Missionizing Your Marketplace: Mobilize Leaders for Kingdom Impact

Hey everybody, welcome back to the DiscipleMakers podcast. Today we're featuring a second track session from LionShare, entitled Missionizing Your Marketplace Leaders. Listen, how do you help societal leaders in your church catch Jesus' kingdom vision for their vocations? How do you envision, equip, and engage them to live on mission where they work?

In this session, you're going to explore how to launch godly discipled vocational teams that can make an impact, both locally and globally. Come catch Jesus' vision for vocational disciple making and invite your marketplace leaders into the adventure of their lives. I hope you all enjoy this session.

Good afternoon, I'm Dave Buehring. Welcome to Missionizing Your Marketplace Leaders. Some of you are here for our first session where we talked about just kind of getting a scriptural paradigm and a practical paradigm of what does it mean to take people who work in the marketplace in your church and mobilize them into disciple making and to help you kind of understand that.

Sometimes people will think, and maybe you've run into this, if you're not a pastor or missionary that like your calling as a pastor or missionary is more holy than theirs. And we have to help them see it's not. You know, if God's called you to it, there's a grace on them and it's holy, it's set apart for God and his purposes and where he wants you to serve in society.

So we spent time on that one. There's a, I'm not trying to hawk books, but if you're saying, hey, I need more on that. So this book tells you about that. It's called The Great Opportunity, Making Disciples of Jesus in Every Vocation. So this will give you a good paradigm. Philip got one, so you got it.

So this session, what we want to do is kind of take it a step further. And how do you take marketplace leaders? So by marketplace, don't just think business, think people who are in education, think people who are in media. Where I live in Nashville, you've got arts entertainment, you know, so just kind of make it the broader non-local church ministry expression, all right?

And how do you actually get them mobilized where they can have a kingdom vantage point and where they can become disciple makers, okay? So let's just kind of jump into this. We'll go for 40, 45 minutes and then we'll chat. So here's a little bit of that review, just so you can, those of you that weren't here, you can kind of feel like where we are.

So we laid this out as the vocations. And so think of each of these dozen like as an umbrella, all right? So you have here, for example, government, law, which would be attorneys, lawyers, and then you've got security, which would be police, fire, military. So kind of they're under a banner, an umbrella we call government law and nation security.

You've got environment, agriculture, you could add zoology. It's people who feel called to deal with creation, okay? So they want to walk alongside their, you know, we find in our country, either you have this side in republicanism or democratic on environmentalism, and both are kind of out there. What is a biblical vantage point?

Like there's actually a, like God said to Adam and Eve, steward the earth. So he's got a game plan. So it's wonderful to get godly leaders who are called to environment and agriculture to be able to say, so like, give us the ways of God on this. How does this work? And then if you can imagine them passing it on to younger leaders who have a heart for health, medicine, wholeness represents doctors, nurses, counselors, fitness, and nutrition people.

So it's, everything has to do with your body and, and, and wellbeing. All right. So you kind of get a feel for this arts, entertainment, sports. One of the interesting things about this is each one of these vocations are attached to God's character. And this is one of the pieces where I find people have not really stopped to see this.

But we have to understand that each of these vocations are tied to God's character. Now we're used to number one, as a family, you know, God calls himself a father. To the church, he's a shepherd. All right. But one of the things that's important is to recognize some of the others. Like for example, God is, God is a builder.

Like he gives them the game plan to build the ark. He gives them the game plan to build the tabernacle, like there's certain woods he wants them to use. There's certain sizes he wants you to build it. So we, we just need to understand that God gets what a builder does and he is a master builder. All right.

So if you're somebody who, like my friend, Bill, who's in construction, I can say, Hey, you know, you can go to God for wisdom, right? Because as a builder, he gets you. Okay. We know, you know, we run into King of Kings, Lord of Lords, his government will rest upon his shoulders during Christmas season.

But to recognize that God as governor, he gets it. So my government friends, I can say, you understand, right, that he has to govern the whole earth and all of history. So he kind of gets governing on big levels. So what are the ways of God related to being a government leader? Okay. God is artist. You know, when you look at a sunrise or a sunset, God is tech master, you know, often, and this was one for a while, I had to go, God, how are you connected to technology?

And then one day, just as I was thinking and praying, he said, it has to do with speed and how God's omnipresence, omniscience, it's all like, he, he goes faster than any internet service will ever have. Right. And so he's the source of all this stuff. And oftentimes it's easy for us to see God as father, God as shepherd.

My friend, Winky Prattney, who's a New Zealander has discovered 40 some things in scripture where God is directly attached to a vocation. And so it's something that is just important for us to understand. And again, for us, oftentimes as pastors, this is a whole different paradigm, but it's an important one in the life of the people, 90, 95% of your adults are working non church ministry.

