"Exponential" has pushed me into high gear!

The corners of the book are bent, the cover is scuffed, and the page edges are green and brown.  You would think that I dragged this book through the woods or something!  Well, I did.  While this is not a post about deer hunting, I have found that I just cannot sit in a tree stand for more than an hour without something to do.  So as I packed up for this season's two day bowhunting camping trip, I grabbed my fresh copy of Dave & Jon Ferguson's book, Exponential.  I believe I received the book from my friend Dale Schaeffer who planted Bridgeway Community Church in Pekin, Illinois.  I attended a workshop where he shared the leadership development principles outlined in this book.  After hearing him, I was hooked. 

While sitting in a tree stand for two days, I was mostly glued to this story of how to do church.  Incidentally, five minutes after I finished the book and put it away, and one hour before heading home, a nice deer walked down the trail.  I will spare you the details, but just know that my family has meat in the freezer!

Dave & Jon Ferguson planted Community Christian Church in Chicago and have experienced explosive growth and an amazing move of God resulting in thousands of changed lives. Exponential: how you and your friends can start a missional movement is their story.  The idea is simple:  focus on reproducing leaders and a church will grow exponentially.  Like many ideas, it sounds so simple, but in practice is difficult!

I noticed three concepts that stood out as consistent cultural practices in the life of their church.  First, their church is built on a theology and strategy of reproduction.  Rightly so, the Fergusons began with the end in mind - following the example of Moses, Jesus, Paul, and the implicit history of Christianity, they realized that a great and godly church must reproduce!  Christians must reproduce Christians; groups must reproduce groups; churches must reproduce churches, and movements must reproduce movements!  Beginning with that end in mind, Dave and Jon built their programs and structures around the idea of effective reproduction!  Genius!

Second, I heard loud and clear their plan for leadership development.  While this sounds like a very organizational term, we again see the example of Moses, Jesus and Paul as they developed future leaders.  If we need churchy language for it, we could call it "discipleship through mentoring, aimed at ministry and evangelism."  (Or we can just call it Leadership Development for Jesus)  At Community Christian, they are focused on developing godly, competent leaders, starting at the most basic level of small group life.  Potential leaders are identified and then asked to be small group apprentices.  Since this is the regular practice of the church, everyone knows that the apprentice is preparing to lead.  And they go from there, gradually promoting leaders in a system in which every leader is both mentoring and being mentored, developing both their skills and their devotion to Jesus.  This system is not only applied to fellowship/discipleship groups, but also to ministry teams.  I loved their description of a campus worship leader introducing an apprentice leader to the congregation, telling them that the apprentice is going to lead "the next song."

This idea inspires me!  It makes me want to push all of our church's LIFE group leaders to identify and begin training an apprentice.  We struggle so much in this area of identifying and developing group leaders. 

Interestingly, the books features the story of Troy McMahon, who started out as an apprentice small group leader, moved up to become a pastor on staff and then eventually moved to Kansas City to plant a church in the north suburbs.  And I know him!  He participated in the interdenominational church planting fellowship in which I participated!!!!  Small world!

The third recurring concept I discovered was that small group life is not only a leadership development system, but is also the connectional system for the church.  I know, I know, I should know this already, that growing churches help people to connect in small groups.  This just affirmed it once again that small groups are massively important.  It doesn't matter what we call them, but our people will only really connect with each other to the degree that they are active in a smaller group.  (This also helps to show the relational skills or lack thereof of potential leaders).  They believe in small groups so strongly that they state that, "small groups are the epicenter of community life in a church." (page 102)

Can you tell that I really liked this model?  Now I want to go to the annual Exponential Conference!

I am going to add two more of the Fergusons' books to my to-be-read pile.  First, I want to check out their Apprentice Field Guide in order to learn more about how to initiate a church-wide apprenticeship program.  Next, I want to read The Big Idea in order to learn how to craft worship services that really teach and connect well.

By the way - there is one more idea in this book that I just cannot forget!  Check out my next post for that idea.