7 Keys to Mobilizing Every Member for Ministry
By Glen Reed with Michael Brodeur
Pastor’s Coach - Ministry Essentials
Healthy Leaders Produce Thriving Churches
7 Keys to Mobilizing Every Member for Ministry
By Glen Reed with Michael Brodeur
Copyright © 2017 by Pastor’s Coach
All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.
Published by Pastor’s Coach
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Redding CA, 96003
916-467-9934
www.PastorsCoach.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas
Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.lockman.org)
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Introduction
Understanding and harnessing the power of every-member ministry can unleash real transformation.
In this e-book you will learn some key steps you can take to begin to shift the culture in your church
and mobilize every member to minister the way God intended.
This is primarily a “how to” document so we’re not giving the whole biblical and philosophy of
ministry foundation that we do in our regular courses and MasterClasses. These are bite-sized steps
you can take to begin to shift culture. And you should see real changes within a month.
We have a complete MasterClass on Mobilizing Every Member for Ministry that goes into far greater
detail. This MasterClass has five video lessons and four weekly one hour group coaching calls with
some of the best ministry coaches on the planet. It is presented periodically. You can sign up for that
or access the video lessons (if you’re a member) at https://pastorscoach.com/.
Since transformation of a church or any group starts with the leader, these steps are designed for the
senior or primary leader of the church (or group).
Key 1: Embrace every-member ministry
Concepts
One of the truths of the Reformation began by Luther 500 years ago was that of the Priesthood of
the Believer, meaning every Christian is to function as a minister sharing the message of salvation
and the love of God to a dying world. That concept has pretty much been ignored. In fact most
churches function as if nothing has changed. We have better technology and lots of information, but
often it’s only a few special people who do the “ministry” and the rest watch and sing and hear
teaching while the “minister” ministers.
You know the Bible teaches about the Body of Christ. There is the universal Body of Christ, made up
of all believers. And there is the localized instance: every church is a smaller body of Jesus, with many
members. Each member is crucial to the proper functioning of the entire body of Christ. As Paul says
in 1st Corinthians 12:21, the eye cannot say to the hand, I don’t need you. You as the senior leader
need to embrace this!
Yet most churches of every denomination have relegated most believers to watchers not ministers.
It’s like a football game. There are 22 men on the field who are exhausted fighting towards a goal and
20,000 people in the stands in desperate need of exercise!
Ephesians 4:11-12 says that the leaders: the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers;
are to equip the saints for ministry… so your job as a senior leader is not primarily to be ministering
and serving but to equip others to minister and serve.
Action Steps
Pray and take personal responsibility for doing your job, to equip your members for ministry. If
you’ve tended to dominate the ministry so no one else is given permission to minister, repent and
decide to change.
Meet with your core leadership team and teach on this and get buy-in, so they understand that their
primary job is to equip the members for ministry.
Spend time praying for God to lead you in making this shift.
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Key 2: Identify what needs to change
Concepts
To get your church running on all cylinders and functioning powerfully, you must embrace the
mindset of every member serving or ministering for God. Every member needs to be a true
born-again disciple, submitted to Jesus as Lord, and each one has some kind of ministry or service to
perform. That also means you need to trust people. You can’t do it all and you shouldn’t do it all.
They don’t have to have a theological degree to serve Jesus.
This means developing people, not just delegating or managing. It means investing in people for the
long haul. It may take longer to train others to do what you can do, but in the long run, if you invest
in others, this will release much more ministry. And the body will function as it is supposed to.
The real key is you as the senior leader. Can you make the shift? What are you doing that only the
senior leader can do, such as casting vision for the church, developing the overall blueprint for what
God is building, and setting direction and goals? And what are you doing that can be done (and
should be done) by others?
Action Steps
Make a list of the top 10 essential tasks that you as the senior leader and your core leadership team
need to do that no one else can do. Then list the top 10 essential tasks that need to be done that
others can do. You and your core team need to focus on your essential tasks and start giving away
the other tasks to others.
Identify 2-3 new ministries that need to be developed that will perform those tasks that others can
do that you or your team are currently doing.
