Hero Maker

by Dave Ferguson

  If Haymitch had not mentored Katniss in all facets of the Hunger Games, she may not have uncovered and ultimately overthrown the corruption of President Snow.

  Who knows if Frodo ever would have made it to Mordor with the ring, leading the fight of good versus evil, if not for his apprenticeship with Gandalf.

  There are leaders waiting to be developed and heroes waiting to be made. They might just be waiting on you. Becoming a hero maker starts with multiplication thinking but continues with four more practices, which we will explain in the following chapters. Are you in?

  To realize this big dream, you will need to be a permission giver. Are you ready to explore that in the next chapter? If you nodded your head, then you just passed the first challenge in that chapter: learning to make yes your first instinct! Turn the page to find out more.

  Hero Maker Discussion Questions

  OPEN

  • What was your big dream as a kid? (Astronaut? Ballerina? Pro athlete?) Who do you know who dreams big? Would you say they also practice multiplication thinking?

  • Describe a time when you realized that there was way more God wanted you to do than you could do yourself, stretching you into multiplication thinking. What happened as a result?

  DIG

  • Read Acts 4:1–22, noting the various responses to the church’s growth to five thousand people. To what extent is multiplication thinking implied in how the apostles responded?

  • What biblical parallels come to mind for the dream napkin tool described in this chapter?

  REFLECT

  • Create and share your own dream napkin (Figure 5.5).

  • Who are you mentoring whom you could lead in a dream napkin exercise?

  FIGURE 5.5

  CHAPTER 6

  Permission Giving

  Big Idea: The practice of permission giving is a shift from seeing what God can do through my own leadership to seeing what God can do through other leaders. Permission giving requires that we learn to lead with a yes and use simple tools like ICNU conversations.

  “Growing up on the west side of San Antonio, I believed in god—the god of football,” says Derwin Gray, the founding pastor of Transformation Church, just outside Charlotte, North Carolina. “The game was my ticket out of an early life saturated with violence, addiction, abuse, and chaos.”26 But it took two hero makers—a high school football coach and a teammate with the locker room nickname “Naked Preacher”—to give him the permission he needed to access that ticket.

  His head coach was D. W. Rutledge, who is legendary in Texas high school football. One reason Rutledge was a Hall of Fame coach was because he was able to help young men believe in themselves and to give them permission to succeed when they saw very little of that in other areas of their life. Derwin told me, “Coach saw in me what I didn’t see in myself; that’s what the best leaders do. They look into the soul of a person and say, ‘I see what you could be, and my role is to bring that out of you.’ ”

  The best leaders look into the soul of a person and say, “I see what you could be, and my role is to bring that out of you.”

  —DERWIN GRAY

  It was Coach Rutledge who not only turned Derwin into a standout football player but also helped him see his way out of a bad neighborhood and a challenging family setting. Derwin credits Coach Rutledge with helping him envision a better future. “I was one of the only men in my family who had not been to jail, who did not have a substance abuse problem, who did not have a child out of marriage, and who didn’t flunk out of high school,” Derwin says.

  Derwin performed so well in high school that he went to college on a football scholarship and was drafted by the Indiana Colts to play strong safety. “I had made it out and was very successful, and pro football became my god,” he says.

  Then he met Steve Grant. Grant, a Colts linebacker, would take a shower, wrap a towel around his waist, pick up his Bible, and ask those in the locker room, “Do you know Jesus?” Like most in the locker room, Derwin laughed him off. But over the next several years, he saw this linebacker not only preach his faith but also live it out. It was that “Naked Preacher” who led Derwin to faith.

  A few years later, injuries pressed Derwin to retire from the NFL as his body gave out from playing a brutal game. At that point, he says, “I was stripped of everything I thought gave me meaning. I was left with nothing, even though I seemingly had everything.” It was remembering the encouragement of his high school coach and the faith given to him by a naked preacher that gave Derwin a new dream for his life. All this led him and his wife to start Transformation Church, a remarkable multiethnic congregation.

  Derwin is not just the lead pastor; he’s also the lead permission giver. Just as others gave him permission and encouragement to go beyond his wildest dreams, he inspires and encourages people in his church to exceed theirs. If you were to visit Transformation Church,27 you’d be wowed at how many of their members have taken major volunteer leadership roles in the church or in the community or have gone on to plant other churches.

  The people in our own groups, ministries, and churches are full of Derwin Grays, all at different stages, from those struggling to find hope in life to those at the top of their game. Ask yourself, “How can I affirm them and give them permission to go far beyond their wildest dreams?” Then let me share with you some powerful stories of what permission giving can do, plus a very practical tool that you can use to become a stronger permission giver. Figure 6.1 shows how permission giving fits into the sequence of the five core practices for a hero maker.

  FIGURE 6.1

  Jesus Gave His Authority to . . . You!

