Shifted:

The Crossing Story

by Jerry Harris

Shifted: The Crossing Story Copyright (c) 2012 by Jerry Harris ISBN: 978-0-9886453-1-8 Distributed via Exponential Resources Exponential is a growing movement of leaders committed to the multiplication of healthy new churches. Exponential Resources spotlights and spreads actionable principles, ideas and solutions for the accelerated multiplication of healthy, reproducing faith communities. For more information, visit exponential.org. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher, except where noted in the text and in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This book is manufactured in the United States.

The Purpose of this E-book

While Exponential and other organizations concentrate their efforts and attention on the mechanics and nuances of church planting, there are churches that have been planted, have grown, and are thriving are all around us. They have buildings, staffs, budgets, and leaderships. Existing churches have a completely different set of circumstances to face in order to embrace discipleship. I wrote this for all those leaders who need the tools to turn the ship instead of the plans to build one. Since so much church planting is accomplished from cooperation of existing churches, it stands to reason that the healthier existing churches are, the more new churches are launched. The trick is empowering the existing church to make the necessary changes to be healthy. Shifted: The Crossing Story is just one example of a church embracing discipleship then incorporating it into new launches. We have grown from a small church of 200 to 5500 in 7 locations and planted 2 others as well. Remember that this is our journey. Churches, like people, are all unique but capturing and adapting ideas from other churches has been a tremendous benet to us. I hope our story helps you.

Introduction: The Crossing Story

Before I discuss the shifts we made toward relational discipleship as a church, I think it might help to get a snapshot of who we are. It starts as a pretty common story. Like most churches, The Crossing was a church riding the elevator between 100-300 in size over it's quarter-century life. A lot of that depended on the personality and charisma of it's pastor and his ability to move Christians from other churches into his fold. As pastoral changes occurred, the number on the attendance board would uctuate. Services and ministries were conventional...kind of stuck in the model of the 1950's. Although it was a late late bloomer in the church growth movement, in the 90's, the church tried to catch on to the tail end of the growth wave by exploring some new approaches in music, marketing, and remodeling. Like most changes in a traditional church setting, anything new was both interesting and unsettling, bringing both losses and gains. However, inside the local leadership, a desire began to form to make a bigger difference...a desire to do something more signicant in God's Kingdom. That is when I came into this church's story; not because I represented anything bigger or more signicant, but because I was the replacement in the transition of their previous pastor because of a moral scandal...not exactly the best environment for growth or change. I had been heavily inuenced by two books I had just read: Experiencing God and The Purpose Driven Church. The lessons taught inside them began shaping my vision for this wounded church. The inuence of The Purpose Driven Church coupled with the leaderships desire to do something signicant for the Kingdom in the community opened all sorts of doors to marketing, technology, targeting, worship change, fundraising, and stafng. We began looking to our purpose rather than any tradition. Blackebys Experiencing God completely changed my understanding of how to know and do the will of God, living and working in step with the Holy Spirit. That book formed a clear vision in me to set as a goal for every person that we would interact with...that they would have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The joining of those two concepts in a church environment that invited change was transformative. The Crossing began to grow exponentially. This was particularly interesting knowing that it was happening in a rather small, non-growing, micropolitan city of 40,000 saturated with 85 churches. The evangelism quotient was very high with over 2/3s of our decisions being rst-time and not transfer growth. Other churches saw our growth but would not even attempt to duplicate it because of their resistance to the necessary changes. Our growth was so far from the norm that churches began to call us a cult or soft on biblical truth. Within a few years, The Crossing was growing larger than any local church had seen, over 1,000 and then approaching 2,000... unprecedented in Quincy. It was then that we turned our attention to reproducing using multi-site. We had benchmarked Lifechurch.tv and saw an opportunity to extend our reach regionally. Our rst location was Macomb, IL, another micropolitan community 60 miles away. Even though we didnt have a single member or contact there, it opened as the largest church in its community. The success we experienced in Macomb spurred us to open more campuses, even internationally. In the midst of this growth and success, there was a huge blind spot gradually coming into view. While we had grown quickly and wide regionally, there was an ever increasing understanding in our leadership that it was not producing the personal commitment to Christ over the long term. We had plenty of jumping on points for people to get involved...ministries, special groups, small groups...it just wasnt translating into the spiritual depth we wanted to see. This was the spot on the timeline that the need for relational discipleship came into view. At the same time of our spiritual depth dilemma, our growth had opened some doors to me to network with other leaders of large churches normally reserved for leaders in more metropolitan areas. It was through that networking that I heard about and met Jim Putman. Jim and Aaron Couch had planted a church in Post Falls, Idaho in 1998, the same year I came to Quincy. In the same time that the Crossing had grown to 2000, Real Life Ministries had grown to 8,000! Both communities were similar in the sense that they were micropolitan and economically depressed. That encouraged me to

believe that at least some of their approach could be transferable. Jim credited the key to their growth to be discipleship in relationship. A visit to their campus reinforced the fact that it was their focus, as so many other ministry areas needed work as I compared them to the Crossing. For me, it drove the discipleship point home. I didnt see any other good reason that the church should grow so exponentially outside of their approach to discipleship. It was something very different from the conventional small group programming I had seen in the past. This was the beginning of the shift that this ebook is really about. The questions are, Is our church going in the right direction? If not, how do you turn the ship? What are the right steps and in what order should they be taken? Where are the snags in the journey?" It all begins with asking the right question.

