Video Transcript: Strong Relationships

Welcome back. In this next section, we're going to continue with our look at  working with staff and leaders and our skill topic is going to be strong  relationships. So let's dive in. There is a principle I'd like to share with you,  relationships require investing in people. You might think of it this way, think of  the return on investment that Jesus made in people. Now, of course, the primary group of people in whom Jesus made that investment was the original set of  disciples, but there were others along the way, and of course, that continues  these days. It's God the Father, God the Son, investing in the lives of people  through God the Spirit. So that investment continues even to this day, and think  about the rate of return on that investment. You know, the Christian faith has  expanded across the entire globe, and all of this started with a handful of, rather, I don't know eclectic, an eclectic group, a strange combination of people, a small group of people, empowered by the Lord, filled with the Spirit, beginning to  share the faith. And the return on that investment is immeasurable, leading, of  course, ultimately, to that multitude in Revelation 5, that's too numerous to  count. What a return on investment. Now, here's a question for you, what are the elements of relational investment in people? So let's talk a little bit about how we do this. Now, the first thing that I would like for you to look at is the something  that we've looked at before. It's the support challenge matrix that comes to us  from giant worldwide. We've already talked about this, so I'm not going to, I'm  not going to rehash that material. What I want to do is zero in on quadrant  number two, the liberator. I think it's reasonable for us to recognize that Jesus  Christ was a liberating leader. He was a leader that brought freedom. Now this  particular model identifies the Liberator as a leader that provides very high  support for his people, those he leads, as well as issuing a very high challenge  to those he leads. Well, I'd like for you to think about the Great Commission in  terms of both challenge and support. What's the challenge? Well, Jesus says,  Go and make disciples. Does that sound like a challenge to you? It does to me.  I'm sure it did to them. It's a very high challenge. Jesus issues a very high  challenge. He makes the startling claim that all authority in heaven and earth  has been given to him, and in that authority, he's sending them out. Therefore  you are to go and make disciples, baptize, teach obedience. But where is the  support coming from? He says, I am with you to the end of the age. How is  Jesus God the Son with us? He is with us through the power of the Holy Spirit.  So in the Great Commission, we find Jesus the liberating leader, issuing a very  high challenge and yet offering very high support. He's an empowering leader.  He's a leader that establishes a culture of opportunity, if we will just commit,  follow him. Now, as I was preparing my notes for this video, I did some thinking  back to folks that I've encountered in my ministry life, where I felt that I offered  both very high challenge as well as very high support. There was one individual  that was serving in college ministry, sort of the number two in command, but he  had a real desire to move forward in his ministry. Life. He was feeling called to 

pastoral ministry, but he was out of. Touch with a particular denomination. He  didn't know how to pursue this. He didn't know how to go about getting a  licensure and credentialing, that kind of thing that we now offer through CLI  Well, I sat with him and walked through his options, and I offered to work with  him, to connect him with my denomination, to help him navigate that world of  licensure and ordination. Once he had completed that process, gone through  some training, he already had the seminary degree that was required the night  that he was commissioned. I was invited to speak at that occasion and to be  part of his commissioning service. And he went on to join the staff of a very large church, and in the last few years or so has risen to the level of being the senior  pastor of that church, but I can think back to about 20 years ago, when he was a young man wearing and wearing An ice hockey jersey, ministering on the  college campus. I issued the challenge. I offered support. There was another  gentleman, a seasoned pastor, who was looking at retirement, but he had  become involved with the training that we offer through my ministry, and we had  a discussion about his becoming a trainer, becoming a consultant, a coach for  others. He gradually stepped into that, and he now works through our ministry,  the Go center, and he serves as a trainer and coach to probably half a dozen  different churches out in the Pacific Northwest. I still connect with him. I am the  coach to the coach, the consultant for the consultant, the trainer of the trainer,  high support, high challenge. Yet another pastor who was retiring looking at his  prospects for the future. He and I got in touch, and a similar challenge was  issued, of his becoming my counterpart, doing the things that I do in my part of  the country, out in his part of the country, and he's risen to that occasion, high  challenge, high support. Just recently, a pastor came into my world on my radar  screen, someone that had benefited from the training that we provide in terms of revitalizing the church where he is the pastor, but he has a passion to help other churches, and the leaders of His Church share that passion. They want to be a  church that shares what has happened with them with other churches, but not  just as testimony, but as actual training and consultation and coaching, so he is  now working with me in a two year plan for him to essentially develop the  knowledge and skills that I have so that he and his leaders in his church can be  a resource for other churches, high challenge, high support. That's how these  things work. That's what they look like. Now Recall again that that mandate of  being interested in other people, before being interesting yourself and having  them be interested in you. So here are some questions that you have to realize  that on people's minds as you are working with them, particularly if you in a  positional authority over them in a supervisory way, maybe they report to you,  they're thinking to themselves, are you for me? Are you against me, or are you  in this, just for yourself? You see, the trust factor is an incredibly important  factor. People have to know, have to know that you are acting in their best  interest. And remember, the liberating leader is someone who's looking for the 

