Ron Burns, pastor of New Covenant Church in Michigan says, “I have to pinch myself.” “The momentum we are seeing is crazy!” “We’ve been transformed into a growing church.” Paul Berteig of Genesis Church in Canada reports, “We are seeing lives transformed in our leadership and our congregation.” From Danni and James Howes of Christian Life Church in Australia: “Weekly coaching calls have completely changed our ministry.”
What do all of these pastors have in common? They are making a shift from a “pastoral-focused church” to an “apostolic-focused church.” They all went through the Q2Q Church Growth Track from Pastor’s Coach.
Pastors Coach (pastorscoach.com) is led by Dr. Michael Brodeur. He and his wife Diane planted a church in San Francisco in the 1980s that became the largest evangelical church the city had seen in a generation. He went on to oversee churches, and now coaches pastors and movements around the world such as Catch the Fire and Jesus Culture.
“The shift from pastoral to apostolic is crucial,” Dr. Brodeur says. “All the ‘five-fold’ gifts of Ephesians 4:11-12 are vital, but the apostolic must be primary. We focus on the biblical model of church health and growth, which is to develop healthy leaders and make disciples who reproduce, using small groups as the main vehicle for development and growth. Jesus had a small group! He focused on developing His disciples so in turn they could lead others and change the world.”
“This is the New Testament model. In most churches, members look to the pastor to do the ministry. We show pastors how to develop leaders and members who understand and fulfill God’s calling, serving according to their gifts and passions.”
Their church growth track uses Destiny Finder, an online tool they created to help people discover God’s calling (destinyfinder.com).
“It’s all about people development, which is really just another term for biblical discipleship,” he says. “But it needs to be done according a family model, not a factory model. Healthy things grow … so we focus on quality, and that produces quantity.”
Q2Q stands for Quality to Quantity and it begins with the pastors going through a “boot camp” for 12 weeks, with live weekly coaching calls, teachings on the essential concepts of church as family, destiny, small groups that multiply, dynamic culture, individual development and more. Then they take their leaders through a Destiny Finder small group, and then those leaders launch small groups for the rest of the church, all using an apostolic model that activates every member for ministry and multiplication.
“I get it,” says Mike Harding, senior pastor of Love Gospel Church in Arizona. “It’s not a program. It’s a total paradigm shift for ministry, out of traditionalism and into the leadership model and church building strategy that Jesus intended … my life was changed forever.”
They have a series of free live webinars on church health and growth March 28-April 8, and boot camps begin April 11. Visit pastorscoach.com/webinar.
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