Shift #1 Asking The Right Question

The question is, Are we making disciples?. Matthews testimony of our marching orders in the 28th chapter commissions us to make disciples. Looking back, I am amazed at how little I understood the meaning of the word disciple and how necessary that knowledge was in order to understand the question. That denition however was really not the one I had been looking for up to that point. My questions sounded more like asking how many were at church the previous week. How many people made decisions? What was the offering amount? Most of the answers I was looking for had a number involved...and what could be wrong with that? Numbers are objective tools to give us a clear picture to measure where we are. Measuring discipleship was for me and I believe for many today a compilation of these numbers. If you have been a member for X years, if you are involved in Y ministries, and if you give Z dollars, you have the proper variables for your equation. X+Y+Z = level of discipleship. How wrong I was! My Bible college taught the centrality of preaching the Word and so church attendance to listen and respond to that preaching was central. My church experience emphasized evangelism evidenced by public decisions and baptisms so the number of decisions was key. There were always lots of church programs that needed volunteers to run them. That willingness to give time and talent coupled with a decent measure of ability was critical to maturity. Finally, a great evidence of real spiritual growth is seen in nancial giving. Give these variables actual numbers and you have your answer...or so I thought. Since I measured discipleship this way, the church reected it. As long as I preached great sermons and as long as people kept making decisions, giving, and serving, I could consider that fullling the great commission. After experiencing the method used to create and reproduce disciples at Real Life, my eyes were opened to a huge blind spot in our seeming successful church. As I scanned the congregation that I ministered to, this is what I saw. Many people who had attended church for years, served for years, and given for years were still very immature. Many had never reproduced their faith in even a single person...or even

attempted it. Many of them had never shared their faith even once. Many had never grown in their relationship to Jesus experiencing the sting and joy of real sacrice. Many had become highly sophisticated consumers but consumers none the less. If we look out on the faces of our congregations, how many actual disciples do we see? How many are personally convinced that they are disciples but are sorely mistaken? How many of them believe this fallacy because of the bar we have set before them? Real Life chose Matthew 4:19 as their denition of discipleship seeing Jesus calling His own disciples. Follow me and I will make you shers of men. There are three criteria that help dene discipleship in this divine statement. Am I genuinely following Christ? (follow me...), being changed by Christ ?(...and I will make you), and living life on mission for Christ ?(...shers of men.) This is the question I honestly wasnt asking myself or confronting others with until this point. Are we making disciples? The difcult truth for me was that with all my education, experience, and success, I really didnt know how to mobilize a church to make disciples of Jesus Christ. The best I was providing was an environment for them to gure it out for themselves. Looking back, I wish someone would have shared a copy of Robert Colemans little book Master Plan of Evangelism early in my ministry. What a revolutionary look at the simple truth of Jesus method! As great as it is to share the life changing message of our Savior, has it ever occurred to us that His method of sharing it is just as divine? Coleman wrote of todays church, Most of the evangelistic efforts of the church begin with the multitudes under the assumption that the church is qualied to preserve what good is done. The result is our spectacular emphasis on numbers of converts, candidates for baptism, and more members for the church, with little or no genuine concern manifested toward the establishment of these souls in the love and the power of God, let alone the preservation and continuation of the work. (MPE pp. 29-30) That is a powerful editorial of the state of even todays most successful and highly esteemed churches. How did Jesus make disciples? First, He selected them, spent large chunks of time with them, and set them apart and empowered them for ministry. He lived His life as a consistent demonstration before them. He gave them specic assignments, watching over them so that they could reproduce in others what He had produced in them. Did it

work? At the time, it may have looked like a failure, but these men took the message of Christ to the ends of the earth reproducing themselves over and over. I began to realize why this concept was so hard for me to see. No one had ever discipled me! I grew up in a Christian home but my parents were only as intentional as parents normally are, taking me to church and maintaining a Godly home. Even Bible college was little more than an exchange of knowledge without anyone taking the interest to specically coach me. I started thinking how common my story was, wondering how many people out there never had that spiritual mentor following Jesus example. I had constructed my ministry from the examples I admired from a distance. For me, asking the right question meant embarking out into an undiscovered country like a pioneer and asking a church of 2300 to ask the same question with me. The challenge was to turn a big ship that already had a full head of steam. So there I was and here we are...what will be the primary question that our lives and ministries will seek to answer? Coleman described it this way, Seen this way, though, it becomes a big decision in the ministry. We must decide where we want our ministry to countin the momentary applause of popular recognition or in the reproduction of our lives in a few chosen people who will carry on our work after we have gone. Really it is a question of which generation we are living for. (MPE pp. 32) Asking the right question can yield some answers that are hard to accept, especially if it involves drastic changes to your personal ministry approach or the status quo of the local church. I remember placing myself inside the pages of Scripture, specically the parable of the talents, and wondering if when He questioned me about what I had done with what He had given me, if I could show Him multitudes of ckle fans or smaller group of fully committed followers. Had I done what He commissioned me to do or did I recreate it in a way that made it work better for me? Was my life and ministry a reection of not only the message Jesus taught, but the daily example of how He lived and invested into His precious disciples? So the 1st shift that we are confronted with is whether or not we are committed to make disciples on Jesus terms, knowing that this is the best way that we can love God and one another. When the question is asked, what is the answer? The answer for me was that we were not intentionally and effectively making disciples at The Crossing.

While it had happened to some degree, it was more by accident than on purpose. I was nally asking the right question and getting the painful answer. It felt more like an indictment than an understanding. The next shift would be my response.

Shift #2 Conversion
I know that this term is usually reserved for that moment when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord but I have come to realize that my life is actually made up with lots of conversions of different sizes. While there certainly was a rst, there have been countless more on the journey. These are moments when I realize a new truth about me or Jesus that requires change in me. As a pastor, those changes extend beyond me into the church as God uses me as a catalyst for change. Conversions are not tweaks or adjustments. They are seen in reversals of direction, recognition of error and the correction that follows it. The dictionary denes conversion as a change in character, form, or function. I think thats a great denition. Conversion begins in the character and then the shape that our lives and/or ministries take and then how we function in those new forms reect that new character. Since being a Christian is reecting the character of Christ, it stands to reason that I would want to do Jesus things Jesus way. Since the church is the body of Christ, its character should cast the same reection. If I wanted the church to change, I had to change rst. Conversion is necessary. The level of commitment needed to start a movement and change a world isn't going to be found in a crowd of consumers but it can be found in a congregation of the committed. I was convinced that the status quo or success measured in worldly metrics wasn't God's way or the best way..and so the bottom line was it wasn't going to be mine. The rst thing I noticed was that all the raw material for these discipling relationships was already around me. It was amazing to me that even with all of my lack of intention, God had already placed me in key relationships that only needed to move from ignorance to intentionality. I had a group of ten elders who oversaw the church as a whole, a group of lead pastors who headed up the various locations of the Crossing, and another group of pastors at our primary location. I also had a small group that I led with my wife with 3 other couples. Conversion meant that I needed to see my inuence in a new way. Instead of concentrating on being the greatest player on the eld, I needed to be the coach who

