, then the whole church at large will be healthy, strong, and able to reproduce.  Truly, it is our sinful nature that gets in the way of God’s healthy DNA he puts in us with his Holy Spirit when we accept him.  So infusing healthy DNA is really about removing our own mutations and living deeply into what God has already instilled in us!

A great strategy for the Micro Layer is the Life Transformation Group (see also Church of 2 (CO2)).  It infuses the D.N.A. (Divine Truth, Nurturing Relationships, Apostolic Mission) of the whole Body of Christ into a group of two or three.

Take your current goals and multiply them by 100,000.  If you do not have a system that can take you to those kind of numbers, then you don’t have a system that can catalyze a spontaneous church multiplication movement.

What are some signs of a reproducible system? CMA suggests your tools/strategies/methods be…

1. Received Personally — it has a profound effect on your own life.
2. Repeated Easily: you can pass it on to others after just a brief encounter.
3. Reproduced Strategically: it transfers to other cultures and languages.

These 3 simple principles can be extrapolated out from the “Micro” to all layers of the Onion, attending to the natural span of relational care.  Use the word “chaordic” to describe such systems – they are both thoughtful and intentional, yet out of control of any person or organization.

“The more I considered Christianity, the more I have found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”                  — G.K. Chesterton

Let the DNA of Christ permeate every conversation, every worship gathering, every act of social justice.  Let it baptize every layer of your church’s community.  As Ed Waken was quoted saying at the conference — “What if discipleship was nothing more than the lifelong balance of the DNA in your life and in the lives of others in your circle of influence?”