Develop Leadership Gifts

 Hello everybody, my name is Dean Davis and this is “Multiply,” the podcast that provides a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters. 

When I was first sent out as a church planter, I knew I wanted to plant churches that would grow to become strong and healthy.  So I often asked myself, “What is the difference between a strong, healthy church and a weak, sickly church?”  As a church planter, you have probably asked the same question.  

Of course, there are many answers to this question. Healthy churches lift up Jesus as the savior of the world. Healthy churches obey his commandments.  Healthy churches have members who give generously of their resources and time.  I knew all this before I started planting churches.  But here is one thing I learned from personal experience as a church planters.  Healthy churches have strong members who share ministry responsibility. If a church is led by a church planter who does everything, it is not yet healthy. If the church planters, preaches, teaches evangelizes, organizes and carries out every event, every meeting, every class, every outreach, that church planter is not working with a healthy church.  Healthy churches have strong members who share ministry responsibility.  When the church planter can delegate responsibility to church members and know that they will do it, the church is moving toward health and strength.

The selection of elders for a new church is a transformational moment.  Church planters must examine well the candidates and their character.  It is also important to have elders with a variety of spiritual gifts. In Ephesians 4, Paul tells us that when Jesus ascended on high, he gave gifts to his people.  “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

What does this mean? This means that there are gifted people in your church.  Jesus has given your church a variety of gifted people.  Maybe your members have not fully manifested their gifts, but your people have apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral, and teaching gifts. Perhaps these gifts are not obvious to everyone, but with the eye of faith, you can see these gifts as they develop and grow.  When you see them, cultivate them.  When you see a teaching gift show up, no matter how small or weak, encourage the teacher. Give him or her more opportunities to use that teaching gift.  The same is true for evangelists.  When you see a person with a tiny gift for evangelism, help that person evangelize.  Help people with each of the five kinds of gifts use them. When you help others use their gifts, you will be building up a corps of leaders who will transform your church from weakness to strength and from frailty to health.  Just be sure of this, the transformation you hope for will not happen from one day to the next. It will take time.  But with the eye of faith, you can identify and cultivate gifted elders for your church.

This has been “Multiply.” And I’m Dean Davis asking, “Who will you share this encouraging word with today?

#EncouragementForVillageChurchPlanters #FiveFoldMinistry