prepared the players and provided places for them to play. Like Jesus, I needed to select them, something God had already provided in large part. I needed to reorder my ministry to spend large chunks of time with them, preparing them for areas of ministry that t their gifts and passions. I needed to live a life that was a consistent demonstration of Jesus example before them. I needed to teach them how to reproduce this in others, then set them apart and empower them for their ministry. This was denitely a conversion to me. I was used to getting all the afrmation from being the best player. Sharing those opportunities and giving ministry away scared me. I wondered if my ministry would become more janitorial than ministerial. I would be endlessly cleaning up messes and stomping out brushres. Deeper still was the quiet insecurity of giving up things that I would rather keep for myself. What if I was so successful that I worked myself out of a job? These were some of the hurdles of my conversion. Conversion is the road less travelled. The unknown can be very intimidating, but like Robert Frosts poem, it can make all the difference. Perceived success can be very limiting. There is a pride that ows out of it that keeps us from recognizing and responding to our need for change. As I've talked to other successful leaders who ask about our story, I often feel resistance supported from the pride they have in their perceived success. They're thinking,"Why should I change my whole approach to doing ministry when the things I'm doing now seem to be working just ne? Besides that, these kinds of radical changes could not only hinder my present success but even reverse it! Isn't this really just another one of those latest avors labelled with an appropriate buzzword?". I can remember pushing back on these changes reminding myself and others that we were already one of the fastest growing churches in the country. A major change of course could make it look like I was just experimenting with the direction of the church and using the congregation as test subjects. I had lots of ways to defend my position. Conversion requires humility...I really don't think it is even possible outside of it. Let's face it...if we have enjoyed success, we're proud of it. It feeds our insecurities and gives us condence to lead. Its hard to admit to ourselves that maybe all this time, Jesus had

something else in mind. If we have been leading in the wrong direction up to this point, why should people follow us now? In many ways, this conversion is just a continuation of our rst. If true conversion is happening in our church, this is exactly what we are calling for others to do. Accepting Christ means that the former way of life was the wrong way and following Jesus and His Word is the right one. Why should it be any different after we've been Christians a while or placed in leadership? We place this like all other things, at the foot of our Master, the Great Discipler and when we return from our knees, we have a new passion and vision. That was certainly the case for me. Conversion made making disciples in relational environments my vision and I could not see preaching about having an intimate personal relationship with Jesus outside of it. Conversion means change. The Crossing at this time was a church based on attraction. We had a great building, awesome worship, relevant messages, and the best programming...certainly the best in the area. Our strategy was to get people in, disarm them, and then let the Word and the Spirit do the heavy lifting. It worked! At least it did for attendance, decisions, and giving. If I hadn't seen the difference between the sum of these parts and real discipleship, neither would the church, the staff, or the leaders. My blind spot would certainly be theres as well. Leading conversional change is some pretty heavy lifting. We know that as a practical matter, Christians like to be seen as committed but operate as a consumer. Consumerism is precisely the reason why more traditional churches resist change, even if it contributes to their Iack of effectiveness or even their death. But conversional change can be just as lethal. It will denitely be uncomfortable! The trick is making people uncomfortable at a rate they can tolerate. Just because I have a compulsion to convert doesn't mean that it will be shared by staff, leaders, or the congregation. The challenge before me was to lead a major change of direction in a church that perceived itself highly successful already. How I chose to communicate this new direction would be absolutely critical to its success.

Shift #3 Communication
So how do I communicate this new vision without throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water? The rst thing I realized was that in order to be intentional about making disciples in relational environments, we didn't have to give up on attraction. As a matter of fact, they went hand in hand! Attraction was serving us well by bringing people in the front door, it just hadn't done a good job helping people to get to the place that Jesus had commissioned us to bring them. Why? Because attraction appeals to the consumer and consumers are ckle. We really shouldn't be surprised if our church people act like consumers if we have intentionally sought to attract them through what we offer. We hire, program, worship, build, design, and market with the consumer in mind. It's naive then to expect him to act in a way that is contrary to his nature. The consumer is at the center of his own universe. If he doesn't like something or feels neglected, he doesn't need to complain, he just votes with his feet. Today's churches are full of consumers and mega-churches don't have a corner on the market. People consume tradition just like innovation, so traditional churches who point at larger churches accusing them of being too shallow are really no different. Tradition appeals to a particular consumer in the same way. The missing piece in many churches today is a specic intentional pathway to committed discipleship. Attracting consumers isn't a bad thing, it's just incomplete unless it is used as a springboard to a committed Christian life. Without relational discipleship, its not much more than drawing a crowd and just like in Jesus' time, crowds come and go. One minute they're shouting "Hosanna!" and the next they're yelling "Crucify!". Not only does attraction draw consumers, the practice of drawing through attraction has a relatively short shelf life. In the short term, it can be very powerful, but its effectiveness is short-lived. When a new restaurant comes to town it can be pretty hard to get a seat. After the place is open awhile, it gets a lot easier to nd one. It's the same for a new Hollywood blockbuster or a new shopping mall. Smart churches can attract consumers, but only a church bent on making disciples can turn consumers into the committed. Sophisticated consumers are hard to hold and attraction for a church

leader can be an endless pursuit for the next great thing. No matter what we do, eventually consumers are going to get used to it, bored with it, and want to be satised with something new. Some pastors, wanting desperately to hold the crowd, have chased this rabbit into shock tactics and moral compromise. Making disciples is a better way and it's Jesus' way but it's not the easy way. Okay...so that meant we could still be an attractive church...but how could I emphasize that making disciples was really the point? One of my favorite Bible verses of church leadership is Psalm 78:71-72: He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens From tending the sheep he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance. And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; With skillful hands he led them. Integrity of heart That's what I needed to do and who I needed to be...lead with skillful hands out of integrity of heart. Communicating this new direction of relational discipleship with integrity of heart required more than conversion...it required conviction and conviction expresses itself in passion. If you arent passionate about your conviction, you might wonder whether or not a conversion has taken place. Passion is what validates the investment into your conviction and when you communicate from it, people are moved to either follow or disconnect. Passion is what holds your commitment to something when logic and reason fail you. Passion is preoccupying. Your mind is running constantly back to it. It takes an effort to think about something else. Passion is personal. It attaches itself to your own identity and it becomes self-dening. Passion is emotional; its hard to talk about it without inection in your voice or getting caught in hyperbole. Passion is powerful. Like a ship going through the water, it creates a wake that people get caught up in. When conviction is doused with passion, youre getting pretty close to all you need for a roaring re. The listener gets caught up in the power and passion of the conviction. The most effective ideas communicated are the ones that people consider their own and when a