All right. There's also a vocational DNA. All right. So I just want you to think about this a minute. So I would submit to you at least these five, one, each vocation contains a God-given competence. Okay. They can do something you can't. Right. Whatever it is, there's a God-given competence. And the whole idea is God's given them that competency to serve other people.

In the first session I was teasing about how, like, I just, I don't know how to fix cars, but my friend Robbie does. So much so he could take every part off, polish it up, fix it, clean it, and put it back together. See? All right. Each vocation develops distinct products or offers specific services to meet the needs of others.

Even you as a pastor, this is part of what you do. There's a distinct things you offer that others don't. All right. Third, each vocation has a unique range of impact on others. Okay. For some, the range, you know, a vocation of a mom who's being, who's homeschooling her two children, her range of impact is maybe two.

But we don't know yet until they grow up and you see the impact of those two. But that's her range. Where you have some of the artists I work with in Nashville, their range is huge. You know, they end up singing a song or they do a concert or they use their skills. I have an artist friend who goes to India and he ends up, you know, in front of a crowd of 100 to 200,000 people.

And in that moment, he has that, and the impact, right? In God's eyes, it's not numbers, is it? It's obedience. It's obedience, right? Fourth, each vocation contains relationships to enjoy and team with. All right. The people that you work alongside, do you actually enjoy? Take the time to get to know them, enjoy them, and you get to find ways to team together with them.

Okay. And each vocation has a specialized mission to accomplish on behalf of others and for the glory of God. And so when you look at how things are rooted in God's character, and you look at these vocational DNA pieces, and you help somebody begin to realize, wow, yeah, this is something I offer that nobody does.

But if you do it for the glory of God, it's powerful. In our first session, we looked at quotes from Martin Luther and how he said, hey, it's a shame that the devil has tricked us to think the only fruit is supposed to be in the church. And the reality is it's supposed to be throughout all of society where we as Christians serve others to meet real needs.

So we have to get out of the mentality that ministry is, you know, meaning church leadership or missions is the thing, and realize the thing is what has God called them to do, and helping them be what God has called them to be in that place. Okay. So just kind of a little bit of background. Last slide I think I'll show you on this is here.

We talked about calling and how calling has, you know, various pieces to it. So there's passion, you know, what does God put in people's hearts that they're passionate about? They want to really give themselves to, all right? Giftedness, like when I use that word, I mean, sometimes we just stay on spiritual gifts, but God made all of it.

So what are your natural abilities? What are those things you've been able to do ever since you were a kid? Like for some of you, you've been able to build things. Others, you just relationally are the glue. Others athletically are off the charts, or creatively you just think outside the box. My grandson, Nolan, who's seven, I think he's going to be an engineer.

Like he'll, he's been into monster trucks. So Papa's been to monster truck events with my headsets on, right? And, but he'll pick up one of his like a hundred monster trucks he has, and he'll just go like this. Papa, look at, look at how the wheels, and he's just completely, and so I'm paying attention to my seven-year-old grandson, realizing this is the way God has made him, because gifts kind of come from the inside, they've been placed by God from the inside out.

And so people don't have to be looking for their call out here. They begin by saying, what has God placed in me? Okay? And you begin to develop those things. And you'll notice there's a process of passion plus giftedness plus vocational field, where God has appointed you to serve in society. That's part of your calling, all right?

And then you've got opportunities where God opens the doors in that vocational field. And then in the end, right, it's about obeying Jesus. Where is Jesus asking me to obey him? And sometimes we know for character development, God's not putting you in your bullseye, especially in your twenties, thirties, and often into your forties.

You may be a step off of where he's going to call you. We talked in the first session here, we use this little paradigm here from Dr. Bobby Clinton. This is your birth date, and this is your heaven going. He contends that it takes about two thirds of your life is preparation before God puts you in your stride.

So like, if you look at Moses, who lived to be 120, first 40 years, he was where? Egypt, probably best training on the planet at the time. Next 40 years, wilderness. God gives him a family, begins to meet with him. And then we know 80 years old, two thirds of his life, burning bush. It took two thirds of his life to prepare him for that third.

And so we have to realize, not all of us in our twenties, we don't hit our stride then. And most of the time when I'm with twenties and thirties, I'll say, in your twenties and thirties, it's more about what God is building in you than what he's doing through you. Which, he still does stuff through you, because you're being obedient, right?

But the key is, what is God building in you? Because he doesn't push, if I could say it this way, the mother load, the big thing through you till usually late in your fifties and into your sixties. That's how God develops leaders. Very different than the world. The world is, by the time you're 25, you better be, certainly by 30, and my gosh, you're way out of there if by 40 you're not.

