The thing Jesus did the most, we do the least.

CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP IRONY #1:
The thing Jesus did the most, we do the least. 

I’m not talking about abstracts, deep emotions, or complex morals. I’m talking literally about the thing Jesus DID most. 

He shepherded and mentored.

Over the past thirty years or so, many great churches have risen up and grown massive in size.  From an engaging Sunday worship service to a replacement for what you remember from your sixth grade school cafeteria, they have it all.  However, the one thing I still see even the biggest and most modeled-after church leaders fail at consistently on a massive scale is mentoring their future leaders to take over and replace them.

Now, I don’t say this to in any way rip at mega churches. I love them - a lot.  But I single them out because it appears that even the churches that we idolize the most and place on a towering glass pedestal can’t seem to get this one thing right.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Hybels what happened when he tried to leave his church. Don’t know Bill personally?  He’ll tell you in his book, Courageous Leadership.

The fact remains, as much as we try to write books on vision and leadership, form giant conferences, and sit down for coffee visits in our suits or trendy jeans and buttoned down shirts with the suave fabric that just screams hip leader in the room, we aren’t mentoring people at the depth and level that Jesus Christ did with his disciples. Now, at this point you might be saying: “Well of course not because we can’t live up to a perfect example.” To which I will reply: “Absolutely, I agree, but we aren’t nearly where we could be.”

There’s a commandment that Jesus commands us to follow – yep, I just said commands right next to commandments because we don’t seem to get the connection.  That command goes something like this: Go out and make Christians of all Nations.  Oop, doesn’t sound right?  Well, it’s not.  The command is actually this: Go out and make Disciples of all Nations (see Matthew 28).

Here’s catch number one: Making Christians, for a lot of us, means someone accepts Jesus, you give them a Bible and maybe a cookie to go with it if you’re one of those churches. You may send them to some guy in a corner to talk to for ten minutes, tell them to join a small group, and then they are on their way.  

So how is making disciples different?  Well according to Jesus, who I trust more than Wikipedia although even Wikipedia references Jesus here: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35). Therefore making disciples means making – or might we say shepherding and mentoring – people to love one another as Christ loves them. There’s no dump and run in Jesus’ model. Sure different people might be in charge of different parts, but as a Church, we’re to be committed to the whole deal.

Do you know the number one thing that college students tell me they want that they don’t get from their small groups?  It’s mentors.  Did you know that in 2006, which is decades ago in today’s fast paced world, 25% of young adults had ZERO close friends with whom to discuss deep personal matters. This is the world we live in and it is screaming for companionship and screaming for mentorship.

Here’s another catch: When Jesus says make disciples of all Nations, he doesn’t mean you personally all by yourself.  No, in fact, Jesus, the greatest superhero of all times (yes, even better than Iron Man, Captain America, or Optimus Prime)… he had twelve who were his closest companions, and even among those twelve some were closer to him than others. Only a couple of them got their own gig in the Bible.

In our society, time is possibly the largest yet least recognized thing we idolize.  We fill our days so full that we barely have time to stop and listen to a song, and I mean just listen without doing twelve other things.  If you want a take-away, it’s this; make time for mentoring people – LOTS of it.  If you are a leader and you don’t have at least 30% of your time free, I encourage you to find people who can take on some of your duties and burdens. I know it’s a catch-22, but find that free time and eventually you may just find that you have someone who’s 100% capable of taking over your work 100% of the time and doing it 110% as well as you did – why 10% more, well I didn’t want to scare you ego trippers out there.  If you’re feeling threatened at that thought though, the good news is that by the time you finish building other people up to that point, you’ll probably either be called somewhere else or ready to retire.  And yes, don’t mentor just one. Go for twelve.  Jesus wanted at least eleven with room for one bad apple.  Don’t mentor one person and go playing those odds.  As I like to say, what has greater impact - raising ten thousand lukewarm Christians, or one Billy Graham or Luis Palau (two men well known for massive scale evangelism)?

How much time do you spend shepherding?