I am continuing to learn …

This past week I attended the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention Executive Directors’ Association. I will not bore you with the business details of our meeting, but I do want to share with you one great lesson I picked up on.

We had the opportunity to hear a pastor from a church in Idaho who is having remarkable results. The pastor’s name is Jim Putman, and he leads a congregation of thousands in Post Falls.

Here is what I learned from him: it is never enough for a leader to cast a single vision for the church he leads. While the vision is great, especially when it is clear, concise and compelling, it is never enough.

Jim teaches that each church needs not only a single, compelling vision, but it also needs a single “engine” that drives the vision. God’s church that is a part of Jim’s influence is not only focused in its vision, but it is also focused on the engine.

And what is the engine? It is a small group disciplemaking strategy that takes a person from conversion to full-blown mission.

This church family honestly believes that every believer is to be a witness and every convert begins a journey toward the end of mission/ministry. No exceptions! This church has an incredible disciplemaking ministry of one-on-one discipleship and small group strategies. You can read about this church in Jim Putman’s book entitled Church Is a Team Sport.

As I heard his story, I walked away confessing that many of our Southern Baptist churches left Sunday School years ago as the single-driving engine of our churches. But now the question comes back around anew: When you dropped Sunday School as your engine, what did you replace it with? Anything?

Please remember, you will not help your church family if you drop one engine and do not replace it. Or worse yet, if you drop one engine and replace it with five engines.

I thank God that even though I am getting older in my walk with the Lord, I can still stop long enough to learn from a younger generation of leaders. And the lesson I learned last week is: Single Vision/ Single Engine.

It is not a new lesson really. It is simply a new pastor teaching an older student that not all we learned years ago is bad.