For example, if you are visiting several people a week in the hospital, you need to make a mental
shift. You need to equip the saints for service… You need a hospital visitation ministry!
If your core leaders are leading every small group and teaching every Bible study, they need to make
that shift and start thinking about developing small group leaders and teachers.
If your chief administrator is directing parking Sunday mornings, you need a parking lot team.
Key 3: Value every-member ministry publically
Concepts
People do what is celebrated and encouraged and rewarded. If most of your members are on the
sidelines watching, what does that say about what you as a leader are celebrating and encouraging
and rewarding? If you want every member to be a minister, then you need to celebrate and reward
people who are doing it.
Reward can take many forms. Spending time with you and the core leadership team, being invited to
special events, having special access, being celebrated publically and getting awards are all non-
monetary ways of rewarding people. And you can spend money appropriately; such as paying the
registration fee for your worship team to go to an annual worship conference.
Action Steps
Begin to celebrate any “ordinary” members who are already serving and ministering, especially those
who do it informally. Mention them in sermons and in announcements.
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Start having them share testimonies of serving, ministering and reaching others during Sunday
service announcements. Find ways to reward them.
Invite the people who are serving to start leading in the areas in which they are serving.
Have special gatherings to thank and celebrate the people who are serving and leading who don’t
normally get the spotlight. At Jesus Culture Church, they have a meeting two to three times a year
that is solely for all the people serving in all ministries. It’s catered, and the attire is dressy, and
ministry leaders create awards for their members. There are fun skits and performances – all to
honor the “ordinary” people who are serving.
Say thank you a lot to those who are serving without much recognition.
All of these will demonstrate that you value every-member ministry and will prepare hearts for
what’s next.
Key 4: Understand your personal destiny
Concepts
We believe strongly that every person has been created by God for a purpose. Ephesians 2:10 says
that we God’s workmanship or handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He prepared
beforehand, so that we would walk in them. In other words, each person has a purpose, a calling –
each one has specific works to accomplish-- that He planned ahead of time. We call that personal
destiny. We also use the words “calling” and “dream” to mean the same thing. Everyone has a
personal destiny. And God has gifted us and given us desires and passions that are linked to that
destiny. He has designed or wired us to accomplish the things that He has called us to do.
By destiny, we mean the ministry that God has for each person. Not their job or what pays the bills,
although that might line up. For example, a nurse might have a pastoral calling and that gifting and
calling would be fulfilled through the job directly. Another person might have a pastoral calling but
he is an accountant. We would say, don’t quit your job to go to Bible school and become a “pastor”
unless God tells that person explicitly to do so. Instead, we would encourage the accountant to
exercise his pastoral gifting within the context of the company he is in. He can reach and pastor
people there that would never set foot in a church.
Other examples of personal destiny: working with inner-city Spanish-speaking youth; leading
women’s Bible studies and mentoring younger women; planting a church in Romania; a mom raising
four children to be world changes and reaching the families of their friends for Jesus; being a teacher
and spending summers doing construction for an orphanage in Mexico; opening a top-notch
restaurant that has Christian artists performing. It’s whatever God has called you to do for His
kingdom (not just personal desires such as live on Maui… But if God calls you to open a resort in Maui
that truly impacts people for His kingdom, then go for it!).
Wouldn’t it be great to have the people in a church serving and ministering according to their gifts
and passions? That would produce maximum fruitfulness and fulfillment for them, and maximum
ministry for the church and Kingdom. It’s a true win-win.
That can happen! There are various gift assessment and talent inventories. At Pastor’s Coach we
have a companion ministry called Destiny Finder (www.destinyfinder.com) which provides online
tools, programs and coaching to help people understand and pursue their calling or destiny. Our
premise is this: if you don’t know what your destiny or calling is, look at how you are gifted and what
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passions God has put in your heart, and how you are wired, and that will point to your personal
destiny.
We have developed a series of inexpensive online assessments that help people understand their
spiritual gifts, but this is much more comprehensive than the many other spiritual gift assessments.
Our assessments cover one’s ministry gifts, motivational gifts, and manifestation gifts. And we have
another assessment that helps people understand their passion and what people group they feel led
to impact, and many other aspects of personal design and ministry orientation. The assessments
generate multi-page reports with powerful insights that help people to understand how God has
made them and where He is trying to take them, so they can pursue intentionally.
