When God calls He also equips, He graces us(his body/the church) with three things:
A voice – sound, you must here it before you speak it
A capacity – sense, you must carry it before you birth it.
A task – vision, you must see it before you do it.
If God gives you a voice to grow leaders and you spend your time speaking pastorally, you will never acheive the task he’s set. If the sound of your voice is according to an apostolic call then what you birth will be apostolic people, people that need to be sent out. Most of their learning and development is in the doing of the call of God. If you try to contain pastorally what the Spirit has birthed via the equipping of an apostle you will meet with frustration.
If you wonder where your voice should be directed then look closely at the vision that prevails, or the capacity you are gestating/ carrying.
If the vision is to plant churches then the sense inside will be satisfied by sending people out. The voice that will sees fruit will
be the voice that has heard from heaven and then speaks what it has heard. If you expect to grow a people committed to local community but preach global missions or world domination you will fail, just as if you preach leadership to the masses hoping they will feel pastored and safe.
Take giving for example. Giving is a lifewide truth. If you are a giver or believe in giving it must pervade every area of your world. If “giving is Gods way” then this will be true at every level and in every sphere. It cannot be true of finance and not true of time. It cannot be true of material resourses and not true of people resourses. For example: If you ran a church and preached giving and you had a vision to be a sending church, yet held back on all your best people and tried to influence people to stay, instead of giving freely of your people resource, you would be limiting gods ability to increase your capacity by stemming the flow of grace or gifting. This way you would stagnate, people would jump ship cos they are unfulfilled, those who stayed would lose purpose, and lack buy-in. Finances would dwindle. When you give of you’re best you make room for Gods best, however the cycle doesn’t stop once God entrusts his best to you, this is just the beginning.
The most common cause for this is divided vision. Or two visions. This is ok only when one vision serves the other, but when they begin to compete there is either compromise or division. So, often to avoid division compromise is sought.
What if God had not called us to be a Citywide mega church but a Pauline style, umbrelled network of bright powerful spirit fuelled assemblies. And still see city won for christ. What if we offered to serve those in our influence rather that rule them. What if we empowered them to make the decision their calling and gifting prompted. How do you effectively train people in grassroots church planting, when what they are most often modelled to is that of an MegaPlant.
Since the beginning of the worship revolution, God has been using us to step out ahead of the pack and break new ground. When we shrink back to follow other models, waves and currents we find ourselves copying the structure that produces fruit for someone else, instead of following the unction of spirit in Us to spearhead the next level of breakthrough in the body of Christ local and global.
If you try to house and hang on to too many leaders, all you get is ‘leader swapping’. Paul found this very issue when they were all fighting about who they belonged to, whose teaching they subscibed to, who they gave permission to speak into their world. “I’m of apollos, I’m of cephas”. Leaders must be sent out to lead otherwise they become stagnant. The best way to disciple leaders is to have them lead. The best way to grow prophets is to get them prophesying. Leaders and planters are not defined by there social or vocational success but by the call and gifting of God. Many if not most of the iconic leaders in the history of christendom have prospered inspite of qualification rather than as a result of.
God gave to the church apostles, pastors, teachers etc.. For the equipping. Apostles equip apostles, prophets equip people with the prophetic. That’s how it works. That doesn’t mean that an apostle can’t be prophetic, but if a teacher or an apostle tries to impart or train in the prophetic it may not be that successful as they may not have an understanding of how the gift works. More often than not they would be better to empower an individual who is gifted in that area. If a prophet simply prophesies they miss half of their calling, so much of the joy comes in the delivery/birthing of new prophets. how selfish to think “i am gods chosen vessel” and not eqip other. In business I personally have no greater joy than seeing someone i have trained become a greater talent than I could have ever wished to be.
The word says a mans gift makes way for him… However if the gift is not allowed to be used it will not make way for anyone. A gift makes way when it is practiced and developed. Paul encouraged timothy to “fully deploy” the gift given him. God says his call and gifts and without repentance. Therefor you need to figure out what it is early on so you can get to work. If you spend your life doing another task/call not associated with your gift, all in the name of serving, what will the master say of the talent he gave you when he returns. And what will your excuse be.. “oh God I knew you were a hash God, so I buried my gift and kept going thru the motions, here it is… Listen I can still sing, preach, prophesy”