conviction is communicated effectively, people are drawn to the it and not just the leader. In the long term, this gets far more traction for the church and for the kingdom of God. I know this sounds like a contradiction because a conviction is personal, but a great leader gets people to focus on the relational discipleship itself. Churches that center on relational discipleship are going to be much healthier than those that center on the personality of a leader. Letting the focus rest on the leader is ultimately and invariably destructive. Leaders are humans and humans cant help but make mistakes, be inconsistent, and disappoint. Concentrating on relational discipleship puts the focus on God where it belongs. But what about the "skillful hands"? Skillful Hands I once heard a great quote from an army general who said, Leadership is taking people to a place they would have never have gone to by themselves. Without a leader, a church isn't going anywhere and even with a leader, its still looking at turbulent waters when it comes to change. Convicted leaders face an uphill battle even in healthy environments and movement in the direction of change is seldom comfortable. It will mean moving away from the place where you are and this is almost never easy. Policies and structures will be adjusted or abandoned, key positions will be established, and others will be replaced or removed. Change is best served in healthy times, but the institutional inertia and the success of years gone by prompt existing leaders to consider that if it isnt broken, why x it? By the time many churches nd the stomach to change, they are pretty far gone. Like a terminal cancer patient, they are willing to grasp for life with experimental treatments. In his great little book, How The Mighty Fall, Jim Collins discusses the downward spiral that leads once successful businesses to capitulation and death. His research shows that in an effort to reverse the fall, companies make sweeping changes. However, by the time they do it, they are over leveraged in the opposite direction and not healthy enough to manage the massive adjustments. Any change is best accomplished in smaller increments. Driving even on a straight road requires constant corrections at the wheel. It may seem that youre going straight, but careful examination reveals a long line of small corrections. By contrast, most of us

have been distracted while driving only to be frantically forced into a major correction and a very dangerous situation. Big change divided up into lots of smaller, more manageable adjustments is a healthy strategy for churches. Communication of deep change needs to begin at the top. The last thing a leader should do is to start communication from the pulpit. If the change is more important than the primary leader, then the more leaders that own it and carry it to the congregation, the better. I began with my top staff. I took them with me to see what I had seen, put them in proximity to those who were actually walking relational discipleship out, and then debrieng them on their thoughts. They saw what I saw and more! My understanding began to expand in the soil of collaboration. New ideas began to come to light as we imagined together how relational discipleship would look in our context. Now relational discipleship wasn't just my conviction, it was ours! Next, I shared with our eldership. They could feel the weight of my conviction as I shared what I had experienced. They saw that it was a shared conviction of the staff. I gave them Coleman's book to read, brought Jim Putman and some of his staff in to speak with them and ask questions. I asked them to pray. We discussed the cost of the changes. Now the conviction to change was shared by all the leadership in unity. I remembered how Henry Blackeby had taught in Experiencing God that God speaks through His Word, the church, circumstances, and prayer. All of those came together to further my resolve in moving this way. It was obvious from the Word that this was Jesus' method and the substance of His commission to the church. The circumstances put me alongside people who were further down the discipleship road than I was to teach me. My prayers had done nothing but conrm my conviction and now the church was starting to move in unity from the top down. We began to strategize on promoting relational discipleship in attractive ways to our congregation so that instead of resisting, they would embrace it. I had already been using a teaching strategy I had developed some time before to help the staff and leadership understand how The Crossing would seek to build spiritual maturity in people. I called it "The Dot". Relational discipleship provided the dynamic piece to complete that model. This is how I would communicate how relational discipleship and attraction would work together to make mature followers of Jesus Christ.

Shift #4 The Message

Relational Discipleship...What is it? Relational discipleship is not a small group program but it was hard for me to see that. In fact, its not a program at all. Since Ive always considered myself to be an evangelist, small groups have always been more of a necessary chore than a great opportunity to me. It has always been difcult to get them going and even harder to keep them going. You are constantly required to police whatever book or study theyre going through. Getting people to lead them or host them has always been hard. Often, people dont like others in their group and want to move or quit going all together. Many successful groups might tend to want to be exclusive. New people are not invited in and the group wont establish new leaders and new groups. When I rst saw relational discipleship in action, it appeared to be just another small group program but a more careful look showed something else entirely. It was making disciples using a balance of three things: an intentional leader, a relational environment, and a reproducible process. An intentional leader is someone who has made it his business to reproduce disciples for Jesus. He does this more by watching and listening than by teaching. Compare this to a coach interacting with a player in practice, correcting him, watching him do it again and again, and adjusting and readjusting until the player is able to reproduce what the coach wants. The attractional model alone reduces potential players to spectators or fans coming out to watch the professionals play. Churches committed to relational discipleship are full of potential intentional leaders both inside and outside the church who have never been coached to coach. A relational environment is one that allows the kind of individual attention to take place so that meaningful one-on-one dialogue can happen between a group member and a coach. Parents know that larger class sizes at school are never preferable because individual attention is critical for teachers to know the progress of their students. Small groups work when they are relational environments where this intentional leadership and coaching can happen.

A reproducible process means that what the intentional leader is doing is designed to be reproduced in the follower. It is a means of coaching that makes the process of discipleship measurable. Having some sort of metric to track spiritual growth has been elusive in the church. We tend to put lots of options in front of a congregation and hope they nd something that ts them that they can grow in. The process of relational discipleship was revolutionary to me. It divides spiritual maturity into 4 stages: 1) infant 2) child, 3) young adult, and 4) parent. Someone at the infant stage may or may not be a Christian. If they are, they are only attending as a spectator. Someone at the child stage is involved in a relational environment (small group) and is starting the process of being coached by that groups intentional leader. Someone at the young adult stage is putting what he is learning to work in ministry. His small group is a place where he puts what he is learning into the context of his ministry and his intentional leader is looking for ways to move him into a coaching role. Someone at the parent stage has become the intentional leader, reproducing what has been done in him and looking strategically at how to move individuals under his coaching forward. Notice that the word stage is used and not level. The reason is because people need to be valued no matter which stage they are in. There will be some in the infant stage that will be far more effective in later stages than many already there. Coaching happens by listening to the questions and comments in the group and then driving the question or comment deeper into the person who gives it. As the person explores the comment on a deeper and more personal level, the coach is watching, listening, and getting a bead on the stage of his group member. A typical comment might be made about the story of Jesus washing Judas feet. The group member might say, I would never wash that jerks feet! (Infant stage) He might answer, It is so awesome that Jesus washed his feet! (Child stage) He might say, We all need to gure out ways to wash the feet of others. (Young adult stage) Or he might say, George, how does that hit you in the context of your divorce? (Parent stage) The answers the coach hears will let him know what stage his people are in. That cant happen in a preaching environment. The dialogue requires it to be relational. The leader is being intentional. His intention is guring out where they are in order to move