That's not how God develops leaders. God takes his time, and he develops you thoroughly. And when you look in the scriptures, like Jesus, ten elevenths of his life was preparation. Like do you know, there's one verse, Luke 2, 52. He grew in, what, wisdom, stature, favor with God and man. That's the only thing we hear between 12 and 30.

That's it. Eighteen years in one verse. That's all we know. And so, Jesus is quietly, whether it's probably as a carpenter with his dad, we don't know when Joseph passed, he's not there when Jesus kind of launches out in ministry, but somewhere in Jesus's life, there's this quiet developing of stuff in him.

I wish I had more time to kind of go through this, it's very intriguing of the seasons of life, of how God develops you, and you need to learn to cooperate with that season of life. And it's not, Bobby talks about four different seasons, it's not until you get kind of in your fourth season that you hit what he calls your stride.

And the stride, if we could make it a math equation, would be this, seasoned, tested character plus a mature use of your gifts plus a God-determined sphere of influence. Those three things come together, there's a stride. So it's recognizing, you know, when we're in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and older, he always comes back to building godly character in us, so that when he pushes things through our lives, that there can be fruit.

So let me illustrate this for you with someone that we're all aware of, who unfortunately didn't have this, didn't do this. So there's a young man who grew up in a family where he lost his dad at a young age, and so didn't have a kind of a father figure to guide, but he had this sense of call on his life to do great things.

And as a young man, we actually see a picture of him talking with John Kennedy at the White House. And when he hits into his late 30s, early 40s, a guy named Bill Clinton runs for governor. He wins. One of the youngest governors you've ever had. An incredibly merciful heart and a very good articulator of stuff, alright?

But because he didn't focus in his 20s and 30s on building character, but rather climbing a ladder, for the rest of his days and the rest of history, two women's names are associated with him. His wife and one whom he had a very public affair with, that he tried to hide. And I'm saddened about that because I'm just going, oh, nope, he didn't have someone to say, hey Bill, in this season, keep focusing on what's happening inside of you.

And he gets into a major role in life. And of course the enemy wants to steal, kill, and destroy no matter who we are. So you see that it's essential that we let God build character in our lives. And when you're with young leaders, sometimes with young leaders I will say, hey man, I want you to help teach a Sunday school class, but I need you to come behind here with me and clean the toilets.

What do you mean? I'm called to be, I know you are, but you're also called to be a servant, so let's go clean the toilets and I'll go do it with you, right? And so we have to realize that when it comes to calling, there's things God calls us to, but there's a process of how he develops us. We were just talking with the leaders together this morning.

If the messenger is healthy, usually the ministry, the marketplace role is good. You just need to coach them up, encourage them, equip them a little bit. But if the messenger is not good, it all melts down, right? And so when we're thinking about vocational calling, I just kind of want you to recognize that God can do wonderful things with this.

So let me just kind of show you this real quick. It's one of the grids that I kind of look at through with disciple making. So foundational disciple making is where it begins, which is grounding new followers of Jesus to be rooted in his character, ways, and mission. By God's character, I mean his mercy, his grace, his faithfulness, all that.

His ways is how God does things from the scriptures and by the spirit. And his mission is his mission, winning the lost, discipling the found. And so Joey gives his life to the Lord today. You want to begin to ground him in basics. This is the word of God. This is his family. It's called the church. This is etc.

All right? Then you go to formational disciple making, which is growing disciples of Jesus who grow spiritually to such a point that they become reproducers. Much of this conference that you're here for, it's this, formational disciple making. Then there's vocational disciple making, which is developing disciples who reflect God's character, ways, and mission in and through their vocation.

All right? That no matter what it is you do, you're reflecting God, his attitudes in it. You're reflecting the ways of God and how you go about doing things. But see, can I just submit to you, most of us in local church life, we don't think about this at all. Okay? We're going to talk about that in a minute.

And the fourth one here is I call leadership disciple making, shaping leaders who reference God's character, ways, and mission in their lives and leadership. So regardless of what God calls them to. So for me, this is kind of how I view the grid of disciple making. All right? It begins with foundational for a new believer.

You take them into formational where you form them. So if they already know God, then it's forming them. But this vocational piece and leadership piece are just as important. Because sometimes, hey, I'll take you through a leadership class. Why don't you apply the same principles of leadership, or excuse me, of discipleship in your leadership development where it's still relational, all right?

But you're pointing them to the ways of God. Like oftentimes for me, like I sat with a guy one time who had a project that was huge financial project. And I looked at him and said, can I ask you a question? He said, sure. I said, I just want to ask you this. Before you jumped into your project, did you get the word of the Lord on this?

I mean, did you seek God where you know God was, language we use a lot in lions, is God breathing life on this? Just like in Genesis, there was the breath of God on it. Do you know God is breathing? And he just, he started to panic. I said, what's going on? He said, no, man. All we did is whiteboarded and tried to come up with a solution and thought that was the best way we went with it.

