Hero Maker

by Dave Ferguson

  You might be like Warren. You’re reading this book and aspiring to be a hero maker, but you simply haven’t been in a leadership or church setting where this is normative. You want to learn. You’ve listened to teaching and have even taken great notes. You’ve put into practice what you have learned, but you were simply never taught hero-making practices.

  Then let me say it again: you can be a hero maker. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your background is, or what your title or role may be. You can multiply the kingdom’s influence by investing in the lives of those around you. Want to know how? It starts by learning to think multiplication (which I guarantee you can do, even if your math skills aren’t the greatest). That’s the first of five practices I will show you in the next section, and as with each practice, I’ll give you a simple tool so you can begin to implement it immediately.

  Are you ready to quit trying to be the hero? Are you ready to start hero making? Then you’re ready for the next section of this book. I think of it as an apprenticeship with Jesus, focusing on how movement-making leadership works. In chapters 5 through 9, you’ll discover the five essential practices for being a leader who multiplies leaders. I believe these practices are critical for maximizing your impact, because:

  • These are the practices Jesus applied.

  • They are what we find in movement-making churches, both historical and contemporary.

  • They are affirmed by Leadership Network research.

  • They are the consensus of a think tank of leaders from Level 4 and 5 churches, convened by Exponential.

  Turn the page and let’s get started!

  Hero Maker Discussion Questions

  OPEN

  • Who has been a hero maker to you? (Not a hero but a hero maker.) Think of someone who has unselfishly invested in you to help you become better. Tell the story.

  DIG

  • Read Mark 4:26–34 (the parables of the seeds) and Matthew 13:33 (the parable of the yeast). How do each of these parables illustrate that multiplication is a part of kingdom growth?

  • Maybe it was eye-opening that Jesus focused three-quarters of his leadership and ministry on the Twelve, not on the crowds. How will this understanding impact your own leadership?

  REFLECT

  • The Gospels tell us that Jesus spent more ministry time with the few than with the many, by a ratio of three to one. What is your ratio?

  • If hero makers create a platform and then invite other people to stand on it, what can you do today to create such a platform and invite others to stand on it?

  CHAPTER 5

  Multiplication Thinking

  Big Idea: The practice of multiplication thinking is a shift from thinking that ministry happens through my own leadership to thinking that ministry happens through multiplied leaders. Multiplication thinking requires that we dream big and use simple tools, like a dream napkin.

  Luke Skywalker needed Obi-Wan Kenobi.

  Rocky Balboa needed Mickey Goldmill.

  Harry Potter needed Dumbledore.

  Katniss Everdeen needed Haymitch Abernathy.

  Frodo Baggins needed Gandalf.

  Heroes are made and not born. For every hero, there is a hero maker.

  The Hero’s Journey

  Think of some of your all-time favorite books, or remember the movies you love to watch again and again. Many of these great stories are remarkably familiar: an unlikely hero embarks on a journey that has been thrust upon him or her. The hero is ill-equipped for all that lies ahead but meets a mentor or helper who offers wisdom, tools, or the courage to journey on. The hero makes allies and enemies, and maybe even falls in love.

  Heroes are made and not born. For every hero, there is a hero maker.

  Then comes the ordeal, in which the emerging hero makes the ultimate choice to sacrifice for the greater good. In the end, it all pays off and, having accomplished the heroic, the hero returns back to where he or she started.

  In literary circles, this is known as the hero’s journey. In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, American mythologist Joseph Campbell popularized the common journey of every hero and summarized it in twelve stages (see Figure 5.1). Campbell said it is at stage 4, early in the journey, that the hero meets a mentor. The mentor gives the hero the guidance and tools to leave the ordinary and move into the extraordinary. The mentor is a hero maker.

  FIGURE 5.1

  The guidance provided by the hero maker includes giving the emerging hero a vision of a greater cause, a more important battle, or a bigger dream.

  • Obi-Wan Kenobi didn’t just train Luke Skywalker how to use the Force; he trained him how to lead the rebellion and overthrow the Empire.

  • Mickey didn’t just train Rocky how to box; he trained him how to inspire his city and eventually his country.

  • Dumbledore didn’t just teach Harry Potter magic; he taught him how to build an army of students to fight Voldemort.

  • Haymitch Abernathy didn’t just train Katniss Everdeen how to survive the Hunger Games; he trained her how to lead a revolution against the oppression of the Capital for all the districts.

  • Gandalf didn’t just recruit Frodo Baggins for a journey; he inspired him to lead a diverse fellowship committed to overthrowing evil.

  We see this pattern of hero making across Scripture as well. Who can forget the hero-making role that Moses played with Joshua, or that Naomi played with Ruth, or that Mordecai played with Esther, or that Elijah played with Elisha? Each of these hero makers are investing in their apprentices, and not only training them but also giving them a vision of God’s greater story.