them forward. Look back at the infant stage answer. The coach would drive the comment back into the group member with something like, When have you ever felt betrayed? How did you respond to it? How do feel about your response? When one group member starts getting transparent, it gives the whole group freedom to open up. Before long, the intimacy level is rising and the coach is getting a great read of the phase of each group member. All of that strategy is great but how does a leader insert it into the DNA of an already living and growing church without killing it? Relational Discipleship as a Maturity Strategy We already had what I thought was a maturity strategy at The Crossing. I called it "The Dot". It helped us to communicate what we were shooting for as we moved people forward after being attracted to our church. It had already helped our people to be less change resistant and willing to try new things. The exercise is important in an existing church because it gives a clear view where changes need to be targeted, where communication will be most effective, and whether or not the shifts will be accepted. The problem was that while "The Dot" helped us to pinpoint where we were, and that is critical, it really didn't give us a specic process to use when it would be most effective. This is how "The Dot" works: Whether we mean to or we do it by accident, every church puts out a product that is more effective to at least some subset of people. Every church has a target. It may not be intentional, as traditions tend to take on a life of their own but its there just the same. Look at the style of your music and worship. Who is attracted to it? Look at the church budget. Who gets the most money? Look at the use of the building. Who gets the most space? Look at the style of the building and its furniture. Is it antique? Does it have colors popular in the 1970s? Your church will tell you whom you are targeting. Now look at who is sitting in the seats. Dont gure in children under 13, as they have to go wherever their parents drive them. What is their average age? When you put all that together, you will know whom you are targeting. That is your dot. Now nd an age range of about 5 years with 2 and 1/2 years on either side of the dot. That is the sweet spot.

The Sweet Spot The sweet spot is that space of time where relational discipleship and attraction come together. It happens on both sides of the dot and the better we are at it, the wider that sweet spot becomes. It gives us more time to implement and reinforce discipleship through motivation, relationship, and training to make it stick. The focus on discipleship does not take away from the attractional emphasis...it enhances it! This focus closes the back door of the church and as people move through The Dot, the reproducible process of discipleship transitions them from self-focused to others-focused. They dont leave because a new set of seless priorities has replaced the set that attracted them. Further, there is a greater sense of unity that comes from alignment with the staff to meet the shared goals of growth in numbers and growth in maturity. Maturing Christians let personal wants take a back seat to whatever is most effective to get people through the sweet spot. The result is a healthy, growing, deepening, and unied body. Focusing on the dot was the Crossing's rst step in a winning strategy. The missing piece was what we were going to do in that time of maximum effectiveness. The conversion to relational discipleship and the communication of that message was exactly the strategy we needed to communicate in that highly fertile space of time. The Crossing's sweet spot has always been pretty wide, especially since we have very little in the area of sacred cows or church traditions. Our problem wasn't either establishing or widening our sweet spot, it was using it most effectively to make disciples. If we were going to understand our "win" was making disciples in relational environments, then our whole organization would need to be aligned to that from the top down. Look a little closer at the dynamic. As people approach the age range where the dot is, everything is becoming more and more relevant. You are getting the maximum impact for your work. As things begin making more and more sense for the person, they are getting into the dot. This is the place when our hearts are the most open, were the most teachable, and discipleship traits like worship, ministry, prayer, and Bible study really revs up. Those 5 or so years are absolutely critical to discipleship. While were there, the church has to establish proper priorities, values, and a Christian world- view

in the hearts of targeted people. In the dot, people learn how important people without an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus really are to Him. They develop disciplines to value spiritual change in others more than personal comfort. They get involved by committing to be part of the solution by discovering their shape in ministry and putting it into practice. Its a critical time because before long, were moving out of it. We cant stop the march of time in our own lives. The goal is that by the time the church is becoming less personally relevant to us, we have traded in our own needs for the bigger yes of seeing the effectiveness of the church and our own ministry on those coming up. We incorporate our gifts into the rest of the body as we join together to reach into the lives of those hearts coming into full bloom. But what about people on the older side of the dot? Are they neglected? If the church has done its job, there really isnt a problem. Its not about us anymore. That is a simple denition of Christian maturity. I cant overemphasize just how important it is to communicate this philosophy to the leaders and congregation. It goes beyond what were doing to answer the question of why. When we know why it gives substance to our purpose. Were making a difference thats going to outlive us. When we look hard at it, we know better than to be self-centered. Now were not looking at a church an inch deep and a mile wide. Relational discipleship can also help the church become immortal. Many churches wonder why they are getting older and smaller or why the struggle attracting younger people. If you want to do ministry the same way you have been, youll continue to be effective with that age group of people. How close are they to dying? Lets say 80. If your dot is 55, it means that your church has 25 years to live. Its mortal. If the church continues doing the same thing, in 25 years it will only be relevant to the people in the cemetery. Thats a sobering thought but nonetheless very important to understand. This is the reason. Unless you have gured out how to make the sun stand still, time will continue to march on relentlessly. As time marches on, the dot will move with it. The dot is bound to time as long as we continue to be most relevant to the same people. The only way to change this is to change the target. If the church can apply pressure to the higher side of the dot by focusing the target downward, time wont slow down but the dot will. Our goal is to stop the dot from moving at all or to reverse it.