  When Jesus said to some unschooled, off-the-map fishermen, “Come, follow me . . . and I will send you out to fish for people” (Matt. 4:19), he made an amazing statement of permission giving. He didn’t say, “Follow me, and watch what God can do through my own leadership,” although they certainly did so. He said, in effect, “Follow me, because God’s going to work through some leaders other than me: each of you!” And for a respected rabbi to look this group of working-class grinders in the eye and say, “I see something special in you” was mind blowing and life changing.

  This was not just a day-one recruitment message. No! Jesus started his ministry with it, practiced it throughout his ministry, and ended his earthly ministry with it.

  How? Can you imagine a senior pastor assembling everyone on staff and saying, “You know I’m the boss. I have the authority. Now I’m giving it all to you. Go out there and get the mission accomplished!”

  That seems to be exactly what Jesus did. He said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). In addition, in one of the most familiar passages in the Bible, the Great Commission, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20).

  In essence, Jesus looks at his apprentices and says, “Hey, guys, I’ve got all the authority, and now I’m giving you access to it. So go spread the good news everywhere!”

  Talk about permission giving! Could anyone hope for a more permission-giving leader? From day one until his final day, Jesus practiced what he taught. How many times across his ministry does Jesus model permission giving? Just three examples:

  • You feed them! (Mark 6:30–44)

  • You try casting out the demons! (Matt. 17:14–21)

  • You go out and share the gospel! (Luke 10:1–3)

  “No Thanks, Dude, We’re All Set”

  Such high-trust permission giving doesn’t routinely happen, but should it? Growing Young, a recent landmark study about millennials and church, subtitled Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church,28 says that the more you give millennials permission—handing them the keys of everything
from the church facility to the soda machine by the youth room—the more they’ll thrive.

  By contrast, Sean Sears, at the time in his late teens—just the kind of person Growing Young was talking about—had a permission-withholding challenge that’s so extreme as to be comical. Yet I fear there’s a grain of truth in his experience.

  Sean went to a Bible college, passionate about student ministry. There was a popular church near his college, and he tried to get involved in the student ministry there. He found the youth pastor and asked, “How can I plug in? Maybe you need some counselors?”

  “No, we have all the counselors we need,” the youth pastor replied.

  “I’m a freshman, hoping to be part of the church for four years,” Sean said. “Maybe there’s another way I could help?”

  “Nope, we are all set.”

  Sean really wanted to get his foot in the door, so he offered to give kids rides to youth group.

  “No thanks.”

  He offered to go to some of the students’ ball games, just to be an encouragement.

  “No thanks.”

  How about if he showed up the day before youth group to set up the meeting room?

  “No.”

  Sean took one final stab. “What if whenever you hold a youth event, I came afterward and cleaned up the pizza boxes and other debris?”

  “No, dude, we’re all set.”

  You already know how Sean felt. Totally discouraged!

  His girlfriend (and future wife) had been going to a church that was farther away and considered less spectacular; it was smaller, older, and had fewer bells and whistles. Sean decided to attend, mostly out of interest in her.

  After Sean had come a few times, the pastor asked, “Is there any way you’d like to get involved?” Sean felt a surge of energy and explained that he’d like to be a youth pastor someday.

  The pastor shot back, “Why someday? Why not now?”

  Immediately Sean began to think of all the reasons why the youth pastor at the other church didn’t want him. “I was starting to believe I wasn’t needed,” Sean reflects. “But then this pastor gave me permission to do whatever I needed to reach youth who were far from God.”

  Sean took the challenge and started a youth group with the church’s three middle schoolers. A year and a half later, the group had grown to thirty-five. So the church went from roughly 100 people to 135, with now a fourth of the congregation being what Sean called “preadolescent street punks.”

  “The old gray hairs were the most loving and patient people I could have hoped for,” says Sean. “The kids were loud and rowdy, but the congregation was so excited that kids from the neighborhood were finding Jesus.”

  The impact on Sean transformed his future. “That experience put inside me a passion to make sure I was never a barrier or roadblock to others serving God,” he says. He was determined to be a permission giver, not a permission withholder.

  Fast-forward to today, and Sean Sears is a hero maker. Sean planted Grace Church in greater Boston, Massachusetts, and in its first twelve years of life, it planted four other churches. A nineteen-year-old student who helped Sean start Grace became the pastor of their first daughter church. They have an extensive emphasis on developing and giving permission to men and women who are high-capacity but underutilized for kingdom purposes. “Every church I’ve known, including Grace, is full of leaders,” Sean says. “We just haven’t done a good job of identifying them, giving them permission, and releasing them.”

  I believe Growing Young’s research is spot-on, but permission giving is not just for integrating and mobilizing the next generation. Jesus wants permission giving to be in the DNA of every generation that follows him.

  Fears That Keep Us from Permission Giving

  Two of the most permission-giving people I know are Larry and Deb Walkemeyer, who have served for more than twenty-five years at Light and Life Christian Fellowship, in greater Los Angeles. Starting with a handful of committed white folks in an established congregation in an aging facility with very limited parking, the church has grown into a multiethnic, outward-focused urban church with one thousand in attendance that has planted forty-four churches and counting.

