The leaders of microchurches don’t tend to do all of the heavy lifting. The burden is shared like the moving a piece of heavy furniture. The same piece of furniture that threatened to break the back of a solo lifter reduces to the weight of a peanut when shared by a few extra sets of hands. It’s no different when believers all pitch their gifts into the mix of mission, or as Paul says when “each part of the body does it’s share of the work.”
Unfortunately, we’ve replaced using our spiritual gifts with doing church chores. You know the usual suspects; folding bulletins, laying out the donuts, working an overhead, changing the slides… Not really the kind of thing that excites the average believer, is it? Believers tend to get fired up when their gifts are coursing through them, and in a microchurch context, they get to do the real stuff; what Paul calls “the work of the ministry” In a microchurch, leaders aren’t feeders. They aren’t star players that everyone else watches. Instead, leaders function like coaches who support others as they run the ball of mission down the field as a team. Average everyday believers score the touchdowns, resulting from a team effort. The leader is on the sidelines most of the time, and the points go to Jesus. After years of doing ministry like a losing team, it took reinventing the game to start the turn around and start winning.
Everyone would agree that the church was winning in Acts 2:42. After all, everybody wants an Acts 2:42 church. Just ask a Christian to quote it on demand, and you’ll get a wispy-eyed conversation about “how church ought to be”. However, what we often miss in that verse is that it’s not about leaders, but about everyday believers and the effect they had on their community. That entire verse is what the old ladies, housewives, laboring men, slaves, and dopey teenagers did together. They all met, devoted themselves to the teaching, prayed, ate together, and gave generously. As a result of everyday believers activated in their gifts, the Lord added to the scoreboard by adding to their numbers…daily.
Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.
