The Mentoring Church

How Pastors and Congregations Cultivate Leaders

Phil A. Newton

• Publisher: Kregel Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780825444647
• eBook ISBN: 9780825487507
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Ministry Book of the Year--The Gospel Coalition 2017 Book AwardsThe critical missing element in Christian mentoring today: the congregation "Bringing up future leaders isn't just the job of the pastor but of the whole congregation. This is an urgently needed book in churches today."
--R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological SeminaryYoung, emerging leaders of the church, many of whom have gone through leadership training and traditional mentorship programs, still too often find themselves unprepared for the realities of ministry. Many leave the ministry altogether, overwhelmed.Phil Newton reveals a critical gap: single-source mentorship is incomplete. Mentoring must involve the congregation, not just senior pastors, in order to bring forth mature, resilient leaders prepared for all that ministry entails.The solid, practical solutions in The Mentoring Church offer churches of any size both the vision for mentoring future leaders and a workable template to follow. With insightful consideration of theological, historical, and contemporary training models for pastor/church partnerships, Newton is a reliable guide to developing a church culture that equips fully prepared leaders.

CHAPTER 1

HEALTHY CHURCHES NEED HEALTHY LEADERS

While ministering in Brazil, a pastor invited me to preach in his evening worship service. It happened to be “pastor appreciation day,” so I witnessed what seemed to be genuine affection for the pastor. Lively music, songs by the children’s choir, and a presentation preceded my sermon. But I knew that I was in trouble when I stood to expound the Scriptures and noticed that my translator did not have a Bible with him. After borrowing a Portuguese Bible, I asked him to turn to Titus so that he could read the text before I began the sermon. Although a faithful church member, he couldn’t find Titus. I knew enough Portuguese to help out and ease his embarrassment. I noticed that many in the congregation sitting in the straight-backed pews had as much trouble as my translator finding Titus. Some searched for it in the Old Testament. Grieved, I realized that this pastor and church neglected biblical exposition and Bible learning. While they were lively, they were not healthy. Noise and movement do not equate to church health.

Yet that’s not a problem localized in Brazil or in other countries. I’ve witnessed similar experiences, without quite the liveliness, in the United States. Some pastors react to the unhealthy congregations by making a decision to plant a church. I know that personally, since I did the same after nine years of pastoring unhealthy churches.

No casual observer of the state of Christianity in North America would squabble over the need for new churches. Yet merely multiplying churches fails to answer the need for effective Great Commission churches (Matt. 28:18–20). Missionary leader David Platt points out that far too many churches simply assume knowledge of the gospel without admitting that many of their adherents have never understood and believed the gospel.¹ Ed Stetzer, a leading church planter and strategist, echoes Platt’s concern by warning that evidence of genuine discipleship seems unnecessary for many churches to call someone a Christ-follower.² We need more than just new churches.

While the need for church multiplication rises, so does the need for churches to maintain gospel-centered focus and faithfulness.³ Apart from such focus and faithfulness, a church remains unhealthy. So then, what is a healthy church? Washington DC pastor Mark Dever explains, “A healthy church is a congregation that increasingly reflects God’s character as his character has been revealed in his Word.”⁴ Healthy churches should be normal, yet far too often churches confuse busy activity—like that church in Brazil—with the spiritual health that grows in corporate Christian character. Unfortunately, sometime pastoral leaders seem paralyzed at shepherding ailing congregations toward robust health.

While assessing North America as a mission field, theologian Jeff Iorg admits that many churches “have lost their mission, identity, focus, and in some cases, their credibility.” He wisely reflects, “But do not dismiss the Church too quickly. God will sustain the Church and churches, both universally and locally (Rev. 5:9–10).”⁵ Great Commission churches must be different from those that have slipped into unhealthy patterns and practices. They will need to return, Iorg asserts, to proclaim the biblical gospel, raise membership standards, practice church discipline, maintain doctrinal fidelity, embrace a missional mindset, and model Christian community. Additionally, they will need to show creativity in adapting to the cultural context of their communities.⁶ Pastoral service in churches that take seriously the call of Jesus in the Great Commission requires a deliberate approach to training and equipping the leaders who serve them.