Action Steps
Get the Destiny Profiler assessments and do them for yourself. See if the results are accurate. We’ve
had thousands of people do the assessments and most have found them to be very accurate. Then
take some time to evaluate how well your personal destiny matches with what you are doing. This
may raise some questions. Some people find themselves serving as pastors because they were raised
up to believe that was the only path for ministry, but in fact, they may be wired by God to be an
evangelist, or a teacher, or serve in the business or education or government worlds. You may be
wired as a teacher but the Lord has a plan for you to be a VP of training in a large corporation,
influencing thousands of people in that arena.
Ok, I don’t want to get too crazy. Assuming you confirm that you are to be a pastor, now you need to
do the same thing with your core leadership team; have them do the assessments. Then evaluate
with them individually how well they each match up their personal destiny with what they are
actually doing and pursuing. If you have a person who is gifted in evangelism but he or she is doing
the accounting, that’s not optimum! If you have someone who is gifted for teaching, and not very
prophetic, but they lead the prayer ministry, you probably should make a leadership change.
See www.destinyfinder.com or contact Glen Reed at 916-467-9934 or email
[email protected].
Key 5: Develop a plan for matching personal destinies with
organizational needs
Concepts
In the next Key you will take this concept of having people serve according to their destiny and calling
and apply it to the whole church. Everyone needs to understand their destiny. The ideal is to have
every member serving according to their gifts and calling, and the end result is the body functioning
in prime health…and healthy things grow.
But… before you do that, once people start understanding their destiny and pursuing it, you need to
be ready to match them up with the church vision and destiny. So you need to create a plan for
people to serve according to their destiny in partnership with the church’s destiny.
This can be a bit challenging because on the one hand you want to encourage each person to pursue
his or her destiny or calling. But on the other hand, your church has a corporate vision. In fact that’s
one of the things that you as the senior leader are responsible for – to articulate and steward the
vision from God for the church. So you need to bring the personal and organization destinies
together. You need to invite people to pursue their destiny in partnership with the church. They may
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serve for many years in your church, or they may be there for only a short season. You need to show
them how you can help them pursue their dream by serving with you along the way.
This means delegation, but even more than that, developing others so they are equipped and
released to serve well – to reach their potential, to do what they were designed to do. It’s about
people development, and the church should be a destiny incubator, launching people into their
destiny.
Action Steps
Develop an overall plan for all your church ministries and services or refine your existing plan
showing each ministry and who is accountable, etc. For each ministry, such as evangelism or
children’s church, list the job descriptions, especially of the leader. And describe the gifting that is
needed for that job.
Indicate the jobs that have people already serving by listing their names.
Go back to the action step in Key 2 in which you identified ministries and functions that you and your
core team should not be doing and make sure those are highlighted in your plan.
Now you should have some sense of where the needs are, and what gifts are needed for each job.
Key 6: Help your members discover their personal destiny
Concepts
Now that you have your plan, you need to bring the concept of personal destiny and calling to the
entire church so that every member understands their unique purpose; that every single person is a
member of the body and has a crucial function to perform for the body to be healthy.
Go back to Key 4 and use the same information to help people understand about destiny and calling.
Action Steps
Preach and teach on the concept of the Body of Christ and body ministry. Use Acts, Romans, and
Corinthians.
I encourage you to use our Destiny Finder tools. If you choose to do so, there are several ways that
you can do that in your church. You can simply encourage people to do the online assessments and
benefit from that. Or you can host a Destiny Finder workshop which is a Fri night and Saturday all day
power-packed time. Or you can do a Destiny Finder Small Group program, which goes eight weeks
and is amazing!
The result is that people should have the results of the assessments and through prayer and
discussion with leaders, etc., they should have a sense of their own personal destiny and be
motivated to pursue it.
See www.destinyfinder.com or contact Glen Reed at 916-467-9934 or email
[email protected].
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Key 7: Develop people for church and marketplace
ministries
Concepts
People who serve will serve either in the church, the marketplace (business, education, government,
entertainment, sports, etc.) or in both. The real key will be filling leadership positions, and this is
where you and your core team need to be fulfilling your role of equipping the saints for ministry.
