Hero Maker

by Dave Ferguson

  EVERYONE WANTS TO BE A HERO.

  YET ONLY A FEW UNDERSTAND THE

  POWER IN BEING A HERO MAKER.

  Hero or Hero Maker?

  I met Barry after he made this discovery, and he finished his thought: “Dave, I’ve put behind me the days of being the hero. I am making it my mission to dramatically change the trajectory of the lives of ten young leaders.” As of this writing, he’s found and invested in seven, and his hope is that they will be even more successful than he is.

  Barry is becoming what I am calling a hero maker.

  The term hero maker first came to my attention at the recommendation of Todd Wilson,2 my friend and coleader of the Exponential conference. Warren Bird and I (this book is written by both of us but will be in my—Dave Ferguson’s—voice) took Todd’s phrase and gave it this definition:

  HERO MAKER: A LEADER WHO SHIFTS FROM

  BEING THE HERO TO MAKING OTHERS THE

  HERO IN GOD’S UNFOLDING STORY.

  Todd also modeled the phrase for me. More than a decade ago, he came to me and said, “I will do all the behind-the-scenes work and run the operations if you will be the president and the onstage presence of the Exponential conference.”

  “It’s a deal,” I replied.

  Since that time, I have served as president and Todd has served as executive director of the Exponential conference, which has grown to be the largest church-planting conference in the world (that we know of). Many people think that since I’m the president and I stand on the stage and welcome everyone that I must be the genius behind it all. Not true. Todd and his team do most of the work (marketing, organization, registration, logistics), caring only about the mission and not who gets the credit. He creates the platform and then lets me stand on it. Todd Wilson is a hero maker.

  Along the way, Todd has also reminded me to quit trying to be the hero and instead to make heroes out of others. I remember a conversation sitting on a plane when he was looking at an article I had written that included a bar graph about one of our Easter services. More than ten thousand people had shown up at Community Christian Church, the church I lead in metro Chicago, and I was excited about that stat. Todd pointed to the article and reminded me of my dream when we planted the church: “I thought your dream was to see a movement of multiplying churches,” he said. “This article makes it sound like your dream is to be one church with a really big attendance.”

  The words stung, but Todd was right. I hadn’t intended to focus on growing only the church I was leading. Then Todd reminded me that the number of people being reached on that same Easter weekend through NewThing, the church-planting network we started, was more than fifty thousand. Todd pushed me again: “Dave, you should use a graph that tells the stories of what your church plants and church planters are doing, and not just what you and Community Christian Church are doing.” He was encouraging me to change from being the hero to being a hero maker.

  By the way, so that I don’t confuse you with my stories, let me explain that I wear three hats: I’m the lead pastor at Community Christian Church; I’m the visionary of NewThing, a network of multiplying churches; and I’m president of Exponential, best known for its church multiplication conferences.

  I tested my idea about whether hero-making leadership is essential to a multiplying movement on my Australian friend, Steve Addison. Steve has studied, written about, and understands better than anyone on the planet what it takes to start a movement of multiplying churches. He told me, “Dave, movements are started by leaders who have died to their own success.”

  This is not the thinking of the typical leader, pastor, or church planter. Yet that is how a hero maker thinks.

  Our challenge for you as a leader is, don’t settle for wanting to be a hero but instead discover what it means to be a hero maker. You might be a business leader like Barry or a pastor like me. You might be a volunteer leader of a group or a team like my coauthor, Warren. Whether you are leading ten people or ten thousand, we want you to maximize your leadership, make the greatest impact for Jesus and his kingdom, and join our multiplying movement by becoming a hero maker.

  Whether you are leading ten people or ten thousand, we want you to maximize your leadership and join our multiplying movement by becoming a hero maker.

  Hero Maker in Sections

  To help you clearly understand what it means to be a hero maker, we have divided the book into three parts.

  Part 1: A Hero-Making Challenge. My conversation with Todd Wilson and other global leaders brought a turning point in my leadership and now in the leadership of a growing number of other leaders around the world. We stopped asking the same old questions about how to grow a church and began to ask new questions: “What does it take to be a leader who multiplies leaders and disciples to the fourth generation?” and “What does it take to catalyze a movement of multiplying churches?” Since then, we’ve become even more specific: “How can we see the number of reproducing and multiplying churches in America go from 4% (where we are now) to a tipping point of 10% (where we want to be)?” At Exponential, we call it our four-to-ten mission. Our answers to each of these questions point us to the need for hero makers, because they have discovered the secret that results multiply through others and not through themselves.

  In the first section of Hero Maker, we refer to multiplying churches as Level 5 churches. If that’s new terminology, don’t worry. The gist of it is that Level 1 churches are declining in attendance, Level 2 are plateauing, Level 3 are growing, Level 4 are reproducing (adding a new campus or planting a new church), and Level 5 are multiplying (starting multiple outreaches that in turn each start multiple outreaches). If we focus on multiplication, we can achieve God-size impact and results. (If you want to see the five levels visualized, flip ahead to Figure 2.1.)