I said, so you didn't seek God? No. Did you seek a multitude of wise counsel? No. I said, you're kind of walking in a here's hoping this goes God's way. He said, I guess so. And the thing that we have to realize is God doesn't want us to walk in a here's hoping. He wants us to walk in a place where we know we've heard from him, which might require seeking him, fasting, prayer, unity.

One of the things I've learned over the years is not to launch something unless the key players in it feel like they've heard from God and there's unity around it. So with leadership, that's a key thing. Do we feel like we've heard from heaven? And is there unity? Then I can step forward into it. So I just wanted to kind of just give you a quick snapshot of this because oftentimes we're aware of this, new believer, we're aware of this, but we don't think as pastors about these things.

How do you distinguish between vocational and leadership since there's so much overlap? Here's my simple way, John. Not everybody feels like they're a leader, but it could be, you know, the baker who's under the boss at Meredith's, our bakery in Franklin, but they're the baker, right? Where this is specifically those who are taking responsibility for initiatives or people.

Make sense? Yeah. Good question. So consider your church is called, oh, I'm sorry, yeah, thank you. I want to ask a question just on the example you just gave about seeking the Lord. How would you reframe that for a workplace environment where not all your colleagues are going to be there? Yeah. Yeah.

So let me repeat that question. So the question is how, in light of a workplace where not everybody knows Jesus, how do you deal with this seek the Lord piece? Great question. So for me, it depends on, like in that situation, I would go to my fellow, if I'm the boss, I know who's on my team. And I would probably be promoting within my team, not only people of good character, but there would be some that I know are followers of Jesus.

And in some cases I would be able to go to them and say, hey, I'm praying about this. Just know I'm going to present this to all six of you as leaders. But the two of you walk with Jesus like I do, would you just really be praying with me about this? And so it's finding where can I have unity? And sometimes you're the lone person, right?

You don't have anybody in your leadership team. So then it's a matter for me, what I encourage people to do is you hear from heaven, but go to a couple trusted leaders that you walk with who are not in your company, but they know you and they know your company. You can say, will you fast and pray with me?

Will you seek the Lord? I actually am doing that on behalf of a friend of mine right now who has a company in Kentucky that has done really well, but they took a hit. And so he's had to rebuild over the last 12 to 18 months. And so there's times he'll just say, hey, I'm driving up there. I really need your prayers today.

Will you pray that God gives me wisdom? And he doesn't have a bunch of believers. And it's been amazing what has happened. And he's invited others, me and several others, to speak into it. And I'm not the sharpest business guy in the tool shed. I've got common sense and I've got some experience, but that's not my forte.

But I can say to him, hey, as you're talking about this and I'm praying, I will tell you that I get this piece. You've got to go the extra mile in your relationships. You've got to go the extra mile in it, right? And now, his last text said, unbelievable what God is doing, right? So if you don't have it within, you can seek it with otherwise counsel from out, without.

Does that make sense? And, you know, let me tag team on one piece here. So when I walk with people who are leaders in society, and this might sound odd to you, but kind of hear me out, I encourage them to raise up their own intercession teams. So when I talk to someone who leads an online multimillion dollar business, it's like he started getting attacked spiritually.

And I said, Gabriel, do you have intercessors for your business? He said, well, I know you're supposed to have that as a church and a pastor. I said, yeah, but you're in ministry too, doing what Jesus has called you to do. And so he raised up an intercession team. And so he just tag teams me on that.

And so I always see when he sends it out and he reports them, here's what's going on, here's where I feel like our company's being attacked. And I say, well, how did you pray? And it has caused his company to have an incredible breakthrough. So just know that's something if you're pastoring business leaders or like Mandisa, or the Jeremy Camps artists of the world that we've walked with, we said, who's your intercessors?

Well, what do you mean? Well, you're kind of on the tip of a spear at times as you're doing things in the name of Jesus. Don't you think it'd be a good idea to have people praying for you and get people who can do this. They hear from heaven. And they know how to keep their mouth shut. And so they can share with you, but you know, they're not going to be sharing with everybody else.

And so it's a way you can serve business leaders and vocational leaders in your church and even help them. Well, I don't know people like that. Well, let me introduce you to some people that just take a little time, build a relationship. So there's trust, and you would feel good about sharing some of the things you need to share.

But see, that's where as ministry leaders, we have to take some of the things God's taught us like intercession and help others utilize that. Are you guys tracking with me? So there's things like that that can really benefit vocational leaders. So let me just kind of back up a minute. Consider your church's culture.

Culture are the social norms, relational behaviors, customs, beliefs, habits, spoken or unspoken of a particular group of people. So we know this when we go to different nations, but you know this when you go into different churches too. So my friend Jack Minton, who we office together, he runs a ministry called Hopeforce that deals with disaster relief.

