Point of Limit

Last week, I had the great privilege of attending the Multiply Conference held by the C2C Network over at Westside Church. It was two full days of messages and sermon-like workshops where many pastors who had been part of a church planting experience shared about some important things they wanted church pastors and leaders to know.

The big names, of course, were Francis Chan and Jeff Vanderstelt. I was really excited to listen to the two of them speak live, and they did not disappoint. I took so much away from not only these two, but from the rest of the speakers as well. The different speakers all came from a different background of church planting and from different areas of the world.

I don't think there has ever been a two day period where I learned anywhere near as much as I did during this conference. There was so much to take in that in I felt, in some ways, over-stimulated. There was no way I was able to absorb and digest everything before needing to turn my attention to the next speaker.

One thing in particular I learned was from a pastor named Larry Osborne. I knew of his name prior to the conference, but I didn't know what to expect from him. He spoke twice, and I was far and away the most convicted from listening to him speak. He said one thing that really sticks to my mind.

We as pastors are the shepherd of the church who are the flock. When making disciples, we have to love and meet each person at their limitation. So often when we talk about discipleship, it's about training leaders and equipping people to play a part in the church. Larry separated this idea into discipleship and leadership. He said that discipleship is about helping people take the next step of obedience to Christ; leadership is to help people take the next step in sacrifice for Christ.

Having heard that, I couldn't help but look at myself and seeing my frustrations at church come from joining discipleship and leadership together. If you ask me, discipleship is the hard one. Because you have followers at the front lines, the mid lines, and the back lines, you have to meet each one at the point they seemingly cap out at, and allow them to take that next step. This means that if you have someone in the backline, you're not to get them straight to the front, it won't work.

This was so incredibly convicting because I'm guilty of wanting everyone to jump straight to the front. And when I see some of my members seemingly stay stuck in the back, I get upset because I count them as immature spiritually and unwilling to step to the front. For that, I have to apologize because I simply wasn't aware that there should be a distinction between disciple making and leadership training.

Then, the challenge for me is now to be able to meet each member at their point of limit and then love them at that point. This is tough, but it makes sense to me because that's where Christ meets us. Even a step further, Christ not only meets us at our best, he meets us at our worst. And since God himself is the great shepherd, I need to learn how to be able to do this, to engage people wherever they're at and help them take that next step in obedience.

I can't wait until the recordings from the conference get released so I can go back to listen to them again!