In considering the global front, David Platt explains his desire as leader of Southern Baptist’s International Mission Board: “We’re working and pleading with God to raise up multitudes of workers,” so that they might be funneled through the denomination’s mission agency. While mission leaders can troll colleges and seminaries for potential workers, the multiplication of future missionaries will only take place through healthy churches developing and training potential missionaries.⁷

ORGANIC LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

The development of leaders for the early church took place organically rather than institutionally. The orientation of the church with small beginnings in Jerusalem and gradually expanding into Judea, Samaria, and the rest of the world, shows an intentional thrust in fulfilling the Great Commission (Acts 1:8). Jesus prepared his disciples to proclaim the gospel, and to establish communities of believers throughout the Roman Empire that would continue to do the same.

Clearly, as North Carolina pastor J. D. Greear explains the early practice, “God’s strategy for fulfilling the commission of Acts 1:8 was the planting of Acts 2:42–47 style churches in every city of the world.”⁸ We admire the way that the early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” The simplicity of community, generosity, service, table fellowship, and gratitude distinguished believers from their neighbors and heightened their gospel witness. The Lord raised up leaders to serve the expanding network of churches from that kind of lively discipling community atmosphere, as we will see in the next three chapters.

Does that approach seem too far-fetched for the sophisticated churches and strategies of the twenty-first century? While we have better organizational structures to help with developing pastoral leaders, we cannot improve upon the strength of healthy congregations birthing healthy leaders through a combination of pastoral oversight, congregational mentoring, and making the best use of academic training.

MENTORING NEW LEADERS

Although the vocabulary that explains mentors and trainees has expanded in our generation, for twenty centuries Christian workers have been mentored and trained to start new congregations and to serve as catalysts for reviving others. Those who would lead in pastoring churches—locally or globally—need to be trained, at minimum, in apostolic doctrine, biblical theology, proclamation, ecclesiology, missiology, and spiritual leadership. We most often turn to the academy to provide this sort of intensive training. Yet, the New Testament demonstrates that the kind of training necessary for healthy pastoral leaders in any setting finds added effectiveness when rooted in the context of healthy models of community. As one regularly involved in training Christian leaders, Manhattan pastor Tim Keller’s explanation of the importance of community makes the connection between the local church and ministry training.

Community shapes the nature of our witness and engagement in mission … shapes the development of our character … shapes our ethics and the spoken and unspoken rules that guide our behavior … is the key to true spirituality as we grow to know God by learning to know one another in relationships … [and] is perhaps the main way that we bear witness to the world, form Christ-like character, practice a distinctly Christian style of life, and know God personally.⁹

The practice of forming new communities of disciples, baptizing, and continuing to teach the disciples in community implies the need for effective leadership in these Great Commission tasks (Matt. 28:19–20).¹⁰ Paul spoke of the pastoral and leadership gifts of Christ to the church (Eph. 4:10–16), “as [Jesus] supplies the church with everything necessary to promote the growth of the body until it matches his own fullness,” as F. F. Bruce explained.¹¹ These gifts need cultivating and maturing in their use.¹² Jesus set the pattern: Spiritual leaders working through community train leaders who will shepherd, plant, and revitalize discipling communities, who replicate the same work.

How will new leaders prepare for the challenges of their ministry? Quite often, the training will take place in an academic setting. However, British author Stuart Murray, in discussing training church planters, points out the gaps that exist in theological education due to an emphasis on theory rather than application in theology. Then he makes a useful point that “perhaps partnerships between local churches, networks, and training institutes can provide leadership training which will equip church planters with theological insights, spiritual resources, and practical skills to plant churches with solid foundations and the potential for creative reproduction.”¹³ His observation goes beyond church planters to include the broad scope of pastoral and missionary leadership. If church leaders are to be trained for their global tasks, then the training must eclipse the theoretical to embrace the experiential. It is not that the theoretical has no place in training—it does. Yet, while the academy normally appears best suited to expand on the theoretical, the local church brings theory into application and experience.

