Guardrails: Six Principles for a Multiplying Church - Softcover

Briggs, Alan; Frost, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1631464353 ISBN 13: 9781631464355

Publisher: NavPress Publishing Group, 2016

Synopsis

An estimated 4,000 churches are planted every year. An estimated 3,700 churches close every year. It’s not easy starting or sustaining a vital Christian witness of any kind. It’s even harder when there’s no structure to support the good work you’re doing. Guardrails offers structure to your good impulse to follow the great commission to go and make disciples right where you are.

Guardrails provides six principles that allow for sustainable growth in a church’s mission, for the health of God’s people and the sake of the world.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Church Growth ? Church Health
Every impulse to share the gospel and make disciples is a good impulse. But without a structure to organize our impulses and focus our vision, the great commission can drive us straight into burnout. Healthy church growth is measured not by full schedules or even packed seats but by a steady multiplication of disciples of Jesus.

That happens when we organize ourselves around discipleship that is simple, holistic, adaptable, regular, reproducible, and positive.These six highly practical principles will give life and momentum to any ministry.

Read Guardrails and find your ministry better organized, more sustainable, and more fruitful.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

GuardRails

Six Principles for a Multiplying Church

By Alan Briggs

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2016 Alan Briggs
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-63146-435-5

Contents

Foreword, xi, 
Introduction: How We Stayed Afloat, xv, 
PART ONE: Foundations, 
1. Chaos in Search of Order, 3, 
2. The Kingdom, 19, 
3. The Great Commission, 31, 
4. The Apprentice, 53, 
PART TWO: Principles, 
5. Discipleship Must Be Simple, 69, 
6. Discipleship Must Be Holistic, 75, 
7. Discipleship Must Be Adaptable, 83, 
8. Discipleship Must Be Regular, 97, 
9. Discipleship Must Be Reproducible, 109, 
10. Discipleship Must Be Positive, 123, 
11. Applying Movement Principles, 135, 
12. Roadblocks and Missing Ingredients, 151, 
Epilogue, 161, 
Appendix: Apprentice Culture Assessment, 163, 
Acknowledgments, 167, 
Notes, 169, 
About the Author, 172, 

CHAPTER 1

CHAOS IN SEARCH OF ORDER

Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

We cannot create movements; only the Spirit of God can. But we can align ourselves, raising the sails of kingdom-oriented ministry, so that when the Spirit does blow, we are ready to move forward.

STEVE SMITH

Discipleship and disciple-making is foundational to any movement. No matter which movement you observe you will find that they are obsessed with discipleship and disciple-making.

ALAN HIRSCH

It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. I was meeting with a church planter at a local coffee shop. For some reason, church planters and coffee go together like Portland and weird. After catching up a bit I asked a familiar question: "What is the next hump your church is facing?"

His response was simple. "If we just get over the one- hundred- person mark, we are going to be fine."

At the time their church was wrangling about forty folks into a Sunday worship gathering. He was wishing to more than double the size of his church. So my next question was, "If God brought you sixty people tomorrow, what would you do with them?"

It was obvious he had no idea.

I have had this exact thing happen at least three other times! Unfortunately, most churches have no idea what they would or should do with the people God brings them.

We often see people as solutions to our problems: Add sixty people and our church plant is out of the woods. God sees people differently — sixty people he created in his image; sixty people harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. God knows the plans he has for those sixty people; why would he trust us with them if we don't?

Just a few months later, this conversation would come back to haunt me. My heart cry is to influence leaders who are hungry to live like Jesus and multiply disciples. I meet with as many hungry leaders as I can. I create as many equipping venues as I have the influence to put together, which can lead people into a sustainable life of mission. Each day at 10:02 a.m., I pray as Jesus commanded in Luke 10:2: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."

The problem with asking God for something is that once he gives us what we've asked for, it becomes our responsibility. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak and the calendar is already full. At a certain point I started feeling completely swamped, maxed out with no solutions on how to ease the load of administration and equipping leaders. My list was long, and the margin for error was minuscule. We had just adopted two kids from Ethiopia who didn't know our language, I was working an extra job on top of full-time ministry, and my wife was getting her master's degree in the evenings. We slept occasionally.

In the midst of this frantic season, God put two new men on my mind. I was convinced I didn't have time to insert these two new guys into my life: I was already discipling people in the early mornings, over lunches, even at my house after my kids went to bed. But I also knew that saying no to God wasn't acceptable. How can I turn down God's answers to my prayers because I'm "too busy"?

I sensed God echoing a similar question back to me that I had asked the church planter just a few months before: "If I sent you ten hungry leaders tomorrow, what would you do with them?" I had no good answer.

My realization: I was the bottleneck to my own prayers. My desire to disciple others, to equip everyday folks to join God's work, was clouded by unsustainability. My systems were maxed out. I either needed to change my systems or change my prayers.