  Hero makers have discovered the secret that results multiply through others and not through themselves.

  In this first section, we challenge you to think about the questions you are asking and the leadership practices you are using and to reflect on whether those questions and practices are needed to meet the challenges ahead.

  Part 2: Five Essential Practices of Hero Making. This section is the heart of the book, and it introduces the hero maker model. The five practices are sequential, building on each other. To give you a glimpse of what is ahead, I’ve summarized all five practices by contrasting them with common leadership practices.

  1. Multiplication Thinking

  COMMON PRACTICE: leading until you’ve reached the limit of your time and energy.

  HERO-MAKING PRACTICE: dreaming big and strategically investing yourself in others to multiplying your impact.

  2. Permission Giving

  COMMON PRACTICE: leading with a tight rein on others.

  HERO-MAKING PRACTICE: making yes your default response as a leader.

  3. Disciple Multiplying

  COMMON PRACTICE: prioritizing personal growth.

  HERO-MAKING PRACTICE: investing in the work of helping others multiply apprentices.

  4. Gift Activating

  COMMON PRACTICE: making sure every slot is always filled.

  HERO-MAKING PRACTICE: releasing leaders to new opportunities as their gifts and skills grow.

  5. Kingdom Building

  COMMON PRACTICE: defining success by what you gather and acquire.

  HERO-MAKING PRACTICE: defining success by what you release and send out.

  For each of the five practices, I describe the biblical basis for the practice, highlighting it in Jesus’ life and ministry. I also offer numerous examples of people putting this practice to work. Plus we give you a simple tool you and your team can use, starting today. So we rotate between motivation and methodology, between theory and practice.

  Part 3: Hero Makers Get Results. In part 3, I give you an inspiring vision of what is possible through your leadership. In this third and final section, you’ll learn how to create a culture of hero making, and I’ll challenge you with a big dream
for what we all could do together. I close this section with some motivating words from a friend of mine and a hero maker, Pastor Oscar Muriu in Nairobi, Kenya (whom you’ll meet in chapter 4). We’ve also included a few appendixes to give you even more practical resources, which we summarize in the table of contents.

  Jesus the Hero Maker

  While hero maker is a term we are introducing to today’s leadership genre, it is based on ancient truths that we see consistently lived out in Jesus’ life and ministry. You can’t study Jesus’ ministry practices without seeing him as a hero maker, someone who puts the spotlight on others. First, Jesus puts the spotlight on God the Father. Then he puts the spotlight on the leaders around him, who in turn do likewise for others. Notice this multiplying-generation sequence of leaders in the gospel of Luke:3

  • In Luke 8:1–3, Jesus traveled around proclaiming the good news, taking the Twelve and others “with him” (the concept of diatribo that I’ll describe in chapter 7). That’s Jesus impacting a second generation of leadership.

  • In Luke 9:1–6, Jesus sent out the Twelve, giving them “power and authority” and the assignment “to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” That’s the second generation impacting a third generation of leadership.

  • In Luke 10:1–2, Jesus sent out seventy-two others on a similar mission, but he told them to pray for even more workers, emphasizing that “the workers are few.” That is four or more generations of leadership.

  The growth of God’s kingdom—all of God’s collective work around the world—seems to be in direct proportion to the number of called, trained, empowered “harvest hands,” as The Message translates Luke 10:2. So Jesus not only involves others in the mission, but he multiplies himself through others. And he tells them each not to pray for just one more worker but rather to ask the Lord of the harvest that the workers be many. Jesus was a hero maker, and his example challenges us to be the same.

  You Can Be a Hero Maker

  This book is about changing the world by changing others. Throughout these pages, I’ll remind you of the insight my friend Barry embodied: everyone wants to be a hero, but only a few understand the power in being a hero maker. Barry, like so many of the people you’ll encounter in this book, not only became a hero maker, but he had a hero maker who encouraged him to be a hero maker.

  I want to help you become a hero maker so you can help others be hero makers too.

  That is what I hope to do for you. I want to help you become a hero maker so you can help others be hero makers too. I am convinced that God wants you to become that type of world-changing leader. He wants to see you multiply your impact and legacy for the sake of seeing the people he loves find their way back to him. Turn the page and we will start with a secret that Jesus knew, passed on to his closest followers, and longs to pass on to you as well.

  CHAPTER 1

  Jesus’ Leadership Secret

  Big Idea: Hero makers have discovered that dying to self and living for God’s kingdom through others is the secret of multiplied results and greater impact.

  Want to know the secret?

  I’m not trying to be clever or sly with that question. But over the last twenty-five years, I’ve learned that there really is a secret to multiplying great leaders. It’s a secret for pastors and volunteer leaders alike. And it’s what leaders in business and social sectors are looking for. You might lead a megachurch or a small group, but this secret is scalable and will allow anyone to exponentially multiply his or her difference making. Not only is this leadership secret available to all of us, but if you keep reading, you can begin to apply it today.