Jack says, a culture represents what most of the people do most of the time. Does your church currently have an active and thriving disciple-making culture? Does most of the people in your church do disciple-making most of the time? If you don't, that's okay, but just acknowledge, starting point, that's where we are.

Is it right for vocational disciple-making? You might be way back here before you can jump fully into this, but I want to talk with you about it today because you've got to start. How do you create a disciple-making culture amongst your church where what most of the people do most of the time is they tie in disciple-making?

Another question I often ask is, do most of the people most of the time, do they have the habit of obeying Jesus? Think about this with me. Matthew 28, John and I were talking about this at lunch, Matthew 28 says, teaching them to obey. I always qualify that by saying, remember when Jesus said, if you love me, you'll obey me.

We have to remember, he probably said it like this, if you love me, you'll obey me. It's not, if you love me, doggone it, prove it. Now, yes, it does prove our love for God, but the reality is if we love Jesus so much, you can't help but not obey him, right? A question that is good for you to ask is, is my church ripe for vocational disciple-making?

So let me just kind of throw some thoughts out here. That's all this is meant to be, is to kind of provoke you to think a little bit. How do you view the 95% of your flock that serve in various vocations throughout society? This is a question as a pastor or leader in your church you have to ask. How does that 95% view you and the church you lead?

I have business like heavy hitter leaders come to me in a local church and they just say, Dave, here's what it feels like to me. I love the community, don't mishear me, I love the way the pastor teaches and our worship, but what I don't understand is I feel like all I'm here for is they want me to give and find some role to serve, and I'm happy to do that, but do that, does the pastor not know where I'm tapped into into society and how I could help the church advance the kingdom?

And I've had business leaders say that to me because they said all they view me as is a cash cow and someone who's a volunteer, and they don't tap into like I, like some of these guys and gals are like extremely entrepreneurial creative. You get some of those people around and you seek God together about your community, watch out, stuff happens.

You're going to come out with stuff that you're going to go, oh my gosh, because in our nice pastoral minds, we would have not thought about that, but as entrepreneurs, they do. And that's where you have to kind of allow some of those people, yes, you've got to have a relationship with them first, right?

So there's trust and all that, but you've got to open doors and allow those leaders to speak into. How do you view your role as pastor, elder, church staff member when it comes to equipping the saints for the work of service? Part of our role is equipping them for them to function how God's called them to function.

How many vocational leaders in your church have you commissioned into where God's called them to serve? I said this in the last session, it's an encouragement I would have for you. You know how it is, team of 10 going to Venezuela on a mission trip this summer, hey, you guys all come up here and you surround them with leaders and you lay hands on them, you pray for them.

And I encourage you to begin to think about finding ways to do this with your vocational leaders, whether it's somebody who's got a new job and you just kind of, it becomes something over time with the church culture. Or you might on a Sunday say, hey, I'm going to ask all the educators, like it's a great time to do this in August, September when your schools start, hey, would all the educators just stand and I'm going to ask all of you to go lay hands on them.

And then just pray in the name of Jesus, God, would you give them a unique favor this year when they have a pain of people, kids in their classroom this year, would you give them amazing grace and kindness to win their hearts? And see, you can do that. Like those original 12 vocations I had up here, imagine if every month you said we're going to pick one vocation and circle around in prayer for that vocation that month.

If you're in healthcare and fitness and counseling, just know you are on our prayers. Imagine taking the names of everybody in your church who serves in some area of health, medicine, or wholeness, all right, so counseling, doctor, nurse, fitness, nutrition, well-being, and you put their names on a calendar and everybody in that profession knew that month they were prayed for at least once by the whole church.

Don't you think those people are going to own what God's doing in and through your flock? Whole nother level, okay? But we got to start thinking this way, okay? Start including them. So here's oftentimes what can happen. So this is a gathering mentality, so kind of just think about yourself here. Here's a mobilizing mentality, all right?

So the gathering mentality tends to be very building-centric, program-oriented. It's come and gather. It's what I call nickels and noses. We measure the fruit of it by how many are there and how much money is coming in. It's about addition. Oh, we added one or two. It's about church versus the world.

World bad, church good, rather than church impacting the world, all right? And then marketplace people often just see themselves as givers, okay, when there's so much more in the tank. The mobilizing mentality is it's impacting our community, like how do we change our community? It's relationship-oriented.

It's equip and release. It's not nickels and noses, it's making disciples. It's not addition, it's multiplication. It's not churches versus world, it's advancing the kingdom, all right? And it's not marketplace givers, it's marketplace DMs, disciple makers. It's two very different ways of doing church.

Where are you on this list? Like if you had to come up with a yellow marker and say, okay, are we this or that on all of these, where would you land? And you're wanting us to stop today and think, like how could you actually be involved in engaging marketplace leaders more effectively, all right? Here's a question to consider.

