Hero Maker

by Dave Ferguson

  Obe began to build a launch team and otherwise prepare. A few weeks before the opening day of the new campus, Obe, Jack, and the launch team were commissioned at one of our all-church leadership community meetings that brought together all our volunteer leaders and staff. “I was prayed for as an individual to lead the team to the best of my ability—and beyond, all with God’s power and guidance—and ultimately to reproduce the mission in others,” Obe says.

  Obe planted a location in Aurora seven years ago, and along the way has poured himself into making heroes of other church-planting residents. One was a former worship pastor who was wrestling with God’s call. “He had a restlessness, knowing he was supposed to do something but not knowing what.” Obe encouraged him to do a leadership residency at Community Christian, through which he identified San Antonio as the place he should plant a church.

  “I poured everything into him that I had received. It was a blessing for me to invest in someone, seeing their gifts come alive, as had mine. What joy that I, barely in my thirties, could already affirm the next generation of leadership,” says Obe. Young Obe is becoming a hero maker.

  Gift Activation through Tampa Underground

  If Obe’s story left you thinking that gift activation means finding a way into a church staff position, then let me offer the powerful marketplace example from Brian Sanders. He serves as the prime mover of the Underground, a family of church ministries based in Tampa, Florida, mostly led by bivocational people with a heart for Jesus and a love for what the church could become.

  If Brian and his team of leaders are obsessed with anything, it is helping people find the calling and assignment God has given them, and then helping them follow through. They are gift activators.

  They call these lay-led ministries microchurches. “The microchurch concept is entirely predicated on the idea of calling,” explains Brian, who wrote a book called The Underground Church.41 “For us, microchurches are not franchises like discipleship groups, cell groups, house churches, or even scaled parachurch ministries; they are customized and contextualized expressions of the church as unique as the people who start them.”

  Do you hear the idea of gift activation in that statement? That perspective has led them to activate the gifts of an amazing array of leaders, many starting microchurches focused on serving the poor. The target of these ministries ranges from at-risk youth to victims of the sex industry to the formerly incarcerated to refugees.

  Brian and his team are making a difference, all of them heavily influenced by their focus on gifts and their willingness to dream boldly. They challenge people to ask the question, “What would you do if you were not afraid?” A microchurch starts with answering that question and obeying your calling. Then you build a community around that mission, with a focus on reaching people who are not encountering the gospel.

  Brian explains what makes the Underground unique: “We are built to serve the needs not of the individual but of the community on mission. There is no way for an individual to join the Underground. Each microchurch is an expression of personal commitment and ecclesial innovation. This is not a strategy where we quickly reproduce the same thing. Each microchurch is a unique expression of the church that is as different as the people who start them.”

  Those who lead or support microchurches are known as missionaries, and about sixty Underground missionaries regularly office together in a rented workspace where about one thousand events are held each year. In total, some 175 microchurches are a part of the Underground, a number that has grown about 10% each year since their 2007 founding.

  And yes, there is a commissioning moment. They wait one year so they know that the microchurch will last and the leader is committed. Then they formally commission them with laying on of hands and the community’s blessing. This seems consistent with Paul’s instruction, “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands” (1 Tim. 5:22).

  One outstanding example of a leadership gift activated and a microchurch coming to life was through Kathryn, a recent college graduate. Tampa Underground hired her for an administrative position, and when she met Brian, he asked her, “What is your deepest dream, your clearest sense of calling for your life?”

  “I would love to one day run a free medical clinic,” she quickly replied. Kathryn had a heart for the poor and for the healing a clinic could bring. Brian offered to help her pursue that dream, encouraging her as she went back to school for a master’s degree in public health, raised money, and networked with medical professionals. As Brian saw her progress, he offered her two years of coaching to get the dream off the ground, and even allocated a portion of their existing facility to the new clinic. Brian spent two weeks of his vacation time to help her build it out.

  Brian cheered with Kathryn at every milestone: when the clinic received its first big donation, passed county inspection, got their first doctor, and drew fifty patients on opening day. Brian now serves only in an advisory role but looks back on what Kathryn has done with pride, saying, “I love how this clinic has become a personal, dignified, inexpensive, evangelistic, and very real expression of the church.”

  Brian became a gift activator, in part, because others activated the gifts in him. Right out of college, Brian had, in his own words, “some really rough edges, but two courageous leaders at InterVarsity saw past my flaws and gave me a chance.” They put him in a setting where they thought he would thrive most—an area with no InterVarsity ministry on a campus. “I loved the challenge to plant and pioneer,” Brian says.

  Looking back, he acknowledges that the leaders who mentored him found the just-right balance. “Even though I know I was often difficult and pushed against the system, they would both gently correct me and let me color outside the lines, try new and innovative things.” That trust paid off, as it gave birth to the Underground. And now the Underground is making heroes of dozens and dozens of nonprofit leaders all over Tampa!