highest good of others. Spiritual leadership, taking responsibility for the spiritual  development of others. You see. How these things are starting to line up,  working with staff and leaders. If you are in a position of being a leader among  staff, a leader among leaders, as well as being a leader within a congregation,  these are the kinds of things, the dynamics that are at work. And so as you  incorporate these ideas, these principles, these techniques, you're going to  become more and more effective at building strong relationships, trusting  relationships, that can provide the foundation for those with whom you are  working to develop in their ministries, in their spiritual lives. Now we're talking  about managing ministry time in a you know, in our previous set of videos. And  one thing that we need to take away from that study is that strong relationships  are going to require the investment of time. So as you are thinking through the  management of your ministry time, you have to build in those blocks of time in  which to interact with people, to invest in people to build trust with people to  inform, to train, to coach, to consult, to care for, because all of that is part of  developing strong relationships. Strong relationships are going to take time at  the same time, though, this time invested in building strong relationships is  going to reap strong dividends. That's how we work together. Now I want to, I  want to make a distinction between what's called a single cell church and a multi cell church, a single cell church is a church that has a single pastor who is the  personal pastor to everyone in The Church, the vast majority of churches in the  US, and I dare say churches anywhere, the vast majority are solo pastor  churches, there is one pastor who is the pastor for everyone in that church.  Now, as a rule, that church is going to be small, and it's going to be limited to the ministry capacity of that one pastor. If he or she is going to be the only pastoral  leader in the church, then the church can only get as large as that single pastor  can handle. Now, what about the multi cell church? Well, the multi cell church is  different. The senior pastor will not be the personal pastor for everyone. The  senior pastor will be the pastor to the leaders, and the leaders will take on  pastoral responsibilities for pastoring everyone else. The church is spread out  into units or or subgroups that we're going to think of as cells, now it's my it's my view that the distinction as to whether a church is going to be a single cell  church or is going to be a multi cell church needs to be decided very early On,  either at the beginning of that church being established, or at the beginning of  that church being revitalized, or, in a sense, reestablished. So here's a principle  that seems a little counterintuitive, but I want you to track with me on this. The  size of a congregation does not determine whether a church is a single cell  church or a multi cell church. Rather, the decision to be single cell or multi cell  will determine the size of a congregation, or at least the potential size of a  congregation. Now I realize that in most cases, pastors and church leaders are  not thinking this way. They may not be familiar with this distinction between  single cell and multi cell. So they reason to themselves, since my church is 

