Plumbline #4: “The church is not a group of people gathered around a leader; the church is a leadership factory.”
In John 14:12, Jesus makes a truly astounding statement: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do … greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”
How could that be? How can we do greater works than Jesus? None of us could ever preach or pray with the power he had, and few of us have raised the dead or fed 5,000 people with a Hebrew Happy Meal.
What Jesus meant, of course, was that the Spirit’s presence in Jesus’ followers would yield a greater collective power than for all of it to rest on just one, or a handful of, person(s).
Many of our churches have turned this principle on its head, choosing instead to build their ministries around a few gifted individuals whom crowds throng to hear. But that is not where the real power of the church is found.
Did you know that of the 40 miracles recorded in Acts, 39 of them happen outside the church? God’s intention is not for all his power to flow from a few gifted individuals on a stage.
God called pastors not to do the work of ministry, but to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph 4:11-12).
A church’s “success,” therefore, should not be measured only by seating capacity, but also by sending capacity. When church members are empowered, the community will be flush with the power of God.
This is not to diminish the weekend worship experience—our church puts a lot of energy into it—simply to say that a Spirit-filled church is not less than a weekend experience, but much more.