  Simple Tool for Gift Activation

  COMMISSIONING

  God may never use you to send out thirty-one church planters in one day to represent Jesus in the slums. (But he might!) And you may never come alongside dozens of spiritual entrepreneurs and help them start nonprofits. (But it would be cool if you did!) But if you decide to be a hero maker, as Jesus promised his first followers, God will use you and those you influence to do “even greater things” (John 14:12). God will give you the opportunity to bless the people you are mentoring and activate their gifts through commissioning.

  Commissioning is the simple process of blessing a person or team and affirming the use of the gifts God has given them. It will most likely involve two components:

  1. Laying your hands on them as a sign of affirmation.

  2. Praying for God to bless them as you send them out.

  I have commissioned new small group leaders in a home. I have commissioned people who are leaving to start a new ministry or church at staff meetings in restaurants.

  Commissioning can be done for a leader (or leadership team) starting a new group or team. It can be done for an individual (or a team) starting a new church. The commissioning is an important relational and personal blessing that hero makers give to those they are developing.

  The first time we did a public commissioning at Community Christian, we were overwhelmed at the response. We concluded a message with the invitation, “If you believe God has called you to a specific ministry and would like to be anointed and prayed for, please come forward.” We didn’t have to wait long. Not just a few, not even a section, but the majority of the people got out of their seats and came forward. That happened not just at one service but at all of them that day. Wow!

  It’s now become an annual event at Community Christian Church. Once a year, we have a day on which we anoint and pray for everyone who wants to be commissioned for what we call the Jesus mission.

  Once a year, we have a day on which we anoint and pray for everyone who wants to be commissioned for what we call the Jesus mission.


  This Sunday celebration includes a commissioning for each of our small groups. We prime the group members by saying, “You need to be able to answer the question, ‘Where and to whom are we commissioning you to go and bless the world?’ ” We make available a simple document that quotes Acts 13:2–4, where Barnabas and Paul are commissioned, and answers five questions:

  • What is commissioning?

  • Why should every group participate?

  • Why commissioning?

  • How can I create a culture within my small group where we live out the Jesus mission?

  Then we ask anyone who wants to be commissioned to come to the front of the room where we are meeting, and we anoint them and pray for them. We consider it their ordination. In every way, we try to communicate, “We are for you, we are behind you as a church, and you have our blessing. Go out and accomplish that mission!”

  We’ve done this for many years, and I am always blown away by the response. In particular, I’m stunned at how seriously they take this idea of being commissioned for a specific mission. Every year, I hear people say things like,

  • “I don’t want to merely coach my Little League team. I’m looking for opportunities to help many of those families find their way back to God.”

  • “We’re going to adopt a child, joining many other Christian families who together dream of zeroing out our state’s foster child waiting list.”

  • “I’m going to start a small group at work.”

  • “After going on three mission trips to Haiti, God’s call is clear: we’re going to move there, to make a difference.”

  Through the laying on of hands and praying a blessing on people, we convey a powerful message: if you are a Christ follower, we want to help you activate the unique gifts and calling that God has given you.

  Hero Maker Profile: Joe Wilson

  One of the most humble people I know is Joe Wilson. He was once a managing technician for an office supply company. But that is what he used to do! Since he became a Christ follower, a lot has changed. This friendly guy with a heavy Southern accent is now multiplying church-planting networks globally and is asking God to use his hero-making strategy to do it in every country on the planet!

  I first met Joe at a gathering sponsored in Europe by Leadership Network, designed to help plant more than one thousand new churches over a five-year period. I was speaking on my book Exponential, which he had just read, and we hit it off. Joe had three big, burly Eastern European church planters with him, whom he introduced as “Dema, Dema, and Dema.” After I laughed, one of them said, “And Joe’s name in our language is also Dema.”

  Joe is partnered with NewThing and has a passion to plant churches and develop future leaders of Christianity in extremely underevangelized countries. It started in 2002, when Joe planted a single church in Minsk, Belarus, after starting an English as a Second Language school for Belarusians that offered practical help by teaching conversational English.

  The government there shut down this church in 2005, forcing Joe to partner with a local church led by a like-minded Belarusian pastor. From this church, Joe helped catalyze a Belarusian team to plant churches. These efforts have grown from Belarus into other countries, like Russia, Albania, and nine others, where there have been 238 new churches started and twenty-three new networks.

  Joe’s secret weapon is gift activation. He always looks for Christ followers with apostolic impulses, leaders whom other organizations have ignored. He helps them fully activate their leadership gifts to convene other leaders, who then do incredible faith-stretching things together that none of them could have done alone. How does that work? Here is Joe’s story in his own words.

  Joe Wilson

  NEWTHING

  EASTERN EUROPE AND BEYOND

  From one church has birthed a vision to catalyze a movement of reproducing churches in the former Soviet Union

  As a young adult, I became a drug addict. If I had any money, I’d spend it shooting up cocaine and amphetamines. When I hit bottom, I asked God to help me. I knew that he was responsible for getting me off the drugs.