  Larry says there are two kinds of churches: lake churches and river churches. He explains that lake churches are like bodies of water that don’t go anywhere, so everything stays in one place. “A lake church keeps everything within its banks, and unless something stirs it up once in a while, it will get stagnant. River churches are different, because the water is flowing to somewhere; nothing stays the same, and the current is always moving.” Larry says, “Our focus now is to reach, teach, mend, and send. We want to release a river of multiplication in our church, city, and world.” Of the fifty-six churches Light and Life has started, twenty are local and domestic church plants, and thirty-six are international, in the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Indonesia.

  Every time a new opportunity to send someone arises, there is a temptation to hold and preserve what you have. “It’s not easy being a river church, but we feel called to keep sending people out,” Larry says. “We have sent many staff, leaders, givers, and money to start new churches. Some of these groups have been small; several times we have given away 10% of our congregation, and on two occasions we sent 25% of our whole church.”

  In his ebook Flow: Unleashing a River of Multiplication in Your Church, City and World,29 Larry says, “The more I studied the book of Acts, the more I was overwhelmed by the bold fearlessness that marked the early church. Risk was the daily special on the church’s menu.” He goes on to highlight very real fears that commonly keep pastors from giving permission to plant new churches. Even if you are not a pastor, I think you can identify with each of these fears. Here are the five fears he identifies that keep us from giving permission.

  1. Fear of failure. Permission giving means giving away not only authority but also people, leaders, and money while knowing that the new project might fail. It means you have fears like, “We are winning at addition; why risk losing at multiplication?” or “What if church planting damages our mother church? Will we recover?” You face those fears and you give permission anyway.

  2. Fear of rejection. Multiplication means giving permission to transfer allegiance from the sending pastor to the planting pastor. This kind of emotional exchange calls for a deep personal security to overcome inner fears of rejection. Pastors must ask, “Am I secure enough in God and in my own identity to face what will feel like a form of abandonment?”

  3. Fear of loss of control. Leading with a yes means you are empowering others and divesting of the direct management of leaders and people. It is a lot like a parent who launches a child and must endure the possibility of being hurt by that child’s poor choices. Pastors must ask, “Do I trust God enough to hand over large groups of people to novice shepherds?”

  4. Fear of conflict. Permission giving always changes the status quo and creates the possibility of significant pushback. Everyone loves addition but many fear multiplication; consequently, it’s difficult to cast and pursue this vision without generating sparks. Can you and the leaders deal with the fallout from developing this potentially controversial new priority in a church?

  5. Fear of financial hardship. When you give large groups of people permission to take their giving and leave to join a church plant, you have no idea of the impact on your church’s monthly income. You wonder, “Will God still provide all that we need?” Again, you face the fear and then you give permission anyway.

  Six Levels of Giving Permission

  The Walkemeyers have discovered the secret that kingdom multiplication happens when we become hero makers and give those around us permission to advance Jesus’ cause.

  But the fears they cite are real, often triggered by painful experiences. Have you ever heard (or thought) something like this: “Oh no. When I said, ‘Please run with it,’ I wanted you to keep me in the loop. But it looks like you went and already did everything . . .�
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  How often have you wanted to give someone permission, but things went south and you ended up taking authority back? Maybe in the process, you inadvertently damaged a relationship or quashed someone’s eagerness to serve.

  Here are six levels for saying yes and giving permission. They are a perfect response to the five fears we’ve been discussing. They will help you and the people you’re developing avoid misunderstandings. They also offer you a series of steps for giving people more and more authority, as appropriate, as you move them from one level to the next.

  Level 1: Watch what I do, and then let’s talk about it.

  Level 2: Let’s together figure out a plan for what you should do.

  Level 3: Propose a plan for what I should do, and let’s talk about it.

  Level 4: Let me know your plan for what you should do, but wait for my feedback.

  Level 5: You should handle it completely, and then let me know what you did.

  Level 6: You should handle it completely, and there is no need to report back to me.

  These six levels work best when you give someone an assignment, and then you ask them to repeat it back to you, by saying, “Please tell me what assignment you just heard from me and what level of permission you received to go and do it.” This approach helps you to frame ministry around the word yes. If you are going to be a permission giver, you need to develop a yes reflex.

  If someone comes to you and says, “I’ve got this idea about reaching kids through sports,” what do you say? Yes.

  If someone says, “I want to care for HIV patients,” what do you say? Yes.

  If someone says, “I want to help provide support for single moms,” what do you say? Yes.

  A yes reflex stages a coup d’état against hero-only ministry and starts a revolution of difference making, led by hero makers. A yes reflex is a verbal manifesto that says, “I see in you a much-needed role to play in the mission of Jesus.”

  Realize That Your Default Is Probably No