17. Practitioner's Podcast: Serving Training Illustration

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Go to navigators church ministries.org. Guys, I am so excited for today's episode. This is one of my favorite illustrations. Now, I will give you the warning right now that we're gonna try to do a visual illustration over audio. So the best thing you can do right now is look into the show notes and pull up the illustration.

It's gonna be a huge help when we get into the nuts and bolts. Today's episode is perfect for anyone who wants to understand how Jesus invested his time, his focus, and his energy. Yeah, that's absolutely right, Tony. As, as you guys know, this ep, this episode, and our whole podcast, right, we are focused on Jesus style, disciple making, and that's what this illustration's all about.

It looks at what did Jesus do? How did he spend his time? Where did he focus himself? How'd he spend his energy? And what did that look like in terms of making disciples interacting with people? And so, just like Tony, this is one of my favorite illustrations to talk about, especially because of how deeply it relates to what it looks like to make disciples the way that Jesus made disciples.

If you've been around this podcast for any length of time, one of the things that you've heard us said before is that we oftentimes look at the words of Jesus without looking at the actions of Jesus. And what is so beautiful about this illustration is that it's really more focused on the actions of Jesus than the words of Jesus.

Although, trust me, we aren't ignoring Jesus' words, so don't send me any angry emails. But this really takes a look at the actions of Jesus. And what's funny, ironic, I'm not sure if funny's the right word, but one of the things that occurred to me as I was looking at this illustration is that, and this is gonna sound weird, but I'm just not sure.

That. Most churches that I visit today, most churches that I work with, most churches that I've been a part of in North America, I'm not sure that most churches would hire Jesus to be their pastor. Now, before you let any more of those audible gas out, let me explain. If we look at how Jesus allocated his time, his public ministry time, and that's really what we're gonna dive into today.

I'm just not sure that most churches would be okay with Jesus spending 80, 80 plus percent of his time with such a small group of people, but it, it does really cause me to wonder, are we misinterpreting? The idea of how pastors and church leaders should be spending their time when it comes to disciple making and overall ministry of the church.

Yeah, that's such a good point. And so Tony, what I want us to do is, you know, hopefully they've got it pulled up. Hopefully they're looking at it, but for those who aren't, let's just build it for them. Right? So if you can begin by describing, The, the first part of the illustration, and then we can move through it kind of piece by piece for people.

Yeah. The very first part of the illustration we would call the bold triangle, right? And that's no technical name. We just call it that because it's got a bold line around it. So if you were to imagine a bold triangle, we're gonna chop it up into four different parts. Right. And the four different parts build on each other from the, the greatest space to the very top of the pyramid or the top of the triangle.

So if we were gonna start from the bottom, we're gonna look at the, the types of people that Jesus interacted with in scripture. So these are the types of people that Jesus interacted with with scripture. And if we look at the largest group, we would call that group the crowds. So that group is at the bottom of the triangle, right?

Right on top of that would be the 72. And then on top of that would be the 12, and then on top of that would be the three. And of course we have scripture to back all this up. So again, think about this. If we're talking about the types of people that Jesus interacted with, then we're looking at the crowds and we're gonna go Matthew 9 35 to 38 for that example.

Then we're talking about the 72. We're gonna look at Luke 10 for that. We're gonna look at the 12 mark, three 14 through 15, and then we're gonna look at the three, like Jesus', his people, his squad, mark nine, two. And that represents the bold triangle. So the bold triangle are the crowds of people that we know based off of scripture that Jesus interacted with.

Yeah. So this illustration's a serving training illustration. So Tony, let's just talk about what we've described so far, right? So we have one bold triangle. We've divided it up into a few different pieces. let's just think about, you know, today if we were interacting with a pastor, a church leader, even many, non-church leaders, right, who are also disciple makers or who are thinking about trying to become that, like they're active in their faith is what I'm thinking about.

 where would you say they spend most of their time focused and energy? when it comes to the triangle? Yeah, I, I would say from the time that I was a lead pastor and from when I worked with lead pastors and other church leaders, I would say most of them spend their time in the crowds or in that kind of core group, like the, the 72.

So the bottom part of the triangle, we're always trying to reach new people. We're always trying to have large church attendance on Sunday morning. We're always trying to reach the unchurched people, and we do that most often through preaching and social justice, like the Habitat for Humanity build or any of those kind of things.

Yeah, so that's consistent with my experience too, is I've, invested in and ministered to a lot of church leaders and pastors. It's, the focus is much more on the, the crowds and the 72. Right. And even if they're not with the people, with the crowds at the time, like you said, they're, they're thinking about it.

They're preparing, right. They're preparing for the Sunday services and things like that. And, you know, certainly Jesus. Minister to those people too, right? You just name those verses of, you know, ways in which or times in which Jesus was actively pursuing and ministering to not just the three and the 12, but also the 72 and the crowds and you know, presumably people's in between, right?