When our paradigms shift or even bust, God goes to work on us. People who have lost fifty pounds will tell you about the moment they looked in the mirror and had a wake-up call. When my friend almost died in a motorcycle accident, he realized how selfishly he had been living. Billionaires hit a moment where they have no idea what to do with all the money they have been sprinting after. Such points of holy frustration and deep wrestling beckon us to reexamine our lives. They leave us utterly humbled. They remind us that we have limits even as they provide fuel for the fire of the Divine.

Perhaps you are experiencing one of these moments right now or sense that you are heading toward one. These moments leave us feeling helpless, but they ripen us for change.

My crisis moment forced me to find a framework to lean back on. It wasn't out of my own brilliance; it didn't come to me in my favorite coffee shop, on a spiritual retreat, or on a 14,000-foot Colorado peak. God forced my hand, and then he pointed me toward the most freedom I have ever experienced as a minister of the gospel. I found a process where I could work smarter, not harder, to help unleash God's people around me. I have never experienced this kind of fruit before with so little weight on me and such immediate reproducibility. These principles formed a simple grid to engage hungry leaders, and it has made all the difference.

LIVING IN THE TENSION

In Acts 6 we are given a front-row seat into a crisis moment in the early church. The viral, grassroots movement of "the Way" was thriving. The church seemed to be capable of taking over the world as it expanded — until now. Now there was conflict, and as church leaders rubbed up against it, they realized more of the same was not going to work.

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables."

ACTS 6:1-2

What was the issue here?

• They needed to preach the Word.

• They needed to meet tangible needs.

• Their existing systems could no longer serve both.

So they came up with a great plan in the tension of this moment.

"Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

ACTS 6:3-6

In the midst of great momentum, beautiful chaos had been building. To sustain their momentum, the apostles created a new structure. The result was explosive: "And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7). Many more people came to faith, and they reached a new, strategic subgroup of people: Jewish priests who came to faith in Christ, validating their message to the broader community.

Thanks to the introduction of structure, the church in Jerusalem continued to grow, and the gospel continued to multiply into other hubs, eventually spreading all over the world! What Christian leader doesn't want to be part of something like that?

Most church leaders I interact with aren't good buddies with structure. In fact, for some, structure feels like a four-letter word. It sounds foreign, crusty, even unspiritual. Forming systems feels like wrestling a muddy pig to the ground — neither fun nor easy. I have never met one person who got into full-time ministry because they dreamed of creating new structures. It's about the people.

But structure is vital to loving people. When we are faithful to obey God, we bear fruit, and when that fruit exceeds our systems, we must expand — and our expansion itself must be faithful.

Too many people naively think that structure is the enemy of movement, when really structure can be the missing link. Sometimes our avoidance of structure is simply a convenient excuse to do things ourselves or avoid hard work.

KINGDOM MOVEMENT

Dee Hock, the founder of the Visa credit card association, coined the term chaordic to describe the mixing of chaos and order. As it happens, chaos and order often coexist in nature. Their combination in the world is typically strikingly beautiful. Hock suggests this can be applied to human organizations — which would include the church.

For most people, movement = chaos. Think about the fear that social movements and radicalism strike into governments. And yet it seems as though followers of Jesus everywhere are praying and laboring more and more toward a movement. They see the chaos of change as evidence of a movement brewing. There is a holy urgency in the air.

I am lucky enough to intersect with people living with this holy urgency. I prayer-walk with church planters who feel a deep call to reclaim the forgotten ground beneath their feet and take spiritual responsibility for their parishes. A friend of mine owns a cafe and intentionally uses it as a place to connect with people far from God and create places where people can be known. An aging church gave their building away to a church plant that was only half a year old so the neighborhood could be reached again. A couple heading toward retirement paved the way for a church in their community by asking, "What does God want to do in this town?" Every other month I gather for a roundtable with a group of Kingdom-hearted leaders who want nothing more than to see God's Kingdom advancing from Colorado's Front Range to the ends of the earth.

What actualizes this holy urgency? In his book Movements That Change the World, Steve Addison highlights the life of John Wesley as an example of how great movements happen.

His goal was to establish a movement of people who were learning to obey Christ and to walk as he did....

Wesley was not interested in just attracting crowds. What set Wesley apart was not the gospel he preached but his ability to gather converts into a disciplined movement. ... As a brilliant strategist and innovator, he created and adapted structures that strengthened and united his followers, while facilitating the movement's rapid expansion.

Most people think disciplined and movement don't go together any more than structured and chaos. But while it's easy to picture John Wesley as a blazing visionary drawing crowds to himself by sheer charisma, it was the discipline of creating structure that turned converts into movement makers.

Living in Colorado, I drive on a lot of mountain roads. Many of them are downright scary. I rarely notice guardrails on level ground, but they are pretty comforting on those high mountain roads. Guardrails aren't just for icy roads and emergencies. They give you a frame of reference and allow you to relax a bit, knowing that you won't take a cliff dive. Guardrails are rarely used, but when you brush them you are really thankful they're there.