Would your community, town or city, even notice if you as a church weren't there anymore? Like if all of a sudden you were just wiped out and there was no longer Sunday morning meetings, there was no longer gatherings that you do, the people might still be in the community, but would anybody notice that you're gone?

Like what are you doing for the poor? What are you doing for youth? What are you doing for, you know, and this is where the marketplace leaders, because they live out there, they see needs all the time. It'd be great to say to all, like begin with those that you know in the flock and say, if there are needs you see out in the community, here's kind of a special, you know, email address I'd like you to send this to.

Would you just mind, or you can text this, and tell us what you see. Imagine then as an eldership and a pastor, you're collecting and you say, man, these dozen people we commissioned, look at all this stuff, because they see the needs, because they're in it every day. Are you guys tracking with me? It's like it's a different paradigm, all right?

But it's very kingdom. It's a kingdom paradigm, okay? You must identify your starting place to create a path to where you want to go. So this is where you have to be really honest. So like if I said, hey, we're taking a trip to San Diego. Unless I say we're in Houston, which means we've got to go pretty much due west, you don't know where to go.

Like if I'm at home in Franklin, Tennessee, and someone says go to San Diego, I have to first start with where am I? Even on our GPS, we have to start with our location. And then it can get you to where you need to be. So it's the same with this. You have to be really honest. Where are we as a flock right now?

Is there a disciple-making paradigm? Is there a vocational disciple-making grid? You have to start by recognizing where you are. So when you go back to this, when you go back to this, consider your culture. Again, where do you see, do you find, hey, we really are on this gathering mentality? Or have you started moving into this mobilization mentality?

So where would you be? So you've got to kind of identify your starting place. And then you can begin to tackle, okay, what are steps we can take to get here where, again, it's not program, it's relationship. It's not come and gather, it's equip and release. It's not nickels and noses. It's the measuring.

It's making disciples. I did a study. You know how those, I think there's Zondervan that does those little individual books of the Bible. You know, the ones I'm talking about where this side is text and this side is lines. So I took it and went through the book of Acts for quite some time. And I began to say, what are the minimums of how you measure the health of the church?

Because oftentimes we get stuck on nickels and noses. How many are there and how big is the budget? That's not a kingdom way of measuring fruit. There's some things we can learn from that, but I know plenty where nickels and noses are a lot and there's no kingdom fruit. So here's what I found in Acts.

So this is bonus material, all right? So I found these four things. Number one, you measure health by presence. Is God's presence there in such a way that it's changing lives? Like when someone shows up on a Sunday morning, do they encounter God's presence? That could be obviously through a conversation, through the message, through worship, through somebody praying.

A lot of ways, right? Hundreds of ways. Do you know there was a survey taken a number of years ago in the American church, and I can't cite it off the top of my head, but the question was asked to hundreds, if not thousands of followers of Jesus, I forget the number, but it was a lot. And they said, have you ever once experienced God's presence?

80% of followers of Jesus in our country said never. That's a problem. 20% have experienced God's presence. 80% have never felt the nearness of the Lord. That's a big deal. All right? So I just want to encourage us. It's like when you look at your church, like today, just for fun, do this. I had a guy do this with me on a 1 to 10 scale because I was trying to help him see this.

And he's a church in Nashville that, no kidding, no exaggeration, we go out for lunch and, hey, Jeff, how's church? Man, it's awesome. This person came out of the wheelchair this weekend, no exaggerations, like signs and wonders galore. So I'd say, so presence, he'd go, man, it's a nine. I'd say, yeah, I guess so, right?

The second one is community. Do people really love each other, care about each other, meet each other's needs, lay each other's lives down for one another? Do people get enveloped in community? And I asked Jeff, I said, where are you on that on a 1 to 10 scale? He said, probably a three. I said, okay.

The third one, disciple-making, where people get discipled to the point that they reproduce the things of Jesus in others. I said, 1 to 10. He looked at me and he said, a two? So he's got a nine for presence. He's got a three for community, a two for disciple-making. And then the last one is outreach.

I said, think local and global, extending the kingdom, advancing the kingdom. And he looked at me and he said, a one. And this is his quote. It's not mine, but it's his quote. He looked at me and he said, are you freaking telling me I'm pastoring a one-legged dog? And I said, well, I'm not saying that.

And then he said, would you mind coming on Thursday, this is like a Monday, Thursday night to my elders meeting and do this with my elders? I said, okay. So I did it with his elders, almost identical scores. And what it helped them realize, and the goal is not 10 to 10, the goal is where am I? It's a grid.