And so, but when we think about what is the difference here between serving someone and training someone, And that is what this illustration's gonna try and draw out for us. but another thing that illustration's gonna draw out for us is, what is the difference between what we might expect or what we might think about Jesus having done what we do and what he actually did.

So let me, let me just draw out the rest of it for us, right? So you have it in your mind. You got the bold triangle, the base on the bottom. Now I'm gonna, we're gonna draw a dotted triangle, and it's gonna be upside down in the base of the dotted triangle. The widest part is gonna rest on the very tip of that bold triangle.

And so it's gonna come down and the, the point of the dotted triangle is going to touch the base of the bold triangle. Okay, so it's still right, it's still touching and and engaging. The three, the 12, the 72, and the crowds. But what this dotted triangle represents is the amount of time, focus, and energy Jesus spent on each of those groups, right?

Focused on helping them, developing them, et cetera. And so what we see is a, is a big difference, right? We, we have the bold triangle, which most of the time, focus and energy is on the bottom. With the crowds, with the masses, with the, the many, many people. And what Jesus has done in his life is most of his time, focus, and energy as he makes disciples, was spent with the three and the 12.

Now, what this illustration suggests to us is that if you draw a line through the middle of both of those triangles above it, so with the 12 and the three, we would call training. Below it, the 72 in the crowds we would call serving. Now, both serving and training again, are really, really important. They're part of Jesus's ministry, and so if we throw away one part of that, If we throw away the crowds and we say, oh, we're disciple makers.

Crowds aren't important. I don't need to spend time with them. That is inconsistent with what Jesus did as a disciple maker. So I, I don't think we should do that, right. We have to be, walking and ministering in the ways that Jesus walked and ministered. And so another thing that this illustration shows us is that the highest influence that we have with people comes in smaller settings.

The highest influence we have with people comes in those smaller 12 and three settings, you know, and it could be anywhere in between there. It could be a couple more than 12. You know, you get the point. It's, it's this sort of crowd, this sort of size that's not a crowd, rather, that has the most impact.

Now the question that, That I want to pose to you as a listener and, and Tony, I'd like to hear kind of your response to it is why is it if most of our influence is with those smaller numbers, why is it that most of our attention goes to the larger numbers? That's a great question. and obviously it's, it's hard to know, like there's a succinct answer.

I, I think the reality is for most of us, it's easier to try to get big numbers because big numbers equal big or what we think, right? Kind of the lie that we tell ourselves. Big numbers equal big influence. Yeah. And so if, if I have a church that's got. 300, 500 people and they're all coming Sunday morning, well then think of the influence that I have.

Yep. But the reality is, if, if Covid taught us anything, they taught us that church attenders are not the same as disciple makers or disciples in general. And so, attendance does not necessarily mean influence. And again, like hear us, we want you to have. The the perfect size church for your building, right?

Like we want you to have a big church if that's what God desires for you. But here's the thing, when we spend our time chasing big numbers, we end up with little impact. When we spend our time chasing big numbers, we end up with little impact. And, and I think, it's really easy and it, and ill, I'll be honest here, it was easy for me, right?

It's easy for me to sometimes get caught up in the thought that I need to have big numbers in order to justify. I. The activities that I was doing, and if Jesus shows us anything, it's that the opposite of that was actually true. That the movement that would be the church birthed out of Jesus's teaching was really done by a small group, 12 people sent out, and then we see it again with Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Timothy.

We see this intentionality of the movement being continued in very small numbers. Small numbers, huge impact. Yeah, I think that's one of the things that this illustration challenges us with is this idea that big doesn't equal better, and that sometimes smaller is more powerful. Right? When you think of just what you said he took, he took 12 or 11 or however we want to count that after Judas and after the crucifixion resurrection.

But, a very small number and from that small number, Became the whole of Christianity today. Right? That's where it began. And so I've seen churches with 70 have a much greater impact than churches of 7,000 because the Church of 7,000 isn't intentionally making disciples. Not that they can't be, but some of the ones that I've seen, right?

But the churches of 70, not that they are necessarily, just cuz they're 70 doesn't mean they're making disciples. But if a Church of 70 is focused on disciple making, And a church of 7,000 is not, I would put my money with the church of 70 being more impactful for the kingdom over the long term. Yeah. And, and one of the things that I often hear when I introduce this illustration to people is the pushback on it.

Like, it, it doesn't sit well, especially with a lot of Americans. And the reason that it doesn't sit well is because is this clearly indicates if we just go off of what the scripture says, Jesus had favorites. Yes. You know, in his time on earth, when it came to his time, he had favorites. Now, I'm not talking about Jesus's ability to love everyone.

