Equipping and mobilizing church laity for God’s mission

This month, I have been conversing with our leadership team, partnering agency and ministry staff about our mission theme for the next couple of years or so.

We want our churches to know all of the great things God is doing through Texas Baptists as we pray, give and work together. We also want to communicate with great clarity what God is calling us to do at this moment in redemption history.

As I think of the future, I also have reflected on the past. When I began my church ministry in the late 1980s, everyone talked about “church growth.” There were multiple conferences, resources and books offering the latest strategies on how to grow your church.

While I was exposed to some of this, my principles for helping a church grow came from the 1920s. Arthur Flake, a Baptist businessman from Mississippi, is considered the father of the modern-day Sunday School. He developed a five-step formula to grow a Sunday School, which, in turn, would grow the church.

When I was called to be a full-time Minister of Education (the old name for Discipleship Pastors) in 1990, I began to apply this formula with great results. In fact, I led the next church, where I was called to pastor in Fort Worth, to grow using the same principles. 

During the 1990s, Eliseo Aldape, who was then the Hispanic Sunday School consultant for the BGCT, invited me to be on his traveling team of conference speakers. As we traveled around the state, I spoke to pastors and lay leaders about leading their Sunday Schools to be about outreach and evangelism.

Dr. Bernie Spooner was then the director of the Sunday School Division for the BGCT. Through those conferences, I came to know Dr. Spooner and heard his heart. He was passionate about equipping pastors and ministers to mobilize the laity for outreach, evangelism and discipleship. He believed church renewal would come when this happened.

I’m grateful for Bernie’s and Eliseo’s leadership, for their mentorship and for the constant encouragement they offered me in my early days of ministry up until very recently. 

The church growth movement gave way to the church health movement. You can grow a church and not be a healthy church, but you cannot be a healthy church and not grow. Then, the turn of the 21st century brought about the missional church movement.

The concept of missional church includes the idea, among others, that the mission frontier has moved from across the ocean to across the street. It also reminds us that the church exists for God’s mission. The church is sent by God to be on His redemptive mission.

The labels have changed from Sunday school to Bible study to small groups. From religious education to discipleship. From church growth to church health to missional church. The strategies have evolved along the way. What has not changed is the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

The apostle Paul’s formula was simple and is still relevant. He discipled Timothy and instructed him to disciple others, who would, in turn, disciple others (2 Timothy 2:2). This strategy has the depth of equipping pastors and lay people, resulting in the multiplication of disciples.

Brother Bernie Spooner has recently gone to his eternal home with the Lord. But his legacy continues. In his honor, the Bernard and Patricia Spooner Endowed Discipleship Fund was created to support the Office of Discipleship, currently in our Center for Church Health. If you would like to contribute to this fund, you may make a designated gift here by writing “Spooner Endowment” in the comments section.

Let us be Great Commandment and Great Commission churches. Let us be about making disciples who make disciples. Let us be pastors and ministers who equip and mobilize the laity for multiplication and for God’s mission.