Case in point. I took some ideas from Carl George’s book, Prepare Your Church for the Future, then I attended a Willow Creek seminar to see how this was fleshed out. For the next seven years, I proceeded to get in God’s way by recruiting, certifying and training every small group leader in our church. No one got into leadership without my approval. Moses had nothing on me.

Neither Carl nor Willow Creek are to blame for my lack of insight. Where they wrote “structure,” I read “control.” To be perfectly honest, I love to be in control. Not like, but love. I especially like to be in control of things that are beyond my control. This doesn’t actually work, but the delusion is sufficient.

Take the work of God. Jesus said to pray to the Lord of the harvest to bring forth laborers. The harvest is plentiful. The laborers are few. Do we really believe that? The way that most of us pastors go about doing church is the belief that there are plenty of laborers albeit lazy, untrained and unmotivated, but we have laborers. What we need is more of a harvest. If we planted more seeds and held more training opportunities and maintained the equipment and planned for the implications of a large harvest, then we might be ready for a harvest that God would probably possibly one day bring through our doors. But, since we’re not seeing much of that harvest, we had better train our laborers some more, if they would just get off of those pews, then the harvest would come flowing in. But, we’d better be ready and put up a couple more silos just in case.

As schizophrenic as that sounds, that’s exactly what we pastors do. We love to plan and prepare and train and train and train, because we have total control over that part. What we can’t control is the future. What we can’t control is the move of God. We can’t stand to sit around and wait, so we must prepare. One question answered leads us to 12 more that need answers. One day we’ll be ready for this thing. Right?

The harvest is here. The harvest is now. Jesus didn’t tell us to train an elite class of laborers. He said to get them into the field. The harvest is plentiful. But, if that’s true, then why aren’t they bursting through our doors.

Think about this. I attended four years of Bible College and three years of seminary which adequately prepared me for ministry in the church of 1970. I wasn’t prepared for the world of 1970, but the church of 1970. The problem is that I graduated from seminary in 1990. While my education provided an incredible biblical and doctrinal foundation, I was ill prepared for the culture I faced. I didn’t know how to bring in the harvest let alone lead others in doing so. I would venture to guess that other pastors have had similar experiences.

After much trial and error, what I have discovered is that the People of God filled with the Spirit of God and interacting with the Word of God is the most powerful force in the universe. The Body of Christ is the world’s only hope. The Church is called to reach out and bring in the harvest. The Church needs to discover what God has equipped them to do. Pastors need to do everything they can to release the Church into the world and to do everything they can to get out of the Church’s way so the harvest can be brought in.

Our church took a bold move last year. We invited anyone to start a small group, who was interested. We provided them with an orientation, a DVD-based curriculum, and a small group “buddy.” What we have seen in the past year is the change from 30% of our adults participating in small groups to 40% of our adults leading small groups over the course of the year. These groups love on each other, build each other up, study God’s Word and reach out to the world. We have not had to stamp out one bit of heresy. No one has joined a cult, and it didn’t create an epidemic of criticism or multi-level marketing.

What happened was that some very grateful members discovered that leading a small group was their passion, though they would never claim to be a leader or a teacher. What we’ve witnessed is adequately-equipped members reaching out to people and places we had never thought about in ways that we had never dreamed of.

Now, we haven’t seen our Sunday morning attendance or our offerings grow dramatically. But, we know that God’s Kingdom is expanding in ways that we haven’t seen.

Pastor, it’s time for you to get out of the way. Send the laborers into the harvest field. Give them what they need to go. But, one hint, it’s not a six-month seminar.