Jesus Worked His System Outside the Religious System
“The impotence of ‘systems’ is a main reason why Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today, which always strongly convey some elements of a human system.”
Dallas Willard
Jesus did have a system. Any system, however, is dependent on the one running it. One of the most foolish Christian leader behaviors is to copy someone else’s system. We have another name for it, a Christian conference. This is where hundreds, or thousands, of ordinary, struggling leaders pay to attend a conference where the best and the brightest pastors, specialists, secular, and sacred gather to copy each other. I should know, I speak at these events. So yes, I’m part of the problem. That is how powerful the allure to success is, we keep doing it even though it doesn’t work.
The typical event attempts to get the most famous speakers, even though the more famous a speaker is the more ridiculous the attempt to run his or her system is because the spectacularly famous person has almost nothing about them that can be replicated. You can’t be as funny as Robin Williams, as good looking as Brad Pitt, or as smart as Jordan Peterson. The reason that the smartest, funniest, or in the case of church work, the largest church pastors are called upon, is to fill seats and to make the conference work financially. So, the purpose of the conference is the conference. And the more successful the conference is, the conference lives on, regardless of the actual results of the conference. This is because of the financial realities. A conference will have a title, it will have a philosophy, but it will abandon its principles if threatened in order to get a big name to help it survive. All of this is not evil or even that harmful to humans given the other dangers that lurk in our souls and around every corner. I would hope we would look reality in the eye and at least give it a wink.
To be clear, the big point here is don’t go to a conference looking for ideas and tools that can turn your ministry around. You should go to meet people who inspire you, and you might find some helpful tips you can integrate into your already existing system. Every ministry, home, or business has a system, and that system is endemic to you and your ways and means. It is based on your worldview, your gifts, your weaknesses, your prejudices, your sins, your habits - it’s all yours and there isn’t another one like it on planet earth.
I have a friend who attended a conference, one that I was speaking at. He brought a second suitcase, it was empty. His purpose was to fill it with books, curriculum, and any other holy relic that might help him establish a disciple making ministry. He went home with the suitcase filled with material that now sits on his shelf, unused and unopened. What he did come home with was a different attitude and some special insights that changed his worldview and led to a change in his behavior and calling. It was because he was inspired by ideas, not programs, curriculum, or whiffle dust. Having said all this, Jesus worked outside the normal religious system, but he did have a system. Here it is.
A system within the system
A common impulse for a leader is to ask, “How can I get this new idea or program to work in my present system?” A comfortable thought is to ask about one’s elders, deacons, or vestry and how you might work with them. I think this is a mistake. My pastoral experience taught me that it is a false assumption to think that official “spiritual leaders” are the same as the best candidates for working out what Jesus called us to do. The system you have that is not producing the product you want will continue to defeat your purpose until you change it.
The New Testament would read quite differently if Jesus would have decided at the age of twelve to stay in Jerusalem and become a star in the rabbinical establishment. I am sure he would have moved quickly up the ranks and by thirty years of age been the most prominent Rabbi in Jerusalem. It would only be a matter of time before he was leader of the Sanhedrin and, of course, the High Priest. There, however, was a problem with that route. He would have been run out of Jerusalem before he turned 18. His sharp mind, his incisive criticisms, his bewildering logic, and his ability to leave his critics dumbfounded was too much. There is a reason that Jesus didn’t call us to make governments or political parties or systems. It was because he already knew that such an enterprise is doomed.
Instead, his actions tell us everything we need to know. He took a group of non-ruling class young men - products of the village synagogue, not the Jerusalem Temple. They knew the Scriptures, but they also understood the business world, and they were pragmatists. At the same time several of them were already spiritually hungry because they were followers of John the Baptizer. Some of these men spent more than three years with Jesus. Try to recall something you did for three years - some job skill you learned, a coach you played for, a school you attended - enough time for it to impact you. At the end of that time, you were expected to replicate it. Not just reproduce it, but to keep the movement alive and growing - to make it known to the entire known world. That means you would have paid very close attention. Three plus years is a long time if you are in medical school, law school, or seminary. It consumes you, because you must learn it to survive.