How do we get the dot to stop moving? You cant stop timebut you can stop the dot. The way to do it is by focusing downward. We must continually look to be the most relevant to the people who are approaching where your dot presently is, not the ones already there. It keeps you stretching downward to adjust to new ways to be relevant. This forces the church to look at the changing culture and adapt to it. There is no need to compromise doctrine or vision, just the means and methods of how they are delivered. It means we have to embrace new forms of technology, new styles of music and worship, hire younger staff members, spend more money and expend more energy in programming in that direction. When outward and downward focuses are coupled together, the church has set itself up for immortality. If the dot isnt moving, even though there are people in the church getting older, the church isnt getting older. Coupled with an outward focus, there is a steady stream of the 80% who are unchurched coming into a relationship with Christ being attracted by the relevance dened by the dot. Using the strategy of relational discipleship maximizes the churches effectiveness at the most critical time and redirects older, more mature believers onto the eld as players instead of sophisticated consumers.

Shift #5 Alignment
In their book Simple Church, Tom Rainer and Eric Geiger opened the eyes of the church to something much more critical than a new buzzword...alignment. The concept caught the attention of cutting edge churches and leaders sought to implement the strategy. Even though the books ew off the shelves, the practical reality and implementation of true alignment has remained elusive for many churches. For the Crossing, alignment was the next critical step in our disciple-shift. Leadership needed to be aligned relationally, theologically, philosophically, and organizationally in order to be effective. While the idea has captured the church at large in theory, very few churches are effectively walking it out and the Crossing was no exception. For relational discipleship to happen, there has to be a context of alignment, starting with the leadership. Our alignment process focused in these most critical areas. Alignment in our relationships (relational) I wonder how many churches are attempting to change the world for Christ, lling their calendars with programs and processes all designed to bring people into a lasting relationship with God and each other without realizing that the staff and leadership are not in relationship let alone alignment. My experience in coming alongside church leaders has revealed a huge blind spot in many churches...relational alignment. The reason I can see it is because it had to be pointed out to me. If the church, leadership, or staff is going to come into alignment, it needs to begin with me (the senior pastor). Concepts taught but not modeled are hypocritical and no one wants to follow a hypocrite. Relational alignment with my key leaders was my rst step. I will never forget sitting around the table with my executive team organizing and leading a "two for one". For those of you wondering, it's an exercise where everyone has permission to speak out two praiseworthy things about everyone at the table and one issue where work is needed, one person at a time. The response by the one being critiqued is only to repeat each observation back to the satisfaction of the one speaking

followed by a polite "thank -you". There is no defending, explaining, rationalizing, excusing, or rescuing allowed. Both the one giving and receiving the two for one have to look directly at each other. The exercise should be done with a coach in the room to keep the exercise on track. Since I was the leader of this group of leaders, it was my responsibility to lead by example. The experience was a little disturbing but highly enlightening as it exposed areas in my life and leadership that needed to be addressed as well as showing me where I was truly admired and respected. It was amazing how well they saw me. The negatives stung but I could see the validity of the areas that needed work. At rst, the other participants were cautious, wondering if I could even receive the criticism. I wrote the words down wanting to repeat them back accurately. My acceptance and appreciation of their words prompted a greater boldness in them to speak honestly and transparently. Before long, some big stuff was being thrown out that had really limited us as a group. Many of the praises and concerns needed attention and it started to become apparent just how far out of alignment we were. It's amazing what happens when thoughts or feelings are spoken into existence honestly and face to face. In that moment they become real and when they are repeated back accurately, the one who shared the opinion has genuinely been heard, maybe for the rst time. I wonder how many leaders of churches would have the guts to do this exercise with their key players. People may have worked together for years but have conveniently avoided any real relationship and without relationship, there can be no real alignment. If our mission is based on loving God and each other, how can we expect to see it in our people if we are unwilling to do it ourselves. It's not easy, but through the process of alignment I learned that relationship is something we can't just expect, it's something we have to ght for. In one meeting, I was amazed at what was shared with me and used what I had learned in the two for one to move the relationship forward. I listened as a committed couple shared their hurt and pain, much of it connected to me, feeling that they had been misunderstood. I listened in silence until they were through, then repeated their hurt feelings back to them. I thanked them for their honesty and then apologized for the pain. Even though many of their presuppositions were wrong, they were valid to them.

Speaking the issues into existence, being fully heard, and then ghting for the relationship changed the entire dynamic. Relational alignment pays big dividends for a church leader. Real love is communicated through ascribing value and that comes through hearing to the satisfaction of the people around us. It doesnt mean that they necessarily get their way, but it does mean that their viewpoint is valuable and it has legitimately been heard. Its far easier for our players to be in alignment when they know their leader is hearing them. Alignment in our understanding (theological) Like most churches, the Crossing had a doctrinal statement, a mission statement, a list of core values, and an introductory 101 style of class. We had a membership and leadership and bylaws. I had written or changed most of them myself. What we didn't have was theological and philosophical alignment. There had been no serious discussion or collaboration in their creation so many were operating on a whole host of assumptions that created a lot of confusion. What do I have to do to be a member? What do you believe about baptism? Is there a literal hell? What roles can women have in this church? Why are there so many different bibles? Are you Spirit lled? There were leaders who leaned reformed, some who had experienced Spiritual gifts, some focused on missions, and others xated on growth or debt. It would have been hard to get the same answers out of any two of them. These were among many concerns that were pretty vague, and there was little sense of what issues we would all die on the hill together for. There were also a host of issues that weren't considered doctrinal ( heaven or hell issues) but more unity statements, kind of like our play book. Those are statements that are clear expressions of how we choose to conduct ourselves as a church by our best understanding of scripture. The leadership needed to be crystal clear on both, and in complete unity as we communicated with our teams, the congregation, and those who were checking us out. It was a great exercise and when we were through, there was a great deal of peace in it. We had clear expectations for potential leaders and encouragements for new believers

