If you are going to change the world, the world changes one block at a time, one neighbourhood at a time, one community at a time. Until you are effecting your community you are never going to change the world.
Change a Region, Change a Nation
What I have observed is that if there is one lead church or one pace-setting church in a community it tends to inspire the behaviour of other churches. Then, the collective membership of those on-fire churches really do effect a community enough for it to begin to effect its region, its county, and then its state, country, and world.
I was in a community recently where there is quantifiable evidence that the crime rate has gone down in an area where a whole bunch of churches have gathered together. I also think of the efforts of Jim Tomberlin, one of our pastors here at Willow. When he used to lead a church in Colorado Springs, he initiated a network of like-minded Colorado Springs churches that decided they were going to do their best to eradicate homelessness from the metropolitan Colorado Springs area, and they made substantial progress on that front.
Then there's Matthew Barnett, pastor of The Dream Center in downtown Los Angeles. Through the collected efforts of many church leaders in that area, they established neighbourhood ministries in a concentrated urban area that have dramatically affected homelessness, unemployment, and hunger. That has effected their neighbourhoods and continues to spread through their region.
Change the World?
During a recent interview, a reporter asked if it's reasonable to believe that something as deep and pervasive as worldwide transformation can actually be traced back to a church leader. My answer then, and now, is yes. To seriously consider the alternative - pessimism and a "why-try?" attitude - is unconscionable for a serious-minded Christian.
I have to be able to wake up every day and say, "It is possible for a church to change, and it is possible that a community can change, and the world can change."
I believe it is possible by faith. I believe it is going to take far more than just me and far more than just my lifetime. Mostly what I am trying to do is to set the strategy for something that may take us another 50 years to achieve. But it is possible, and necessary. We are mandated to do it and the alternative - giving up -is unthinkable.
I want to focus my expendable, disposable income, an inordinate amount of my time and my energy toward the first domino in the world-change equation: Pastors. Because we are never going to see the end result unless we trip that first domino.
Now What?
Leaders ask me all the time, "Now that I know who I am and what I was born to do, now what?" And my answer is consistently the same: Take responsibility for your own leadership development. Be the best leader you can possibly be. Read everything on leadership you can possibly read, go to leadership workshops and conferences, find a leader who is ahead of you and get mentored, and continue to lead at the highest level you can lead.
Do all these things not because you'll add numerical growth to your church, earn a higher degree of respect from your peers, or because it might add a few more abbreviations to your title. Do them because the One who redeemed you didn't make a mistake when He entrusted you with the gift of leadership. Do them because the alternative is unthinkable. Do them because it's the single greatest contribution a leader can make toward the equation that can eventually change the world.
Reprinted with permission from WILLOW magazine
