PEOPLE, NOT PROGRAMS

The challenge, though, is that we need our places to sustain our programs. How will we have thriving children and adult programs if we don’t have a place to host them? This is when we begin to realize that redefining place in ministry leads to rethinking the importance of programs in ministry.

Imagine that your church had no building or facilities whatsoever. Could you still make disciples? Certainly the answer is yes. Churches all around the world make do. So how would your church make disciples completely separate from a church building? This is the question we started asking at Brook Hills, and it has led us to some significant changes. I’ll share just one.

Imagine that your church had no building or facilities whatsoever. Could you still make disciples?

For years we had hosted a Vacation Bible School for one week every summer in our building. Members of the church would spend hours decorating rooms and preparing facilities for the time when kids in our community would come to our building for ministry. But then our children’s ministry leaders asked, “If we didn’t have a building, how could we teach the gospel to kids throughout our community?”

That’s when they began equipping parents, children’s ministry leaders, and small-group leaders in our faith family to host Bible clubs for kids in their homes. We already had homes spread all around our immediate community. Why not make our homes the place of ministry instead of the church building? Why not invite people from our neighborhoods, not to go to a church building with us, but to come across the street and into our homes with us? Home is where we could show the gospel to their children while we also shared life with them.

So during the summer, members of our church started hosting neighbors in their homes for Bible clubs. Crowds of kids came—far more than we could ever have hosted in our church building at one time. And all of it took place in diverse neighborhoods far away from our building.

The outcome? Scores of non-Christian neighbors are hearing a gospel-centered witness and seeing a gospel-centered family right next door, and the gospel is multiplying throughout our community.

One day I visited a home during a Bible club event. As kids played in the yard and parents visited, the host mom and dad hit me with a proposal. “We were thinking that we could invite these kids and their families to our home throughout the year. We’d be doing ministry here instead of trying to do it all at the church building on a Wednesday night. Would that be okay with you?”

Yes! That would be okay with me! I am okay when people discover that God has built into our everyday lives opportunities and platforms to spread the gospel. I am okay when people realize that we are not dependent on well-crafted programs at designated places to accomplish the mission God has created us for as his people.

This is just one small illustration in the area of children’s ministry. But imagine what could happen if this picture were multiplied across the church: men and women seeing that the most effective avenues for ministry are found not in programs created for them but amid the people who surround them where they live. God has given every follower of Christ natural avenues to spread the gospel and declare his glory. Which means that the last thing leaders should do is pull people away from those avenues in order to participate in our activities.

At one point at Brook Hills, we were trying to organize and centralize all the types of ministry in which people were involved. For example, we created community ministry programs so people could participate in outreach efforts in our city. We encouraged every small group to get involved in one of the programs we had organized. The only problem was that the more Christ compelled the members of our faith family to see the opportunities he had built into their lives for the spread of the gospel, the less time they had to participate in our programs. I have to admit: when people started giving themselves to ministries we had not organized, we didn’t know what to do about it.

That’s when we woke up and said to ourselves, “Why are we trying to organize how and where and when our people minister? God has already given them opportunities for ministry where they live and work and play.” So we decided to stop planning, creating, and managing outreach programs and to start unleashing people to maximize the ministry opportunities God had already planned and created for them.

We woke up and said to ourselves, “Why are we trying to organize how and where and when our people minister?”

From that point the impact of our church in the community changed radically. Now our people are busy leading Bible studies in their workplaces and neighborhoods, helping addicts in rehabilitation centers, supplying food in homeless shelters, loving orphans in learning centers, caring for widows in retirement homes, providing hospice care for the elderly, training men and women in job skills, tutoring men and women in reading, helping patients in AIDS clinics, teaching English to internationals, and serving in a variety of other ways. And now our leadership team understands that it’s good when people are so involved in ministry where they live that they don’t have time to participate in the programs we create.

If you are a leader in the church, think about the individuals in your care. See their faces, hear their names, and picture their lives. Consider how God has written a different story in each of their lives, filled with varied circumstances and challenges, trials and temptations, experiences and encounters. He has sovereignly led them to the life stage and situation where they now find themselves, surrounded by people you will never meet and opportunities you will never have. And you have been called by God to serve them in the accomplishment of God’s purpose for their lives. If you’re like me, the last thing you want to do is sideline them to sit during a performance while you do the work or to participate in a program you have created. Instead, you want to equip them, train them, support them, and set them free to use everything God has given them to make his glory known in ways you could never design or imagine.

And if you are a member of the church, start dreaming and strategizing. Consider where God has placed you, whom God has put around you, and how God desires to use you for his glory where you live and work. If you are single, how can you make the most of your singleness for ministry?⁸ If you are married, how can you serve together with your spouse in your community? If you have kids, how can you make your home a ministry to children in your neighborhood? If you work outside the home, how can you share Christ in your workplace? Be careful not to let programs in the church keep you from engaging people in the world with the gospel. Make the most of the opportunities for ministry that God has built into your life.

I think of Darren and Julia, a married couple in our church. Darren works in automobile service, and he intentionally uses his work as an avenue for sharing the gospel. He often tells me stories about guys he works with who have come to Christ and whom he is now personally teaching to follow Christ. Meanwhile, he and Julia serve together in a residential facility that provides shelter and rehabilitation for women. Christ is transforming numerous people’s lives in our city through this one couple.

Imagine the spread of the gospel for the glory of God if every follower of Christ were involved in ministry like this. Who can fathom the potential of the church when we stop programming ministry for people and start propelling people into ministry?