And it's a biblical grid from the book of Acts to measure the fruitfulness and healthiness of your church. So I would commend that to you and know that's more of a biblical grid than nickels and noses and to be able to ask yourself when people come here Wednesday night, small groups, Sunday mornings, how much of God's presence do they experience?

Where he draws near to them and they are touched by whatever language you want to use for that. Do they experience community? Do they get discipled to the point where they can become reproducible? And what about where is your church extending the kingdom, locally and globally? It's a different way to look at it, but that's much more of this mobilizing mentality.

All right, let me just get in a couple of practical things here. So there it is. I forgot I had this slide. There it is. All right. So it's a healthy and fruitful church observed in the book of Acts. Okay. I'll keep it there a second if you need a picture. Did you write it down? Yeah, you need a picture.

Do you have that in one of your books? Yes. In Discipleship Journey on the Church in Acts, I think chapter nine in there. Yep. So let's get in just a couple practical things here and then we'll let you do some Q&A. Creating a new church culture. Seek the Lord with your leaders via prayer and fasting.

Initiate conversations with high character, godly, vocational leaders in your church. Okay. So pull them together, have a meal, talk with them about it. Ask them what God has put in their hearts to do for his kingdom where they serve in society. Like, what would you dream if God could do in and through what you do in your vocation?

Ask them where they need to grow spiritually to help them accomplish what God has asked them to do. Like, as a pastor, you have authority. Like, how could I help you accomplish what God's put in your heart? Okay. And third, ask them how the church can come alongside them in their mission. I've had business leaders say to me, you know, Dave, I'm committed to the church.

I know you are. I see you. You give, you serve. But he said, you know, this is not my primary mission. You know, I'm an extension of this out there. I said, oh, I know. See, and that's where you have to begin to get, to realize if you can come behind their, let's say you have a thousand people in your church, 500 people in your church, and you come alongside 500 people in their mission, golly, that's huge.

Talk about a kingdom impact. But what we try to do is take all 500 of them and get them into our narrow mission. Okay. And instead, it's like, how do I disciple them where their spiritual maturity, so they're reflecting God's character, that when people bump into them, they go, wow. As we say in the South, I want to get me some of that, right?

Where they see that in their lives, right? So this is something that gets you thinking, again, outside of the box, all right, related to vocational disciple making. Creating a new church culture, pray and think outside the box, launch vocational teams within your church. Have you ever, so you know you have kind of a small grid paradigm, great.

Have you ever considered having a vocational grid? Like imagine if something happened in your town or your city where you needed to mobilize all the health, medicine, wholeness people. Do you know who those are? Like do you have in your list of your church name, address, age, birthday, vocation? You know, where they could click one of these boxes.

So when you need to pull up everybody that's called to health, medicine, wholeness, that fast, here's the list of 45 people. See, they need to know each other. They're kingdom comrades. They need to know each other, right? Now imagine, now just play with me on this for a moment. Imagine if you begin to do this in your church and other churches said, how did you do that?

Imagine if you had 10 churches in your community that all did this, and when disaster happens, you can mobilize that fast to serve other people. So we've got to start thinking this way, all right, because this is where these people live and serve. It's where they have favor, all right? So here's a few things.

We'll close, then we do a little Q&A. So these are just some thoughts that I've passed on with other people. Social vocational applications added to Sunday sermons. Like it's really a good idea to take into your sermons, and when you're giving illustrations, tie in some that relate to the vocation so they can understand, so they can see, okay?

Making disciples within the workplace, this is something that we help leaders do. Mandisa, when she was alive and functioning and she was on the American Idol tool, she told me, she said, on Thursdays, here on the tour bus, we go through discipleship journey, which is our discipleship tool. And so we are deepening those who are on this tour in the things of God, all right?

So you can do this all over the place, all right? Vocational testimonies about what Jesus is doing on the job. Like when you hear an awesome story from somebody in your flock where God did something through them in the midst of their vocation, bring them up on a Sunday morning, say, Jim, take five minutes, tell us this story, because it will encourage other vocational leaders to step out as they need to step out, or to do what it is that God has taught them to do, or spoken to them to do.

Vocational short-term mission teams. Like we know how to send mission teams, short-term teams, but have you ever thought about targeting a specific need in a specific nation where the same people from a same vocation have had to go? I have a friend who has sent teams to small villages in Africa, and they're a tech team, and they literally help them get online.

And so their kids could tap into greater education. They could do different things. So that was a tech team. And they mobilized around that mission that they all shared together. Online vocational disciple-making communities. This is something I've done for years, where you get people lumped together.

We're doing this right now with business leaders, and healthcare workers, and pastors, people who are called first to family, to government. And you hub them together, and you meet with them once a week, and you take them through a discipleship tool. So they're growing. But then part of the conversation is all around, like Darren on our team has our government law and nation security.