and members. Since the leaders collaborated on the statements, problems were all addressed and remedied before we faced the congregation. We stood together. Our statement came in two parts: The doctrinal statement and the unity statement. The doctrinal statement spoke our core beliefs. They were the scriptural truths that formed the foundation of our faith and were considered absolutely essential for our salvation and our fellowship. Our unity statements were interpretations of scripture that were open for debate but reected our viewpoints for the purpose of being undivided. It was designed to elevate the value of unity and liberty while clearly setting expectations on our approach to minimize misunderstanding. Creating clear boundaries helped to clarify if a player was getting out of bounds and threatening our unity. Our highest level leaders collaborated to make the document. While this was very important to use for good congregational understanding, it was even more important for the leaders. It forced the tough questions of whether or not each player was willing to stand in alignment theologically. This exercise strengthened the basis of our relationships, the common ground that we stood on and represented to the world. Our next project was to clearly communicate or vision, our mission, and our process. Our vision was taken from Matthew 22:37-40, to love God and each other with all we are and have. Our mission describes how we are to accomplish that. Taken from Matthew 28:18-20, we want to make disciples who have an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We see no better was to love God or each other. Our process is taken from Matthew 4:19, Follow me and I will make you shers of men. We seek to attract followers who can be changed by Christ in relational environments by intentional leaders who can then join Christs and our shared mission. All of our key leaders agreed to these statements. It then became clear that we needed to be in alignment across our campuses in communicating these statements to our congregations. Each campus had their own 101 style of introductory class. Now we would all teach the same material and convey an aligned approach setting expectations for church members and leaders. We also tackled our process of developing leaders and elders, setting clear metrics for each role. The result of this theological alignment was focus and intentionality. The place where we stood was solid and there was plenty room for everyone to stand together.

Alignment in our approach (philosophical) As I touched on briey in the creation of our statements, we zeroed in on Matthew 4:19 for our approach. Before we understood the critical nature of relational discipleship, we had grown as a primarily attractional church. We were very intentional about getting people through the front door and in the seats. As we pursued our desire to follow Jesus method of discipleship in relationship, we recognized that our concentration on attraction wasnt wrong, it was just incomplete. Jesus used attraction through His teaching and His miracles to pull together huge crowds. It was out of those crowds that discipleship formed. We used our worship services as primarily attraction events designed to introduce people to Jesus or to witness what Christ followers look like. We concentrated on breaking down barriers, disarming, uplifting, and challenging as many people as possible. Out of that crowd, we needed to call out for real Christ followers. Like in Kyle Idlemans book Not A Fan, we had to become serious in the development of a pathway from fan to follower. We incorporated Jesus own method of leading learners in relatively small relational environments. We had already said that real change happens best in small groups. We just started putting that into action using properly prepared relational leaders in those environments. They would concentrate on reproducing this process over and over. As people were being changed by Christ, they would submit to the discipleship of these leaders and then become leaders themselves on mission for Christ fullling Jesus Matthew 4:19 method. Philosophical alignment travels from the top down but eventually everyone needs to be on the same page. As I already shared, we developed a new membership class to create a common understanding of our theology and unity. The same class was used to explain our approach to ministry and our expectations of both members and leaders. This teaching became something we wanted everyone who called the Crossing home to go through. Philosophical alignment removes so many potential pitfalls from misunderstanding, replacing them with a sure footing of common cause. Philosophical alignment also creates a platform for setting and measuring expectations in our staff and other leaders. Clear expectations have a huge impact on

intentionality. Many key players are not succeeding because clear expectations havent been set causing their ministry to drift. The leader is responsible to cast vision so that the player can articulate the wins in his ministry area. Wins however are not enough. Without a path to get there, drifting will continue. Players need to map out specic measurable ways that their win is achieved. It should become clear to them in a relatively short amount of time whether or not their strategy is producing the win they are looking for and the leader is expecting. Clear communication can make the strategy the problem and not necessarily the person. Good strategies also create the wins that can be celebrated and used to encourage even higher expectations. Expectations are funny things...they can be completely unrealistic causing big problems in relationship without even being noticed. It may be that the senior pastor says he wants to be in relationship with his key team. That statement may mean two completely different things to the pastor and those he said it to. The pastor may feel a growing resentment from a player only to nd that the players expectation for relationship was much more involved. Maybe the pastor feels that a monthly meeting is sufcient but the expectation of the player was twice a week. Resentment can form without clarity on expectations. A good leader listens well to his players and then asks what the player means when they state expectations. Alignment in our structure (organizational) Our organizational alignment is very specic to our organization. I understand that many of those reading this operate in a single location but the values expressed in our organization are a reection of when we were a single location. We however have always sought to be a at organization, place a high value on leadership, reect core values, and push vertical opportunity. These values have found their highest levels of effectiveness within the pursuit of relational discipleship. With 7 campuses and literally hundreds of ministries, The Crossing has become a fairly complex organization. There are plenty of potential negatives that go along with this kind of growth. There is a tendency to become more corporate or departmentalized creating a colder, more detached staff and ministry. More attention might be paid to a particular bottom line rather than relationships and communication. Organizational structure could become

fuzzy with people answering to more than one supervisor or just choosing the one they want to listen to. Another issue is that while theological, philosophical, and relational alignment should stay relatively static over time, organizational alignment is something that is constantly changing. If it doesnt change with growth, growth will stop. While constant evaluation and change of organizational alignment is critical to the health and growth of the church, it is also potentially frustrating to staff, leaders, and players who feel like the goal posts keep moving. Because of this nature of change, organizational alignment needs lots of communication and re-communication. Our organizational structure reflects certain values that stay static even as the structure itself changes. Value #1 The organization stays flat. Organizations that get large can lose sight of the value of each player on the team. Relational discipleship flourishes in an environment of high communication and transparency. There is a tendency to build structures vertically like skyscrapers rather than a flatter, more spread out model. Structures constructed vertically might look imposing but in fact they are susceptible to higher risk. Flatter models spread out key relationships and give lots more people places to play. They actually reduce exposure to risk. This is one reason why The Crossing believes so strongly in multi-site. Im writing this on September 12th and reflecting on the 9/11 attack. We all remember the visual image of the towers coming down in New York. We know that another plane hit the pentagon but it doesnt evoke the same image. Why? Even though the pentagon was damaged and lives were lost, the structure itself stood strong and was rebuilt. Apply that idea to the church. Vertical organizations can fall if a key player fails but flatter organizations spread the weight out so that it is less vulnerable. The Crossing has meetings...lots of meetings! Each week, each campus pastor pulls everyone on his team in to share, cast vision, and problem solve. Each week I video chat with all the campus pastors doing the same thing. Every month, we pull the entire staff together for worship, encouragement, celebration, sharing, and a meal. Everyone being heard and valued helps them in accepting and adjusting to necessary changes. That, once again, is a reflection of relational discipleship.