  Three years later, at age thirty-one, I received Christ into my life. From that moment, I knew God had some kind of purpose for my life, but didn’t know what. I felt God had called me to ministry, but there was no one to mentor me in my gifts. My church was happy for me to fill various volunteer slots they offered, but it didn’t help me figure out how I was uniquely wired. No one provided a path for me to move forward.

  After being a Christian for three years, I went through Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God book and was challenged by it to find out where God is at work and join it. Miami had been devastated by a hurricane, so I moved there with a group to plant a church. I learned the Blackaby book as I was practicing it. I began to identify the unique gifts that God had given me, and I saw that God could use someone like me to do things far beyond what I could ask or imagine, as Ephesians 3:20, one of my favorite verses, says.

  A few years later, I was at a Bible study, and the passage was “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,” (Hab. 2:14). That was the day the Lord put his finger on me, saying, “I want you on mission globally.” That Sunday my pastor, not knowing anything about the Bible study I had attended, preached on the same verse with the same message. This was confirmation!

  The book Perspectives on the World Christian Movement helped me find out more of what I was wired for, which was really apostolic ministry. God led me to go to Belarus to share Christ through an English as a Second Language ministry. It didn’t really make sense, but I went and soon became involved with a local church there. By this point, I knew that I was good at Ephesians 3:20, getting people to practice big faith, and affirming, “You can do it!” When I see potential in someone, I affirm it. I would say things like, “God wants to do something great through you.”

  I try to do for others what I wish I had experienced. I look for hidden leaders, people no one else has spotted or believes in. My eyes are always peeled for people who haven’t yet reached their potential, humble people with white-hot faith, who are contagious in a way that attracts others.

  When I got the copy of Dave and Jon Ferguson’s book Exponential, I read it in five hours. I was consumed with the message of the subtitle: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Movement. I loved the simplicity. I resonated with the way Dave says, “You can do it.” I still remembered my days of dreaming about God doing great things but everyone telling me that God couldn’t do it through me—at least, that’s the message I heard.

  One of the people whose gifts I’ve helped to activate is Altin Kita. He was what I call an apostolic shepherd in hiding: someone with white-hot faith, a passion to do something great for God, and a contagious spirit that has drawn others around him. I helped him launch his second church, and I coached him to build an entire network of reproducing churches.

  Within three years, Altin’s teams had planted more than thirty churches across four countries. Altin hopes to reach the whole Balkan peninsula through this effort, and I believe his gifts are activated and in motion to do so!

  Now I’m working in twelve countries. I find guys so much more talented than me, and I walk in their shadow. We operate together on mutual respect; I don’t try to control them. I just try to help them figure out how to launch, structure, and develop a network. God tends to connect me at the point where they’ve gathered some people. I help them form the “together” part of it, and we begin helping each other extend God’s kingdom—including the idea to cross borders into other countries. It’s amazing the spiritual harvest that comes from the seeds that God has sown into so many people.

  Joe’s hero maker tip: People who want to move toward multiplication might want to read Steve Addison’s book Movements That Change the World. It will help them know if they really want to go on this journey. It requires developing a white-hot faith that believes God for something they couldn�
�t do themselves.

  Also, they need to examine whatever ministry they lead to make sure they’re focused on the right engine: reaching people far from God, bringing them to Christ, bringing them into the church, and developing them as leaders—who then develop other leaders. If you don’t do those things well, you’ll remain stuck where you are.

  Exponential Commissioning

  The last session of every Exponential conference for the past ten years has ended exactly the same—with a commissioning moment. I remember that the first year we did this, we had about six hundred attenders, and Gene Appel was the last speaker at the closing session. As Gene brought it to an end and music started to play, he said, “Some of you have felt God prompting you to plant a church. If that is you, we want to ask you in faith to come forward, and some of us who lead this conference want to lay our hand on you, anoint you as a sign of blessing, and pray for you. We are with you and for you!” And in some form every year, every closing speaker has issued the same challenge. The only difference is, now there are more than ten thousand attenders annually at our conferences, and we have more people come forward to be commissioned into church planting than were at our first conference. Could it be that some of that swell in numbers is because the churches that have been planted over the years have in turn raised up and activated other church planters?

  I remember the first time I met Ryan Kwon, now the lead pastor at a California church named Resonate. I recall him telling me that it was at an Exponential conference that he came forward to be commissioned and made a commitment to plant a church. He was sitting in the middle balcony and decided to go forward, and it was then that his apostolic leadership gift was activated. Joby Martin, lead pastor at Church of Eleven22 in Florida (profiled in chapter 6), can point to the very place he was standing when he made a commitment to church planting at Exponential. He came forward, and Matt Chandler laid hands on him and prayed for him, and has since become a hero maker to him. Derwin Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church in South Carolina (whose story is told in chapter 6), has told me the same story of making a commitment and being commissioned into church planting at Exponential.