So when you had an attorney, and you had him who used to work in the White House, and then you had a guy that was a head of Greg Campbell, who will be with us tomorrow, second in command in our country for the security of the Postal Service. His associate, Larry, who I always laugh, Larry had the best job.

He's a bomb squad guy for Homeland Security, Postal Service. So like whenever the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, he goes and spends two weeks before in Augusta to make sure that there's no bombs come into the Masters. And then he goes to the Masters, and they say, yeah, I did the same for the Super Bowl World Series.

You got a rough job, buddy. So he literally is there two weeks before to make sure, and you and I never think about this, but think of how successful it has been. There's been no bombs that have gone off at any of our, that's because of Larry. I was just with Larry in Phoenix this week, and he's, yeah, dog, and he talks, yeah, dog, you know, I was at that World Series game.

Yeah, I bet you were, because he said, I had to be there two weeks before to make sure nothing came in the mail. Is that not a service for the people of those communities? See, we have to realize our vocations serve people. They save people. They help people, all right? Planting vocational disciple-making churches, ooh, okay?

This would be like, for example, people who decide that before they all go to work at eight in the morning, at 6.30 every Wednesday morning, they meet, and maybe there's seven or eight businesses that have decided to do this together. You're planting a vocational disciple-making church around business leaders.

Are you guys tracking with me? These are kind of out of the box, but they work, all right? Workplace pre-discipleship via godly lives and principles. What I mean by pre-discipleship is you've got unbelievers walking with you, and they just are observing you're walking in the things of God. So when they give their life to Jesus, they can be fast-tracked a little bit, because they get, they've watched it, all right?

And then get prayerfully creative with your team, right? So all I'm saying is if you can add vocational leaders into some of your strategic initiatives of outreach, what they see out in the community, you can flip things upside down, but it's a different approach. And as a pastor, you have to engage your vocational leaders and acknowledge your calling is just as important as mine.

Together God's called us to this community. What can we do for Jesus and his kingdom? And ultimately, you want to help them become reproducible disciple-makers within their vocations. And I'll just say this to us, too. It's one of the things that's essential is to recognize for right now, young people in their 20s and 30s desperately need to be connected to older leaders who have walked in these things where they can be discipled both spiritually and vocationally.

And so that they can learn the ways of God as a 26-year-old. One of the things we do at something called the Leadership Games at our table, we can tell you more about this. But for every vocation that's represented and they're with young leaders, we deal with three things. One is we have an imaginary city called Hebron Hills that has real life problems that we ask them to leave their politics at the door only from the scriptures and the ways of God in scripture.

How do we fix this problem? And it causes 20s and 30s to go, I have never been challenged to think like this before. It is awesome. But while they're in their track, we ask the vocational leaders to do two things. We say, pick one character quality from scripture that you feel like is essential to your vocation.

And they pick that, they ground them in the scriptures, they go through things, they talk about it. And here's the second one that's interesting, and I'm going to close with this, is I've asked all of our vocational leaders to be really honest. So they're all like 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and I've said to them, what is a spiritual stronghold that people in your vocation can get stuck in?

If you don't know what I mean by a spiritual stronghold where, for example, this year I just received George Kehoe's, George is our business leader, and George's group talked and for business they said one of the strongholds can be pride. Pride of finance, pride of position, pride of community influence, and so they have said pride can be a net that the enemy lays out that you don't even know you're walking into until you're snagged.

So what's the opposite of pride? Humility. So he said one of the requirements, or one of the things we're going to teach you about God's ways of being a business leader, you've got to learn to exercise humility. The artist group, it's fame. And they'll turn it around even a step further and they'll say, they'll kind of do this image of a person looking in the mirror and it's like self-glorification.

That you could get so caught up like Lucifer that you created this incredible thing and now it's all about you. And so we help young people understand where can you get stuck in spiritual strongholds related to your vocation so you can be aware of that and not get snagged. But the leadership games, I just want to encourage you, it's something that's pretty cool.

It's 40s to 70s who've been discipled who are helping to pour into 20s and 30s spiritually and vocationally. It's a four-day event in Nashville that lets them encounter Jesus, build relationships, and at the very end, every one of those young people are in disciple-making relationships for a year where they're discipled both spiritually and vocationally.

If you want to learn more, you can see Laura or Lori or I at our booth and we'll give you something where you can pass on. We're looking. We still have places for 20s and 30s to join us this year. There's a little QR code where you can watch a video and learn more. If you have a 20, 30-something that loves Jesus but they need to be discipled, send them.

We'll get them connected to a godly vocational leader. Thanks for the opportunity to let me hang out with you guys. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode of the Disciple Makers Podcast. If you want more great content like this, come join us at the 2026 National Disciple-Making Forum in Houston, Texas, April 15th and 16th.

Missionizing Your Marketplace: Mobilize Leaders for Kingdom Impact

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin