Dear WHO Family:
This letter is intended to provide you a bit of insight into our hearts as we made the intentional transition to a team leadership model. With limited time on a Sunday morning to share, this format allows us the opportunity to elaborate on what the Lord has been doing in us.
I have always attempted to do what I believe the Lord is telling me to do. Proven and practiced church growth strategies, what people wanted us to preach about, what others wanted us to rally around and accomplish - none of that could override what I felt the Lord wanted us to do. I came to an important conclusion about living my life: to do anything other than what was in my heart to do would result in confusion, restlessness and frustration. For myself and those around me.
In 2011, when I heard the Father call me “son” for the first time, I realized He didn’t see me as a pastor or leader of a church. That’s what I saw about me. That’s how I and most others in my life identified me. Experiencing God’s perspective of you changes what you do and how you live your life. Knowing I was His son, initiated and empowered a different way of doing church.
It started with 4+ months of no preaching on Sunday’s and simply ministering to the Lord, re-establishing Jesus as the most important person in the room. The intent was to fix our eyes on Him, de-emphasizing human leaders behind the microphone. This initiated a time of healing our perspective of who God is. He restored Himself as a good and loving Father. This revelation birthed the needed understanding of who we are as His beloved sons and daughters. To be precious, important and good in His sight solidified our identity, healing our hearts, allowing us to see Him and others accurately.
This above paradigm shift laid the foundation for a change in how we led WHO. We felt it extremely important to lead the church family in such a way where the centrality and focus on Jesus would have the fewest distractions. A worship experience led by many worship leaders, allowing more room for anyone at a gathering to share from the microphone, a multi-faceted preaching schedule involving different voices/perspectives, a group of “service directors” opening and facilitating our gatherings. This model gives the Holy Spirit the best opportunity to offer a full and complete revelation of Jesus in our midst.
When more people are involved in leading, a faith community's eyes cannot fix on any one particular person. This frees us to look to the Lord as the author of our faith. The Lord is our shepherd…when an individual person takes His place in our lives, that’s when we “want”. This leadership transition has the main intention of establishing a strong and vibrant leadership structure without taking the place of Jesus in the lives of His sons and daughters.
The ultimate goal of a church gathering is people encountering their Father. The resulting interaction leads to customized Jesus experiences based on the identity of each person. Those individual experiences lead to a corporate - fuller and more accurate - picture of who the Lord is.
If only 1 or 2 people consistently lead out in these gatherings, we miss out on this fullness. And Jesus is too good to miss out on.
Another important facet of team leadership is how it spreads out weight. It is my belief that no individual is designed to handle the sole responsibility of leading a church. It places an unhealthy amount of responsibility and authority on one person. The leading, feeding and caring for the people of God is the responsibility of Jesus. Leaders are a mature, faithful and loving group of people who have learned to allow Jesus to lead them. When you are led by the Lord, you are more likely to stay rooted in your Father-given identity. This grounding will cause a leader to surround themselves with others different than themselves in an effort to manifest the full nature of God.
Leaders who are led by the Lord will create environments in which Jesus leads others to Himself. When a church leader feels it is their responsibility to lead people, they will lead people to themselves. This is usually not from a desire to control but the result of our nature apart from the Holy Spirit’s leading. Strong leaders, even with good intentions, will take attention away from the Lord and people will naturally be drawn to them. The person in an assembly known as the one “leading us to Jesus” unwittingly becomes the one representing Jesus to the people. This can set up the “king/priest” model, creating a surrogate, middleman between the Father and His children. This is how Moses ended up nursing a whole nation and how Israel got Saul as king.
Ever since that 2011 encounter, I have been jealous for everyone in my life to have an intimate, dynamic relationship with the Father. I am convinced it requires a more spread-out, indirect church leadership model. A model in which responsibility for the relationship is on the two IN relationship. The leadership team comes alongside these two, accountable for creating the best environment possible for an encounter between the Father and His child to take place.
My earnest hope and prayer is that the love of the Father for His children is the driving force of who we are as a church. The transition we have been working over the last several years has been a slow, deliberate effort to remove as many obstacles as possible to people experiencing that love. As we go forward, I ask each of you reading this to strongly consider and appraise your own personal relationship with the Father. Muster a renewed sense of ownership of its current and future condition. Decide that no one but you has the responsibility of ensuring you engage Jesus consistently. Then, when you enter the worship gathering, those who steward that environment are simply hosts and partners with you in the ongoing relationship you are nurturing.
This is the call of maturity. We will have those who come into our midst who have not been intentional with this relationship. But they are hungry for it nonetheless. They need a context of maturing sons and daughters, consistently encountering their loving Father, to have the best opportunity of experiencing that same love. I am convinced YOU are those people. Together we have the great privilege of hosting this beautiful exchange between a beloved child and their Father. What greater honor in life is there than that?!