Movements are birthed in the heart of God, but guardrails are constructed by wise leaders. The best guardrails are informed by biblical principles and take the shape of an adaptable ministry model: We set up appropriate structures, as we saw in Acts 6, so as many people as possible can participate fully in the family and mission of God.

We must not confuse guardrails with roadblocks. Roadblocks stop forward momentum. Guardrails are different: They exist to help forward movement happen safely and efficiently. Perhaps you have accidentally contributed to a culture of blocking roads toward gospel expansion.

People used to refer to Colorado's Front Range as a "church planters' graveyard." Loads of church planters had parachuted into our region, only to close up shop after a short time. I have heard similar names thrown out all over the country. I kept hearing this phrase, and I couldn't shake it. Eventually, I was tasked with modifying how our church supported church planters. After praying for a few months, devouring a few church-planting books, and having a few too many late-night conversations with church planters, I thought God might be calling us out of the graveyard to another city, more convenient and exciting than my own. After praying over my "desired" place to plant, however, my wife and I recognized it as a figment of my own desire. Turns out it was more about escape than calling. It also turns out my wife is more in tune with the Holy Spirit than I am. I was more confused than ever. In the drive back to my city in our shaky Saturn, I knew it was time to transition from living in my city to making it our home. (I write more about fighting escapism and "the grass is greener in another place" ideology in my book Staying Is the New Going.)

After prayer, wise counsel, and confirmation from others, I realized we needed a different process for church planting in our area. While success in the eyes of others does not necessarily equate to faithfulness, I knew we could find different ways to help church start-ups be more effective. My wife and I sensed the call to stay put and "plant" a church-planting hub right in the church planters' graveyard.

There is a desperate need for new churches to "live the gospel into" the places they are planting among the people God has placed them around. God does unique things in every place, and we must learn to respect our own place by taking into account the events, traditions, rhythms, food, celebrations, and language of those who reside there.

Today, when the people we train through Frontline Church Planting leave us at the end of their apprenticeships and residencies for their next season of life and ministry, they do so armed with these lasting principles. The principle of contextualizing the gospel has become a guardrail for their ministries, informing their model of ministry wherever they go, so that they discover God's work in a place rather than imposing a church on it. One of our church-planting residents had come from Puerto Rico. When he realized the barriers to launching a church gathering among traditionally Catholic Hispanics, he began making adjustments to his strategy. His commitment to a place and its people became a guardrail for his ministry.

We all need to develop a ministry model, but we cannot rely on it. We are far too skilled at planting churches in our heads and reaching people we've never actually met. A model generally works for a limited time in a limited environment. What began as good contextualization can easily become a crutch to lean on. Models become cemented and regulated like roadblocks. But principles can be applied across contexts. No program can teach every skill, every response, every nugget of wisdom or every biblical truth needed in church leadership. The best preparation for ministry is a simple framework, clear principles, and a learned ability to trust the leading of the Spirit.

PRAY, OBEY, SAY, GET OUT OF THE WAY

It certainly is possible to overstructure and kill momentum before it starts. Many denominations started as thriving, viral movements; over time they added levels of bureaucracy, and their momentum slowed. Some churches are experiencing the same thing. Nearly every denomination with which I have come in contact in the last few years is rapidly recalibrating to address this drag and recover their momentum. Some of the shifts are incredibly exciting!

But most of the church and ministry leaders I know don't struggle with overstructuring. They're entrepreneurial and apostolic; they revel in the pregnant possibility that attends chaos. In the same way that overstructured organizations need to free up room for new ideas that will allow expansion and new movement, understructured leaders need to prepare themselves to keep their momentum from degenerating into chaos.

The following mantra has been a good organizing tool for me: If we are going to multiply our impact and keep in step with God's Kingdom movement, we must pray, obey, say, and get out of the way.

Pray for a movement. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). This sets our eyes on a bigger story than our little lives. Prayer paves the way for a movement by readying our hearts and aligning with God. Whether you are pursuing the great commission in your suburban neighborhood, within medical clinics in Ghana, or among your friends who don't know Jesus, prayer comes first.

I find it helpful, as I pray the Lord's Prayer, to replace the word earth with the name of my region, state, city, neighborhood, or local gathering spot. I pray for God's Kingdom to come in the Northglen neighborhood as I picture Rick, Ray, Gina, and Eric, who live just steps from my front door. As I pray over my neighborhood in this way, I begin to see the cracks in the spiritual foundations, and God challenges me and my family to fill those cracks with the mortar of the gospel. When we pray for his Kingdom, God will open our eyes to the brokenness that exists around us, and the opportunities for heaven to come to earth.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from GuardRails by Alan Briggs. Copyright © 2016 Alan Briggs. Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: NavPress Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1631464353
• ISBN 13: 9781631464355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192