  Hero Makers Live and Teach Multiplication Thinking

  This first hero-making practice has two applications: first, you must live it out; second, you must also pass it on to your apprentices. I call this practice multiplication thinking. It’s truly a paradigm shift in how you understand your part in the mission of Jesus.

  Multiplication thinking is most often catalyzed by the vision of a greater cause, a more important battle, or a bigger dream.

  FIGURE 5.2

  I was meeting with Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, in his office in Americus, Georgia, when he looked me in the eye and asked, “Don’t you think everyone deserves a simple, decent place to live?” There was no disputing the truth of his vision for making sure everyone had a roof over their head. Immediately I could feel the adrenaline rushing through my body. I had no idea how to do it, but I knew it had to be done! It was the compelling cause and big dream of Millard Fuller that catalyzed his multiplication thinking: he couldn’t do it on his own; he couldn’t launch one construction company that could do this; the best and only way to accomplish this vision was to mobilize multiplying numbers of volunteers. His big dream coupled with multiplication thinking is what allowed Habitat for Humanity to become the biggest homebuilder in the world.

  In chapter 2, I told you about the paradigm-shifting challenge I received to dream bigger: “Take your current dream for your church and multiply it by one million.” Doing the math, I took my dream of reaching one thousand people, multiplied it by one million, and got one billion people! I knew I couldn’t do that myself or through my church. It pushed me to multiplication thinking and to wondering, “How can I multiply my efforts not just through one person but through hundreds, maybe thousands or tens of thousands, of leaders? And how can I help start hundreds and thousands of churches?” That big dream pushed me into a new kind of multiplication thinking.

  This is the first of our five practices, and in this chapter we’ll also explain how Jesus used it in his leadership and then give you a simple tool to do it with too.

  FIGURE 5.3

  Jesus Taught a Multiplication Mindset

  Our world desperately needs a multiplied number of heroes! We need heroic difference makers who aren’t afraid to step out and make an impact in the lives of people—kids, students, the poor, those struggling with addictions, the marginalized, those af
flicted with wealth, business leaders, and more. One multifaceted hero will never be enough to speak to that much diversity. I love how Tim Keller, in launching a New York City-based church-planting center through Redeemer Presbyterian Church, has repeatedly said that no single church can reach everyone. So they announced to every denominational and nondenominational church planter: if you love Jesus, the Scriptures, the gospel, and the city, we’ll train you to plant a church. Redeemer is still doing that today and seeing multiple generations of reproduction.

  But even more than we need heroes, we need hero makers who think big, who see the scale of God’s dream and realize, “There is far more that God wants me to do than I can do all by myself.”

  Even more than we need heroes, we need hero makers who think big!

  Even as Jesus called his first apprentices, he started talking about multiplication. When he said, “Come, follow me,” the rest of his sentence was “and I will send you out to fish for people” (Mark 1:17).

  What did that mean? The next four chapters will offer many examples of what Jesus did to mentor them “to fish for people,” but here let me comment on what that meant in terms of scale. When he first called these apprentices, he performed a miracle, helping them to catch “such a large number of fish that their nets began to break” (Luke 5:6).

  Later Jesus told them they would likewise reach a huge number of men, women, and children. In Acts 1:8 he said, in effect, “I don’t want you to think in terms just of Jerusalem. Don’t even limit yourselves to this region, nor to people with your economic or religious background. Actually, by the power of the Holy Spirit that I’ll be sending you, I want you to be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. Yes, a handful of people will connect with millions, and later with billions.”

  Think about it. That promise was the last thing Jesus said before he left planet Earth, before they would go out and share the good news without him in this world as their coach. He cast this big dream: “My Spirit is going to be inside you, and it will give you the courage to do what you would never be able to do on your own. You will be willing to die for this cause. With my Spirit inside you, we are going to take this good news movement from here in Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the very ends of the earth.”

  Can you imagine their mouths gaping wide? “Where?” “How?” The angel shows up, and I can imagine him saying, “C’mon, to the ends of the earth, boys! Go get ’em!” They are walking away, still musing. “How? How? How can we do that?” Then somewhere it hits them: “What if we multiplied through others what Jesus did with us?” A multiplication mindset. And as long as the church has kept that big dream in the forefront and understood the practice of multiplication thinking, the movement has advanced, goodness has prevailed, truth has triumphed, and people have found their way back to God. May that ever be the case!

  When you study Jesus’ training of the Twelve, you see that he modeled in many ways what he later taught them in Acts 1:8. They did literally take the gospel all over the country: they spoke to Jews and Gentiles, Greeks, Romans, and foreigners, men and women, rich and poor, slave and free. His commission here just affirmed that they should keep doing what they had been doing, even if now on a global scale!

  Dream Big!