  The Secret

  Long before I ever dreamed of starting and leading a church, I dreamed of starting and playing in the National Basketball Association. That’s pretty ambitious for a guy who’s five foot eleven and has always had the vertical leap of a middle-aged white guy! But like I said, it was a dream.

  You might lead a megachurch or a small group, but this secret is scalable and will allow anyone to exponentially multiply his or her difference making.

  My sons share my love of the game. They introduced me to The Book of Basketball,4 the definitive, 719-page book on the NBA by Bill Simmons. An award-winning sports writer, Simmons is one of the few people who could write a credible bible of basketball. Chapter 1 of Simmons’ book is titled “The Secret.” Simmons says there is a secret about basketball that almost no one realizes. He admits that he didn’t detect the secret even though he was a lifelong fan, veteran sportswriter, and viewer of thousands of professional basketball games. He didn’t understand the secret until he had a conversation with Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, best known for leading the Detroit Pistons to two NBA championships. (And Isiah is only six foot one, which gives me hope for the next NBA draft!)

  In an interview, Simmons asked Thomas about the secret to winning an NBA championship. Thomas paused and smiled, hinting that there’s definitely a secret to winning championships.

  “The secret of basketball,” Thomas finally said, “is that it’s not about basketball.”5

  This clearly wasn’t the response Simmons expected. Seeing his confusion, Thomas shared a few stories about the incredible chemistry on his team. And that chemistry was not unique to the Pistons; it was something the Lakers and Celtics teams each had at their peak. Thomas said that he learned the secret when his team made an in-season trade of a star, high-scoring player for an aging, less-stellar performer. That player knew and understood the secret to winning. The Pistons gave up Adrian Dantley, who had a preoccupation with his own statistics, for little-known Mark Aguirre, who was a childhood buddy of Thomas. More important, though, Aguirre saw his role as doing anything he could to make the rest of the team successful. That trade didn’t make sense on paper, but it led to amazing results. The Pistons turned their season around and went on to win the championship.

  Thomas drove home his point. “Being the best in basketball is really all about team,” he told Simmons. “Everyone must put the team first.” Recalling the championship years, Thomas observed, “Lots of times, on our team, you couldn’t tell who the best player in the game was. . . . It’s the only way to win.”6

  Most people think winning in basketball is all about having the star players who score the most points, get the most rebounds, have the highest shooting percentage, and have all the right statistics. But Thomas believes that even having all that doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, what he suggests runs counter to the prevailing wisdom. Instead of star players who are individually successful, the real secret to success in basketball is having players who are willing to sacrifice personal success for the sake of the team, even forgetting about their own stats at times.

  To win, you need people who will forfeit their own success for the greater benefit of their team. That’s the secret to winning over the long haul.

  “You cannot get seduced by numbers and stats,” Simmons concludes.7 “It’s not about statistics and talent as much as making teammates better and putting the greatness of your team ahead of yourself. That’s really it.”8

  Jesus Knew the Secret

  Jesus had a team. His team was the disciples. Jesus knew the secret and never got seduced by numbers and stats. He was explicit about his desire to equip his followers to do the heroic: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12, emphasis added). Jesus told his followers that he was investing his life in them so they would do greater things than he would. He was setting them up so they could reach more people, go more places, and make more disciples than he ever would during his three years of earthly ministry.

  Jesus told his followers that he was investing his life in them so they would do greater things than he would.

  Paul Knew the Secret

  The apostle Paul begins chapter 12 in his first letter to the Corinthians by, in effect, asking us a question: “D
o you want to know the secret?” It’s a secret he has learned not about basketball but about the kingdom of God and how each of us has something to contribute to God’s work in his kingdom. He writes, “Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed” (1 Cor. 12:1, emphasis added).

  Paul goes on to reveal and explain the secret in verse 12. He explains that the church has a specific design, a way in which it is intended to work. It’s a body. It’s a team. And whether we’re looking at the church locally or globally, the entire church is created by God to work together as a team, using everyone’s Spirit-empowered gifts and all other resources to build up the whole body and to accomplish our God-given mission.

  The “secret” is fairly simple, right? Rather than focusing on our individual success or the success of our local church, we need to think about the greater work of God’s kingdom—all the places where he is acknowledged as Lord. That whole takes priority over any individual part. You and I are part of a mission that is bigger than what either of us can accomplish by ourselves, no matter how gifted we might be. The kingdom Jesus gave his life for is far bigger than the local church you serve or the denomination or network you’re part of. As we each contribute to God’s team, it’s a win for the kingdom of God as more people are added, regardless of which local congregation they land in.

  Thinking this way, as simple as it sounds, radically transforms our approach to leadership. Previously, whenever I’d read any of the hundred-plus kingdom references in the New Testament, my first thought would be how that applies to my own context, to Community Christian Church. Now when I read kingdom, I try to imagine our church and the churches down the road, my friend’s church in downtown New York, the thirty-two-member rural church in Oklahoma, the underground church in China, and all the other global churches within God’s kingdom.