small, I'm going to be the pastor to everybody, and they don't realize that, in so  doing, they are casting their church in the role of single cell church, and that  church cannot possibly grow beyond what that one pastor can handle. Now, this  is not to say that that church can't multiply, but hold on to that for a moment.  Well, let's move on to this next question. What is at stake here? What is at  stake? Well, the local church of a single cell church that's led by a solo pastor is  going to be restricted by the capacity of that pastor to personally pastor  everyone now, on average, what we're finding is that the average solo pastor  can handle somewhere between about 75 up to maybe 150 for a highly capable  person. Now this is not a right or wrong, this is not a judgment. This is just an  observation. Folks have limits. Now, a solo pastor can only pastor a small group, a smaller group. So how does such a church multiply? Well, the way the single  cell church multiplies is that once it's once it's determined what the maximum  capacity of that pastor is. As the growth of the church gets closer to that  capacity, you have to start thinking about reproducing, multiplying the way you  do that, let's say, let's say that a particular pastor has a maximum capacity of  about 125 people. Well, as you are approaching that 125 what you would do to  multiply is you would put a church planting campaign together where you would  identify, say, 20 or 25 people as the core of a new church, probably a new single cell church, and those folks would leave That church with a church planter, move to another location, start a new church now that would create headroom in the  original single cell church that could now be refilled so new people could come  in, and the new single cell church could now begin To develop. So let's say that  this new single cell church has a capacity of 100 people. Well, when both of  those churches are reaching capacity, we're now talking about 225 people, and  both of those churches could carve out, you know, say 10% of the congregation  and plant new churches. So now we've got four single cell churches and so on  and so on and so on. So the single cell model can still be a growing and  multiplying model, but just operating as a single cell now what about? What  about the multi cell Church? The multi cell church is a church where the senior  pastor is going to pastor the leaders, the leaders are going to pastor the  congregation. There is no limit to how large that church might get, unless you  talk about the limit of, say, space. But here's the thing, we want our churches to  be involved in planting. So in this multi cell church, we're still going to model.  We're still going to adopt that model of periodically carving some folks out to  plant a new church, or perhaps just putting the funding together to to to  financially support the launching of a new church. But as that church gets larger  and larger, more staff would be added. So you have a senior pastor, maybe you  have an associate, maybe you add another associate, you have other  department staff, so the church can continue to grow. Theoretically, it's  unlimited, as long as we are providing that pastoral capacity from leaders other  than the senior pastor. So regardless, either way you're working at it, the 

possibility to multiply exists now, when I went into Arizona to pastor this church  of 13, anyone who understood this distinction between single cell and multi cell  would have concluded, well, they must be going for single cell, we've got a very  small congregation. We've got one pastor, and so this is a single cell church. But 

it wasn't why not? Well, I did know the distinction, in my sense, in terms of God's vision for this church, was that it would become a multi cell church. Why? Well, a couple of reasons. One is the area had a large growing population, and it  seemed to me that it would need multiple churches of a pretty good size, but  also I knew that I would be more effective as the senior pastor of a multi cell  church than as the solo pastor of a single cell church. So right from the  beginning, even when our congregation was very, very small, I began to plant  the seeds of being a multi cell church, making sure that I was not taking on the  role of being the personal pastor to everyone, but we were sharing that world  among leaders. Now that was perhaps a little bit top heavy at the beginning, but  the time, our church had about 300 people involved. It was a completely  different matter, functioning as a highly functional multi cell church. So that's  how these things come together. That's how they work. Well. That brings us to  the close of this particular video session the topic of strong relationships, and  how do strong relationships relate to multi cell and single cell? Well, it has to do  with what's going to be the nature of relationship between the pastor and the  people now in a single cell model, that would be a direct relationship, strong  relationships between everyone in the church and the pastor, but in the multi cell church, it can be slightly different, strong relationships between staff and  leaders, with the senior pastor, but then not so much with the congregation,  more that the congregation is being developed into strong relationships with  those other leaders. And as the congregation spreads and grows, more leaders  are developed. And as more leaders are developed, the capacity for the  congregation to grow more is developed so one feeds the other over time. So  we're done with this video, and we will be continuing with our next video talking  about still working with staff and leaders, and the skill topic we're going to be  zeroing in on is going to be ministry clarity, ministry clarity. So we'll take a look at that next time. In the meantime, may God bless your efforts on his behalf. May  God bless your ongoing studies that you might indeed be prepared for what he's calling you to be and do in the name of Jesus amen,