  Let me share something I have discovered. The very act of dreaming big will change how you think, how others around you think, and ultimately how you behave. But the struggle is that we are busy with our lives, our leadership, our ministry, and our church. We get stuck doing the work of ministry, and we forget about the bigness of our God. Futurist Alvin Toffler said something that pulls me out of the muck and mire of trying to be the hero and helps me focus on hero making: “When you are taking care of the little things, think about the big things so the little things go in the right direction.” Go ahead and read that again and let it sink in. When we are in the grind of doing ministry, starting a new church, or leading a church, it is easy to not think about the big picture and instead to focus on just what’s in front of us. However, by focusing on only what’s in front of us, we will dwindle our leadership potential and oftentimes concern ourselves with only survival and growth (Levels 1–3) instead of the big picture of multiplication (Levels 4–5). We need to step back and see the bigger dream.

  We get stuck doing the work of ministry, and we forget about the bigness of our God.

  One of the guys who pushed me constantly to dream bigger was Lyle Schaller. If you don’t know the name Lyle Schaller, do me a favor and google him. Lyle wrote fifty-five books, edited forty-four others (that stat is from Warren Bird, who wrote a book about Schaller),22 was called by Christianity Today “the dean of church consultants,” and was once voted “the most influential Protestant leader in America.”23 Lyle also happened to live in the same town I did and came to Community Christian’s very first service. We shared a love for the church and became friends. I loved that old guy!

  One of the reasons I loved him was because over and over he would prod me by looking me in the eye and saying, “Dave, your biggest problem is that I have a bigger vision for your church than you do!” And every time he said that, the dream for my church would get bigger. And that bigger dream would force me into multiplication thinking and asking myself how I could multiply more leaders in more places.

  I thought I was the only one Lyle picked on. Not true. I was listening to Craig Groeschel of Life Church, currently the largest church in the United States, give a talk titled “Expanding Your Leadership Capacity.” He told a story about an old church consultant: “Over and over this consultant would give me grief by looking me right in the eye and saying, ‘Craig, your biggest problem is that I have a bigger vision for your church than you do!’ And every time he said that, my vision would get bigger!”

  I now wonder if a big part of Lyle Schaller’s consulting was finding lots of senior leaders and saying, “Your biggest problem is that I have a bigger vision for your church than you do!” knowing that a big dream would catalyze multiplication thinking.

  I want to be that faith-stretching voice for you! I want to look you in the eye and say, “C’mon, don’t let me or anyone else have a bigger vision for your church or your life than you do!” And more important, what is God’s vision for your leadership, life, and church? At the end of this chapter, I’m going to ask you to find a napkin and write out your big dream. Not your current dream but a bigger dream for your leadership. I’m going to ask you to take what you are currently dreaming and multiply it by one hundred. And then ask, “How can I do that?” My hope is to push you toward multiplication thinking. Let me explain why multiplication thinking is such an important practice.

  MULTIPLICATION THINKING CHANGES THE QUESTIONS

  Once you accept the challenge of a big dream, you are forced into questions of how, and multiplication thinking naturally follows. As my dream grew, so did my multiplication mindset. When the dream of Community Christian was to be one church with two sites, I started asking, “How can I reproduce myself?” Now our dream is to be a church that has multiplied two hundred sites and churches in Chicagoland, and I’m asking, “How can I create a system that is continually reproducing all our leadership?”

  A decade ago, our dream was to start a network of new churches, so I had to ask, “How can I attract, train, and deploy church planters?” Now our dream is to see a movement of reproducing churches, so I have to ask, “How can I create systems that reproduce networks and attract, train, and deploy apostolic leaders?”

  Do you see how a big dream pushes you into multiplication thinking? And the bigger the dream, the more you are thinking multiplication. If you step into the vision of being a hero maker or accept the challenge of leading a Level 4 or 5 church, multiplication thinking is sure to follow. And that multiplication mindset will cause you to ask questions that get multiplied results.

  It was a big dream that led us to build our first Community Christian facility that we call the Yellow Box. We saw it not just as a place to “warehouse believers” but al
so as a meeting place to train and multiply leaders. That multiplication thinking led us to ask our leaders, “If you could do anything in this new space to reach people, what would you do?” That question sparked the imagination of my wife, Sue, who began to think about new ways to reach women. This led to the birth of a ministry called Connections, which has multiplied more than sixty women’s groups, expanded to multiple locations in Chicagoland, and is dramatically changing women’s lives.

  One of those women who experienced life change is Lori Cooke. She first came to Connections with very little knowledge of the Bible, but with a hunger for God. In the closeknit community of these women, she found her way back to God and was baptized. Her small group leader saw leadership potential in her and asked her to apprentice to become a small group leader.

  Then came a day just before Christmas a few years ago. Lori received the devastating news that her twenty-year-old son had collapsed on the basketball court and could not be revived. After seeing Lori and her family through the funeral and the holidays, several people began to question whether Lori would be able to lead her women’s group. Sue, Lori’s coach at the time, felt that Lori should decide for herself, but she let Lori know that everyone would understand if she did not feel up to it. When asked whether she would like to take time off, Lori responded, “No, I need to be here, and I need to lead.” Lori explained that the giving and receiving in her group helped get her through the hard times.