With love and full belief in who God created you to be,
Mark
This letter is intended to provide you a bit of insight into our hearts as we made the intentional transition to a team leadership model. With limited time on a Sunday morning to share, this format allows us the opportunity to elaborate on what the Lord has been doing in us.
I have always attempted to do what I believe the Lord is telling me to do. Proven and practiced church growth strategies, what people wanted us to preach about, what others wanted us to rally around and accomplish - none of that could override what I felt the Lord wanted us to do. I came to an important conclusion about living my life: to do anything other than what was in my heart to do would result in confusion, restlessness and frustration. For myself and those around me.
In 2011, when I heard the Father call me “son” for the first time, I realized He didn’t see me as a pastor or leader of a church. That’s what I saw about me. That’s how I and most others in my life identified me. Experiencing God’s perspective of you changes what you do and how you live your life. Knowing I was His son, initiated and empowered a different way of doing church.
It started with 4+ months of no preaching on Sunday’s and simply ministering to the Lord, re-establishing Jesus as the most important person in the room. The intent was to fix our eyes on Him, de-emphasizing human leaders behind the microphone. This initiated a time of healing our perspective of who God is. He restored Himself as a good and loving Father. This revelation birthed the needed understanding of who we are as His beloved sons and daughters. To be precious, important and good in His sight solidified our identity, healing our hearts, allowing us to see Him and others accurately.
This above paradigm shift laid the foundation for a change in how we led WHO. We felt it extremely important to lead the church family in such a way where the centrality and focus on Jesus would have the fewest distractions. A worship experience led by many worship leaders, allowing more room for anyone at a gathering to share from the microphone, a multi-faceted preaching schedule involving different voices/perspectives, a group of “service directors” opening and facilitating our gatherings. This model gives the Holy Spirit the best opportunity to offer a full and complete revelation of Jesus in our midst.
When more people are involved in leading, a faith community's eyes cannot fix on any one particular person. This frees us to look to the Lord as the author of our faith. The Lord is our shepherd…when an individual person takes His place in our lives, that’s when we “want”. This leadership transition has the main intention of establishing a strong and vibrant leadership structure without taking the place of Jesus in the lives of His sons and daughters.
The ultimate goal of a church gathering is people encountering their Father. The resulting interaction leads to customized Jesus experiences based on the identity of each person. Those individual experiences lead to a corporate - fuller and more accurate - picture of who the Lord is.
If only 1 or 2 people consistently lead out in these gatherings, we miss out on this fullness. And Jesus is too good to miss out on.
Another important facet of team leadership is how it spreads out weight. It is my belief that no individual is designed to handle the sole responsibility of leading a church. It places an unhealthy amount of responsibility and authority on one person. The leading, feeding and caring for the people of God is the responsibility of Jesus. Leaders are a mature, faithful and loving group of people who have learned to allow Jesus to lead them. When you are led by the Lord, you are more likely to stay rooted in your Father-given identity. This grounding will cause a leader to surround themselves with others different than themselves in an effort to manifest the full nature of God.
Leaders who are led by the Lord will create environments in which Jesus leads others to Himself. When a church leader feels it is their responsibility to lead people, they will lead people to themselves. This is usually not from a desire to control but the result of our nature apart from the Holy Spirit’s leading. Strong leaders, even with good intentions, will take attention away from the Lord and people will naturally be drawn to them. The person in an assembly known as the one “leading us to Jesus” unwittingly becomes the one representing Jesus to the people. This can set up the “king/priest” model, creating a surrogate, middleman between the Father and His children. This is how Moses ended up nursing a whole nation and how Israel got Saul as king.
Ever since that 2011 encounter, I have been jealous for everyone in my life to have an intimate, dynamic relationship with the Father. I am convinced it requires a more spread-out, indirect church leadership model. A model in which responsibility for the relationship is on the two IN relationship. The leadership team comes alongside these two, accountable for creating the best environment possible for an encounter between the Father and His child to take place.
My earnest hope and prayer is that the love of the Father for His children is the driving force of who we are as a church. The transition we have been working over the last several years has been a slow, deliberate effort to remove as many obstacles as possible to people experiencing that love. As we go forward, I ask each of you reading this to strongly consider and appraise your own personal relationship with the Father. Muster a renewed sense of ownership of its current and future condition. Decide that no one but you has the responsibility of ensuring you engage Jesus consistently. Then, when you enter the worship gathering, those who steward that environment are simply hosts and partners with you in the ongoing relationship you are nurturing.
This is the call of maturity. We will have those who come into our midst who have not been intentional with this relationship. But they are hungry for it nonetheless. They need a context of maturing sons and daughters, consistently encountering their loving Father, to have the best opportunity of experiencing that same love. I am convinced YOU are those people. Together we have the great privilege of hosting this beautiful exchange between a beloved child and their Father. What greater honor in life is there than that?!
With love and full belief in who God created you to be,
Mark