MPowered Christian Ministries

President & Lead Pastor
Brian S. HolmesWhile traditional church planting and foreign missions is still good, the cost of raising funds for building new churches, sending people into foreign mission fields to evangelize, build, teach, etc. is often inefficient.

There are a slew of other problems including language/cultural barriers between the leaders and members, and a plant's dependency on its sending church for ongoing leadership and support. Because the strategic plan for discipleship and leadership development isn't planned upfront the plant isn't able to be independently governed by its own people.

All this can be avoided by shifting our focus to simply making disciples in new places and equipping them to evangelize and lead the disciple-making process.

As an evangelist or (basic) church planter brings the gospel to new communities, they begin by discipling one person. Those two grow into a huddle (3-5 people), a small discipleship group (6-10 people), a microchurch or home church (<25), a small church (25-200), a medium-sized church (200-400), a large church (400-800), a very large church (800-2,000), a megachurch (over 2,000), or a megachurch with multisite campuses.

They could grow their huddle to any size church, or they could simply grow into any size group and then split up into smaller groups and continue to bring in new recruits.

• Levels 1, 2 and 3 begin the educational, transformational process in individuals.
• Level 4 empowers disciples to make disciples, grow as a leader, create their own communities or otherwise fulfill their Kingdom calling, with additional training, resources, face-to-face time, and personalized support.
• Level 5 provides churches, nonprofits, or other forms of discipleship communities additional features to empower all members of the community to continue to progress in their disciple-making, Kingdom-advancing journeys.
  
  

As they increase in size they must remember to continually reach the unreached, evangelize the lost, and continue to create and empower additional disciple-making communities. If they don't, the church will either stop growing and/or it will stop making disciples that make disciples. The larger churches get the more they tend to develop an "attractional" church mindset. Most of the programs, effort, events, etc. get geared towards attracting people to attend Sunday services, and being a part of them becomes the primary activity Christians are to do.

Members may participate in this now-modified mission of what it means to be the church, by serving on Sundays, and still attending Bible studies and small groups. However, the responsibility for leading and pastoring the majority, sharing the gospel, or making disciples is abdicated to the pastor or small staff. And they're also often simultaneously over-focused on preparing for and executing Sunday services, and overwhelmed by the volume of people any one person is responsible for discipling.

As a result, evangelism to the lost, and the kind of discipleship that leads to well-educated disciples with transformed lives becoming disciple-makers and leaders, comes to a grinding halt. The average church-goer struggles in their own personal growth; struggles with demonic bondage, sin, and brokenness, struggles to ever live out a life of intimacy with God and purpose, and finds contentment in the idols of this world.

Because Sunday services is now the primary vehicle being used to share the gospel to save unbelievers, and churches are also full of believers that still need spiritual milk rather than solid food, everything is modified to be more engaging and enjoyable to unsaved and spiritually immature people. Discipleship is relegated to a less-important week day activity, and training to equip the average church goer to make disciples is often unheard of.

Another consequence of all this is that pastors and church staff must give constant attention to help, encourage, and motivate church goers. The challenges of managing lukewarm, immature churches cause pastoral frustration, burnout, escapism into moral failure, quitting the pastorate, etc. The unhealthy church leadership and inevitable church hurt caused to members only perpetuates the cycle of destruction to Jesus's Bride.

Would schools ever think that one teacher should teach hundreds of students? Do we not think that even ONE teacher per 50 students will STILL lead to the neglect of the development of individual students' needs? Yes, and this is for students who get their teacher for 35 hours a week, a thorough curriculum, regular testing, and the ability to ask questions and get one-on-one access to let their teacher know they need help.

Yet, many churches have almost none of this! And the church is tasked with much more than just giving information to learn and pass a test. The church is tasked with helping people have entire life transformation. 

The solution is to never lose the focus on the great commission in the first place. To never make the mistake of believing that our mission was ever to build big, extravagant buildings with lots of people willing to be in them for whatever reason, in the first place. What matters is whether or not we're making disciples that make disciples. It is better to have one radical disciple making another radical disciple than to have 100 lukewarm believers sitting in a building for an hour a week.

And we're not against large churches or Sunday services. We're against thinking this is the "main thing." The litmus test for whether or not we're getting somewhere. It's not. Discipleship can happen in a coffee shop, a living room, on the job, in a park, in a small church, or in a megachurch campus.

Just as long as we're not settling for simply putting on weekly "Christian events." The unregenerate person wants to live one way the rest of the week and have a religious activity that makes them believe they're saved, good-enough, and doing all that they should be doing. We must change the systems and processes so that we have the time and energy to really know what's going on in the spiritual development of people's lives.

We need to change our gatherings so that those not being led by the Holy Spirit don't even want to stay there, only muddying the water. Either they're encountering God, getting transformed, and becoming a disciple, or our commitment to this goal repels those who aren't truly interested so they eventually leave.

Jesus modeled this with the 12, the 70, the 120, and then the 3,000. Our network and membership platform is how we're shifting the refocus back to personalized discipleship. Where it happens at the small group and one-on-one levels. Where people are known intimately and progress is measured by actual transformation. Even the labels of the levels of our membership reinforce this paradigm shift. We want all believers to grow as a disciple, then become a leader that makes disciples out of others. 

Jesus is making disciples who make disciples. This is what the Holy Spirit is doing. Do you want to be a part of it?? Join the movement today!

See you on the inside,

Pastor Brian Holmes

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