What I'm talking about is that everyone, Jesus probably loved everyone, but he didn't spend time with everyone. And so this is really hard for pastors because if we're gonna really follow Jesus' examples when it comes to his, his modes, right, his his actual physical example, what he did with his actions.

Then it means that we won't be able to spend time with everyone the same way that we could spend time with 12 or three. And, and what it does is it really bumps up against our sense of fairness when it comes to the, this idea of the church and what we're entitled to. And, and really what it does in, in my opinion, is that it bumps up against consumer to Christianity.

Yeah, right. Consumer to Christianity is, Hey, I'm entitled to this message. I'm entitled to your attention. I'm entitled for to a pastoral visit, right? I'm entitled to all of those things. But the truth is, Jesus really didn't do that. He was a little bit more strategic about how and who and when he spent his time with people.

And he did that, I believe, because he cared more about the kingdom, than anything else. So he's out there trying to build the kingdom. And l a lot less focus on building his influence, but rather the kingdom's influence, which of course we understand Jesus' influence is kingdom influence, but, you know, in today's world.

Right. I'm, I'm kind of taking that juxtaposition. Yeah. Yeah. So if we continue this illustration at the bottom of the bold triangle, There's some, some phrases and I want to unpack those and we'll unpack the ones at the top two, but some of some of those at the bottom says there's the most interest. It's the most interest in focusing on the crowds dealing with them, and it's the most interest, not only from the leaders, but also from the crowd.

And there's the most interest there because it's the least costly, which is another phrase they're least costly. It's easier for me as a participant to just show up on Sunday. And it's the least costly cuz there's the least accountability, which is another one of those phrases, least accountability, and it's the easiest to accomplish

So, It is easier to come on a Sunday to just be there. It's easier for the leader to put something on and really not know if there's transformation occurring. And so there's less accountability for the leader too. You just go and do the thing that you're doing and hope that it hit. And whether it did or not, you don't really know, when you're dealing with crowds of people.

And so I think a lot of leaders and. And people in the crowds, receivers, right, of that leadership of those who are trying to minister to them prefer the bigger, because it feels like something's happening, whether or not it is or not, right? And so I think that's a big part of it too, in addition to the consumerism, which kind of helps feed all that as well.

And if you didn't listen to our mini-series on consumerism last season, They encourage you to go back and check that out because there's a lot there as far as how our culture that we live in impacts us, not only as individuals, but also as disciple makers. But if you think that the top there of the illustration, it's kind of the opposite, right?

Why is there so little interest in disciple making? Personal disciple making, whether it's one-on-one, one on two, one on three. Well, it is, there's the most accountability in that you can't hide in that meeting, right? If they're asking questions about your life or how, how much you are engaging God through the word or through prayer.

Prayer, like there's accountability there. Yeah. It costs you, it costs you something, and as a leader, it costs you because, because it's not just pushing content out in front of somebody and hoping it hits them, it's engaging them with who they are and with the reality of Christ. And so serving training, there's a higher cost to training than there is to serve.

Now, again, I'll say it again. I feel like we said a lot this episode already, but both are biblical. Both are Jesus style, disciple making. If we remove one, the serving or the training from our ministry, we're no longer doing what Jesus did. Yeah. One of the things that you and I have talked about recently outside of the podcast is that there's a, a tendency to want to generate ministry versus making generational.

 disciples, right? Generational ministry versus generating ministry. And I think when we look at this serving training illustration, when we get to training, remember, right? We're making disciples who can make disciples. So what ends up happening is we, we then take it generationally versus just generating.

Now there are seasons where you need to generate ministry and it happens and it's good and you know it's important, but there's also seasons where it's time to think about generational ministry and that changes families. And so, both are important, but remember, like if we look at just how Jesus used this time, I think that there's an important lesson to be taken here.

Yep, absolutely. So, with that, let's kind of move to our takeaway and we didn't even say it yet, we've kind of been hinting around it. Jesus spent most of his time focus and energy training. But often his training was in the context of serving. So if you, if you look at some of those verses on the illustration, you'll see that Jesus is, you know, communicating with the crowds, but the disciples are right there.

And after he communicates to him, he takes the disciples or they'll be asking questions and they'll be interacting over it. And so even his serving ministry was often training ministry. And so he used the serving in the context of training. And so, again, our takeaway. Jesus spent most of his time focus and energy training, but he often did it in the context of serving in our action step.

Take a look at how you use your time, focus, and energy. Does the way that you use your time look like the way that GS uses his time? Friends, it's such a joy to spend this time with you. We are so thankful for the opportunity to talk to you about serving and training. We hope that it's, super beneficial.

Again, make sure you check out the show notes and, hey, could you do us a favor? Would you leave a rating or review on iTunes? It really goes a long way to help people discover the podcast. We're always thankful when people do that. Thank you guys so much for the opportunity to connect and we look forward to connecting again real soon.