Let It Grow: How to Develop a Gospel-Shaped CultureSample

Culture Priority #2—Multiply Disciples in Gospel Mission

Making the gospel a priority ensures that new believers are being born on a regular basis. Healthy churches always maintain an outward focus—ever communicating the good news and extending the opportunity for people to place faith in Jesus. Nothing breaks up fallow ground and tears down ancient idols faster than new life in an atrophied church.

When we arrived at Emmanuel, Jesus compelled a simple commitment before the church family. I determined to preach the gospel in every Sunday morning service—to both believers and unbelievers—and to extend an invitation for unbelievers to accept Jesus. This resulted in two things that wonderfully surprised us.

First, believers who had long stopped inviting anyone to church for fear of what political or tangential topic they would encounter began to resume their efforts to bring lost friends to hear the gospel. As a result, nearly every week someone received Jesus as Savior.

Second, the believers in the room fell in love with Jesus all over again. The gospel became not just the entry point of salvation but the river of grace that carries us forward every day. The gospel became the primary driver of both salvation and sanctification, which opened the floodgates to a fresh culture of grace and unconditional love in the church. Spiritual growth materialized organically and beautifully. The same gospel that saved us also reshaped and renewed us with a naturally forming culture of humility, unity, and mission (Phil. 1:27).

Of course, I took some criticism for this approach. Not everybody believes that repenting and receiving the gospel is as simple as Jesus said. But the overflowing joy of growing new believers is a powerful counternarrative to naysayers. It’s hard to criticize louder than the evident fruit of God’s Spirit.

Naturally, the birth of new believers gave way to a myriad of other ministry needs—from baptism services, to discipleship teams, to adult groups, to kids ministry, and care. But the fountainhead of it all is the faithful preaching of the gospel and discipling of new believers.

For everything we’ve examined about healthy pace, I feel an equal and opposite tension to stir you to press on in preaching the gospel. Don’t be afraid to expend passionately and seize every gospel opportunity with devoted delight and optimistic energy. As we operate from the wellspring of deep contentment, we also need a healthy ambition to pursue our mission.

The gospel makes us both content and ambitious simultaneously— call it contented ambition. Our souls can be at rest in Him as our lives are energetically engaged and expended in the mission He gave us. Jesus was both restful and zealous (John 2:17) and Paul stated that he would “most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Cor. 12:15).

Early in the restoration of our church, God embedded three priorities in my weekly function—feed, fellowship, follow up (and repeat). Amidst the morass of problems that I couldn’t fix, these were three disciplines I could do faithfully. Feed the sheep God’s Word. Fellowship by building real relationships. Follow up in reaching and discipling new believers. Jesus left us on earth to be His church for this purpose. We exist to reach and build disciples through the message of His good news in cultures of grace.

If we continue to reset around the gospel, God will always be doing something eternal and special through our ministries. No matter how we feel or what hardships we’re facing, we are always only one gospel presentation away from another potential miracle. A commitment to giving the gospel consistently, especially in a spiritually dark culture, will unavoidably bring people to Jesus.

There is no magic bullet for church growth—we let it grow by preaching the good news and tending to an organic, healthy greenhouse environment. We let the gospel run free and get out of its way. We stop preventing the moving of God’s Spirit by lifting the bushels from our lights and holding them high once again. The gospel of Jesus is the power of God to salvation (Rom. 1:16).

We are messengers, not manufacturers. We do not operate machine shops; we cultivate greenhouses. The former shapes identical objects by machines and sheer brute force. The latter protects and grows tender plants to maturity and fruitfulness in protected places. The former is a loud, destructive, mechanized process. The latter is a quiet, safe, nutrient-rich environment.

When we cultivate gospel-saturated environments, fruit will follow—at what rate or to what degree is God’s to determine. We tend the greenhouse; He grows the fruit.