A story may help here. At age 34, I started work as a lead pastor in an established congregation. The church had several leadership clusters. It had a church board composed of twenty members. There were three elected sub-boards: Christian education, deacons, and trustees. There were also deaconess and various sub-committees, such as missions. The church leadership then was between 50-60 men and women. My strategy, my system, was to create a separate system within a system. Another way of putting it was I would create a new cardiovascular system for this church body. This would create bodily health that would permit the body to operate as designed. So, here is how I did it.
1. CHOose leaders and invest a year with them
I asked around about who people thought were the most highly regarded spiritual leaders in the congregation. I simply observed who seemed interested in what I was preaching about and who wanted to learn more, but that was not enough. I needed people who wouldn’t argue with me or frustrate the plan in my heart. People who had a yearning for more, who were a bit weary of the present system, and who had some iconoclastic tendencies.
After six to nine months of the first year, I invited four leaders and their spouses to join a group I was forming. It would be held in my home, off the grid, and it would require them to do a few things. Did you notice that I did not delegate this task? I couldn’t delegate the most fundamental part of my work, to make disciples who would, in turn, set into motion a disciple making movement that would lead to the making of many new disciples. You can’t delegate this task and have any real credibility. If you don’t lead the pack, like Jesus did, your disciple making will always be second rate.
Here are the group requirements:
Attend a weekly meeting for three hours
Read some books
Prepare a lesson for each session
Do outreach with me, sharing one’s faith, reaching out to others in non-threatening ways
Be prepared to recruit a group of their own and do with them what I had already done with them
Attend an additional weekly leader meeting
Four couples agreed to the above requirements and for the next nine months we met together and prepared to reproduce with others. We also were able to say that several people became followers of Christ through our efforts and some began attending our services. The beauty of this approach is you don’t announce the revolution, you simply begin. No banners, no announcements, no big roll out, no budget - subversive and wonderful. It is an internal divine conspiracy.
2. Help new leaders start their own groups and coach them
Inherent in our original group covenant was the intention to multiply by each leader starting a group. That would be four new groups with ten to twelve members each. We multiplied from eight to fifty in the second generation. When this took place, my new leaders faced an unknown world of leadership. They had been leaders in some ways at church, but not as pastoral trainers and disciplers. I taught them for instance that you can’t make disciples without accountability and you can’t have accountability without structure, covenants, and taking risks.
The groups were designed to create tension. To help people keep their commitments to God; commitments that they had made and were already the desires of their hearts. Never before had many of the group members, or the leader, been put in such a position of vulnerability. For that reason, we held weekly leader meetings at 5:30 am. I hated meeting that early (still do), but it was when we could all meet. I would moan and groan and buy the donuts.
I look back at those early meetings as the glory days. We would go over our lesson for the week that they would be teaching. We would anticipate the push back we would get, particularly from stronger willed members who like to run their own kingdoms. We practiced answers and we discussed how to handle various obstacles and, of course, rehearsed our goals and our vision for each person. We discussed which members showed promise and the aptitude for leadership and apprenticeship. I would rant and rave through comparison and contrast the differences in what Jesus taught us to do from what religious institutions wanted us to do. It was great fun, there is nothing better as far as I am concerned. Let me tell you why. It’s because I was teaching them to obey everything that Christ commanded (Matthew 28:20). And I was learning right along with them. Yes there was flack, but I recall the quip by Colonel Nimrod McNair, “You know when you are over the target because there is the greatest amount of flack.”
3. new leaders became leaders of leaders
Now, our 5:30 am meetings had a new look. Instead of me and four other leaders in a room, we had ten new apprentices that were leading groups. So, our leadership community was fifteen. The fifteen were leading 150. Yes, we went from four leaders fifteen and 150 group members living by covenant - we had a movement. This was all accomplished off the grid in a three year period. This is based on what Jesus taught us to do. What was needed was a leader in a ministry or church that believed in it completely and who was willing to pay the price.
At the same time, I pastored the church, went to board meetings, preached three sermons a week, and did weddings and funerals and counseling, etc. The church was not at peace, it had many problems and conflicts. The church was plagued with a history of legalism, judgmental attitudes, and personal vendettas. Conflict was the order of the day just about every day. Eventually, however, the new leaders began to emerge and changed the tenor and the landscape.
I tell you this history in order to put on display what can be done.
