Church leaders periodically need a checkup to measure the progress of equipping in their churchwide culture.  It’s frequently helpful to get back to the basics of equipping and to remember that there is much more to being an equipping church than simply getting more people to volunteer and fill slots. In fact, a church may have an abundance of volunteers and yet no one is being equipped or growing spiritually. An equipping church is focused on helping everyone in the congregation discover his or her best place of service, inside and outside of the church walls, and to grow and be discipled through service. Here is a true-false quiz, adapted from The Equipping Church Guidebook (with thanks to the authors for allowing us to use it here), that may be helpful in gauging whether your church is moving toward the goal of being an equipping church:

Decide whether each of the following statements is true or false.

The ultimate goal of an equipping ministry system is to…

__ meet the need for workers in the various programs of the church.
__ care for the underprivileged and displaced of the community.
__ increase retention of and giving among members.
__ provide personal fulfillment through ministry.
__ help individuals mature spiritually by using their God-given gifts to serve each other and the community, so that the whole church can attain the maturity that God intended. 

While the first four answers are worthy activities, the only fully true answer is the last sentence, according to Ephesians 4:11-12. Often, our churches get caught up in the mechanics of systems, culture change, programs, and projects and can lose sight of the end goal: to help individuals become spiritually mature through using their gifts. This end goal can only be accomplished through a clear set of values held by the leadership of the church. These values include prayer, embracing the priesthood of all believers, comprehensive spiritual gifts discovery, intentionality, and sustained team leadership.

For equipping to be fully embraced by any church, the leadership must be willing to go the distance with a comprehensive system and not simply insert programs and approaches that have limited scope, such as offering a gift discovery process without the accompanying biblical teaching. Adapting equipping values and principles is never a fast process nor a quick fix for long-term problems. It takes time, resources, visible leadership, and a point person who leads through a team.

Many churches have a strong desire to become more equipping and provide a book study, teach a short-term class, or administer a spiritual gifts assessment tool. They soon discover that no more people are engaged in ministry than there were before the flurry of equipping activities. They become discouraged and view equipping as one more failed church program. For the churches that are successful in birthing an equipping culture, they have discovered that the effort takes much prayer, a team of committed equipping advocates, and at least 18 months for equipping principles to take hold.

Many churches have years and years of habits and processes that need to be unlearned and unraveled, and it is never a fast or easy process to say goodbye to bits of the culture that have become routine. One pastor recently commented to me that “what was routine in our church had become rotten, and we recognized that the way we had always done things needed to change.” This pastor knew that change would take time and that a wholesale change in culture would be time-consuming but extremely healthy. Perhaps this is a good time to examine where your church stands in its equipping culture and to take the short true-false quiz above to be reminded of why we are equipping leaders in the first place. It may not be an easy or fast process, but if developing mature disciples of Christ is your end goal, it is both biblical and healthy.

“I just want to say 'Congrats' and especially 'Thank you!!!' I love The Inside Track and Tuesday’s Tip. Keep building the kingdom!”

— Linda Sjerven,
     Manchester, MO