First of all, make sure that your discipleship or membership programs are producing members who
are born again and submitted to the Lordship of Jesus, and to a kingdom mindset, and to serving.
There has been much emphasis in the past couple of decades on grace and the love of God, and that
is absolutely crucial. But it seems like the pendulum has swung a bit too far the other way, and a lot
of church members are now focused mainly on themselves and don’t seem to have the value for
serving and sacrificing.
This might help: Think about each person giving a tithe of available time. A week has 168 hours; and
after sleeping and hygiene, there are around 100 hours left. If everyone tithes their time that equals
around 10 hours a week. If people go to a weekend service and a small group that leaves another 3-5
hours for service. You need to raise the awareness and give an expectation that if people want to
serve, giving a tithe of their time is a “norm.” Obviously there are special circumstances, etc., but
people will respond if the vision is compelling… and hopefully you are now tapping into the strongest
motivation – their personal destiny! You need to raise the bar for leaders to something like 15 hours
a week. That extra five hours needs to be spent meeting individually with members to develop and
equip them. This is a short e-book, so I can’t cover everything; check out our website for our courses
on leadership development, small groups and much more.
Action Steps
Start with your church ministries. Use your plan and start recruiting people based on their destiny
results from the last Key. Do NOT make an announcement that you need volunteers for positions and
hand out clipboards with sign-up sheets. Absolutely NOT! You and your core leaders need to be very
intentional and recruit people personally based on them being a good fit.
Try to match them up as best as you can. You will need to help people understand how serving in the
church will prepare them for the eventual destiny they desire. For example, serving as a small group
leader is the best preparation for any kind of leadership. It will stretch the leaders and they will learn
so much. Do you have a young man or woman that wants to change the world and lead a church of
thousands overseas someday? Give them a small group and teach them how to multiply it. If they
can’t lead 10 they can’t lead a thousand.
Then focus on the marketplace ministries. This is so important and yet so neglected. These people
won’s be as visible in the church but they are impacting the world in the trenches of “regular” life.
Match up the people that seem oriented this way with others. Provide support and leadership. Do
special gatherings. Form groups such as an artist’s collective, Bible studies for engineers, business
roundtable groups, etc. Be creative. You still need to show people how what they are doing in pursuit
of their destiny ties in to the Kingdom purposes for your church.
The key is tapping into each person’s personal destiny. This way they will be motivated from within
– they would do this even if they got no reward.
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Some people will decide that they want to go off and do their own thing. Bless them and let them go.
Every church isn’t for every person. You need to stay true to the vision God has given you.
You most likely won’t get 100% mobilized, but the end result will be that many more members will
be engaged for service, not in a duty-driven way, but delight-directed, as they pursue God’s call.
Resources
Destiny Finder
See www.destinyfinder.com or contact Glen Reed at 916-467-9934 or email
[email protected].
Training
Our Mobilizing Every Member for Ministry MasterClass will be taught in April 2017. It includes:
• Four weekly one-hour Group Coaching Calls.
• Video Course with five 10-minute videos by Pastor’s Coach founder and CEO, Michael
Brodeur.
• Course notes and application material.
• See https://pastorscoach.com/mobilizing-every-member-ministry-masterclass/
Our How to Mobilize Every Member for Ministry Video Course with five 10-minute videos by Pastor’s
Coach founder and CEO, Michael Brodeur, included for Pro and Max members. See
https://pastorscoach.com/videos/.
Membership Options
We have a ton of resources, including courses, MasterClasses, assessments and coaching available to
our members. Consider joining. Check out membership options at: https://pastorscoach.com/join/.
Coaching
We specialize in personal coaching for all aspects of ministry and leadership, by phone, Skype or in
person. See https://pastorscoach.com/coaching/ or contact Glen Reed at 916-467-9934 or email
[email protected].
Finally…You can shift your church, but it starts with the senior leader and is transmitted from the
inside out. Being intentional is half the battle. Ask and trust Holy Spirit to enable your church to
function as the Body of Jesus!
www.pastorscoach.com
END
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