Value #2 The organization silos under campus pastors instead of ministries. In order to be a good follower, there has to be close proximity to a leader. We learned pretty early that the leadership of each campus-based ministry needed to flow through the campus pastor as opposed to a ministry leader. Having both ministry leaders and campus pastors created a two boss scenario that wasn't sustainable. Multi-site ministry leaders operate primarily in a resourcing capacity and only function as leaders as they communicate through the campus pastor. Discipleship especially flows through staff hierarchy and trust is earned by example and learned visually. Campus pastors then become the linchpins of the organization, building relationship with their staffs doing ministry side by side. Whether investing in campus pastors like I do, or ministry leaders in a single site church, or volunteers in a young or smaller church, relational discipleship is how that investment is made. Value #3 Our structure reflects our core values. We value relationships so our structure is defined by it. The top of our organization is called the executive team. It is primarily comprised of our 7 campus pastors. It is my first priority of relational discipleship as i seek to shape them into the vibrant leaders God intended for them to be. This is my favorite part of ministry...and the most fruitful evidenced in the multiplication of fruit. Relational discipleship is best exampled in leadership so we spend a substantial amount of time, money, and energy on it. These leaders in turn, reproduce this relationship in their individual staffs. Each staff member reproduces it in their volunteers. Our church structure then becomes an example for the expectations we set in the discipleship of every member. I believe every church structure should reflect the image of Christ and His discipleship example. Value #4 Structure is flat but potential is vertical. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes about getting people in the right seat on the bus. At the Crossing, we have recognized the value of moving people from right seat to right seat. Getting a good understanding of this happens in the context of a strong relationship. A flat structure means that there is a place for every opinion to be voiced and valued. There

is a sense of equality even in the midst of hierarchy. The system lets people move fairly freely within the structure, exploring where talents and gifts connect with the church's needs. This vertical movement and the backfilling that comes after it is key to making our system work. Some of our best success stories have come from this vertical movement.

Shift # 6 Empowerment
With the defining of the direction of discipleship and the alignment of the organization, it's time to actually do the work of making disciples in relational environments. This process has to start with the training of leaders. Once leaders have completed the training, it's time for them to put their skills to work. Even this happens in the environment of relational discipleship as the small group leader is in relationship with a small groups pastor. The training is designed to equip leaders to make disciples in relational environments. The training uses small groups as a platform on which to build ideas and discussions, but most of the concepts are applicable to any ministry context. The entire training is accomplished in a small group format. We limit the number of participants to around 10. Groups are typically led by a training team consisting of a lead facilitator, co-facilitator and an apprentice facilitator. The training is designed to get leaders to think much more intentionally. The key to the training is what happens after the training is completed. The participants are encouraged to work and improve upon the various skills and concepts that were covered in their training. Also, connecting the leaders with a mentor who is committed to having an intentional relationship with them is critical. We begin by simply building a model a small group using biblical story telling as a method. We go over several basic ground rules setting expectations and begin to speak the environment into existence. We also do some vision casting about the importance of relational discipleship and the vision for what God wants to do through it. We then debrief, going through all the intentional things that were going on in the modeling of the small group and talking about the importance of each. This gives prospective leaders a much greater understanding of their role and a much higher sense of being equipped to lead. The training covers how to prepare for a group, how to manage typical challenges in relationship like over-talking, under-talking, crisis situation management, and keeping discussion moving and interesting. We teach practical skills to manage a variety of challenges that arise in relational environments, helping potential leaders to learn how

to think through problems and issues. We teach listening skills and develop them in ways to look below the surface, designed to take people deep, discovering motivations for issues and problems in their lives. We teach how to rightly apply scripture into practical realities like sin, surrender, and accepting God's truth. These skills operating in real time begin to change both the intentional leader and the ones learning and following into real players in the Kingdom. Before long, regular church people are beginning to look a lot like shepherds, caring for a small flock and raising up new leaders learning the same skills in an active environment. These leaders learn how to chase the strays and how to restore them back into relationship. This all happens under the active authority of the leader being in relational discipleship himself, learning while leading, always with a leader to answer questions, to encourage, and to celebrate wins. Our leaders develop as shepherds who provide pastoral care for those they lead, promoting the biblical concept of those in the Body caring for one another. Intentional leader development always includes how to open doors to relationship with people outside the church. We show them how to have an intentional relationship with a non-believer and how to handle the conversation when it shifts to God. They learn how to share their personal testimony and how to navigate that relationship to and through conversion. We train our disciplers on how to choose an apprentice, cast vision into him, and how to empower him to start a new group through branching. There are truly exponential opportunities in the reproduction of leadership through this model. People have the opportunity to achieve their highest potential in bearing fruit for the Kingdom. It automatically creates a pipeline for future volunteer and paid staff leaders with the thorough vetting that comes through intentional relational discipleship. Small group leader training happens in a discipleship context and not only develops a disciple but creates a discipler. The small group becomes its own engine for producing a reproducing disciples and leaders through apprenticeship and branching. Where Are We Now?

The first thing that needs to be clear is that we haven't figured all this out. I'm sure that God is moving in many churches to discover the necessity of real relational discipleship, but I can say this for sure...I know that we are moving in the right direction and every day we are getting better at doing it! I can honestly say that relational discipleship does not hinder growth...it enhances it! I can also say that it produces a pipeline of dedicated leaders, both volunteer and staff, that will take kingdom ground like never before! I can also say that creates a much healthier work and ministry environment! There was a time that the Crossing had basically 3 main measurements of perceived success...attendance, decisions, and giving. Now we can measure numbers of existing relational environments, numbers of trained leaders, numbers of branched groups, numbers of apprentices, ratios to overall attendance, and so forth. I believe that consistency of attendance, volunteerism, financial giving, and true worship from the heart are all aspects of Christian maturity and that maturity is grown in the greenhouse of discipleship. The healthiest church focuses on both attraction and discipleship without neglecting either. A church focused exclusively on discipleship misses evangelism and stagnates in growth becoming inwardly focused and self serving. A church focused on attraction becomes shallow and irresponsible to new believers while failing to mature anyone beyond sophisticated consumers. Put them together and the church begins to look the way that Jesus intended it. To get a clearer picture of The Crossing, check out www.thecrossing.net. To get serious about relational discipleship, hook up with Relational Discipleship Network, a network of churches helping each other to walk out intentional relational discipleship in their churches and the world, one person and one church at a time.