While preparing for ministry as a college student, my involvement in local churches shaped me spiritually, provided much-needed accountability, and gave me regular outlets for exercising my gifts in the body. Unfortunately, when I moved away to begin theological studies, my pattern lacked this same level of involvement. While my wife and I regularly attended church, we made lots of weekend trips to visit with family and friends, delaying settled involvement in the rhythm of a congregation. I failed to realize at the time how necessary the church was for our personal growth as well as our preparation for ministry. And yet, I was preparing to pastor! The emphasis on seminary without the intensity of congregational life diminished my theological and pastoral preparation.

I realize that many seminaries seek to bring the practical, experiential aspects of training into the curriculum. For instance, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBC) in Wake Forest, North Carolina does this through their Equip Network, as they combine an academic approach with local church pastoral mentoring. Reformed Theological Seminary has eight campuses strategically located, so that many students can attend seminary while continuing training in their home churches. Seminaries and Bible colleges hold special importance in ministry training. They address necessary subjects such as biblical languages, theology, hermeneutics, and homiletics. Yet the academy is not the church—the sphere in which those aspects of training will be most exercised. The partnership between academy and church both doing what they do best to train leaders, as proposed by Murray, presents an effective training model for equipping leaders.

JESUS’S EXAMPLE

In his classic work, The Training of the Twelve, A. B. Bruce, a nineteenth-century Scottish pastor and theology professor, asserted that Jesus’s statement in John 17:6, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world,” implied that “the principal part of His own earthly ministry” involved training those who would carry on the work he had initiated.¹⁴ Bruce made two important points that define what is meant by leadership training. These points serve as a helpful platform for exploring pastors and congregations mentoring leaders.

First, as a trainer, Jesus not only wanted disciples around him but also wanted them close and attentive to him. In that way, he might train them to make disciples as they replicated what they had intimately witnessed in his life. Effective mentors seek to replicate their own lives and ministries with those they train. Much of the replication happens in the full-orbed relationships of community, where real-life issues bring to surface the full application of the gospel to life. Only by life in community do trainees see the depth of genuineness in their mentor’s life.

During my college days, two local pastors who were about the same age served two of the city’s strongest churches. The first pastor spent an enormous amount of time investing in young men preparing for ministry. He kept them close, met with them for discussion, invited them along at special events, and made himself accessible to them. He made sure that they were woven into the fabric of the congregation. Even with his large church, he knew them all by name. Forty years later, I often run into men whom he mentored and shaped for ministry and missions.

The other pastor provided a superb example from the pulpit for biblical exposition but his rigid schedule seemed to have little time for young men preparing for ministry. While he gained more notoriety for his pulpit skills than the former pastor and spoke in many large churches, the former impacted a virtual army of pastors, missionaries, church planters, and Christian leaders. The latter eventually pastored one of the largest churches in the country, but the former multiplied his ministry exponentially by the time spent mentoring m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Sixteen, Called, and Clueless
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Healthy Churches Need Healthy Leaders
• Chapter 2 Jesus on Mentoring
• Chapter 3 Mentoring Communities
• Chapter 4 Paul as Mentor
• Chapter 5 Magisterial Mentoring—16th Century
• Chapter 6 Modeling Ministry—17th & 18th Centuries
• Chapter 7 Training Communities—19th & 20th Centuries
• Chapter 8 A Theological Rationale: The Church in God’s Economy
• Chapter 9 Leaders Shaping Leaders
• Chapter 10 Models: Ecclesiology Boot Camp
• Chapter 11 Models: A Sending Church
• Chapter 12 Models: Face-to-Face
• Chapter 13 Models: Church and Academy in Partnership
• Chapter 14 A Template for Training Leaders
• Conclusion: Now It’s Your Turn
• Appendix: Suggested Books for Pastoral Training
• Selected Bibliography