But over time, Doug found benefit in learning from other parents. All of us in the group started to become real friends. It was then that I announced to the group, “One of the necessary parts of us fulfilling the mission of this group is for me to have an apprentice leader. And Doug, I would like for you to be my apprentice.” Silence. I could see him breaking out into a sweat.
Shaking his head in disbelief but still smiling, Doug said, “Okay.” (Warning: I was pretty blunt. I don’t recommend you put most people on the spot like this. I could have approached it as an ICNU moment, because I clearly saw that he had leadership potential, as did the whole group. I made my invitation public in this case because of Doug’s personality and my healthy relationship with him and the rest of the group.)
Doug and I set a time to regularly meet, on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m. at Starbucks. The first time we met, Doug said to me, “So if I’m going to be a leader, I guess I ought to be reading the Bible, right? How do you do that?” I explained how I did it on a regular basis, and his apprenticeship had begun.
Over the next several months, Doug and I continued to meet at Starbucks, and I took Doug through the five steps of apprenticeship (see chapter 7). Over time, he started reading the Bible, got comfortable praying in front of the group, and discovered he was a really good small group leader. It was about a year later that Doug thought he was ready to lead. I affirmed that he was, and I turned over the leadership of the small group to him and went on to lead another group.
Doug thought that was how this leadership thing worked everywhere—you lead and develop an apprentice while doing it.
A few weeks after Doug took over, I just happened to stop at Starbucks on Tuesday at 5:00 p.m., and I was so pleased with what I saw: sitting at the same table we had sat at for the previous year was Doug and his new apprentice, Brad. I don’t remember telling Doug he had to get an apprentice (although I’m sure it came up), but more important, Doug simply assumed that of course he would get an apprentice. Doug just thought that was how this leadership thing worked everywhere—you lead and develop an apprentice while doing it. For all Doug knew, that was how every small group leader in every church everywhere did it! His only experience was in a culture in which everyone thought that way. Doug was what you call “unconsciously competent” and because of the culture developed into a hero maker.
The Seven Culture-Creating Steps Attract Hero Makers
Matt Larson also experienced the power of a hero-making culture, but Matt did it consciously, with his eyes wide open. Matt was so attracted to our hero-making culture that he moved his whole family from Southern California to Chicago to do a leadership residency at Community Christian, taking in everything he could. Why? He explains, “Our dream was to plant reproducing churches in Southern California. We had been told by a number of people that we were ready to plant a church and didn’t need to do a residency. But I knew that without a strong infusion of reproducing habits, practices, and some DNA transfer, we might be a ‘successful’ church plant but not a healthy, reproducing church that released people into the story that God had for them.”
During Matt’s leadership residency, he was a part of the launch of Community’s Plainfield location. It was during this time that Matt learned firsthand about leading a reproducing church. Matt looks back and says, “I got to see a church live out 2 Timothy 2:2, reproducing to the fourth generation. I loved seeing how this applies in every area of ministry and not just in church planting. As a result of what I experienced, I was able to instill that same reproducing culture in the church I planted.”
After Matt completed his residency, we commissioned him and his family, and they returned to Southern California consciously competent in planting a church that plants churches. And did they ever! In just ten years, Anthem Church planted first in Thousand Oaks, California, and then expanded the Anthem family of churches to locations in Camarillo, Ventura, and Denver, Colorado. In addition to Anthem locations, they have planted new churches throughout Southern California—San Diego, Chula Vista, Chatsworth, Temecula, Downey, Santa Barbara, Orange County, another in Thousand Oaks—and they are currently dreaming of southeast Asia.
I love both Doug’s and Matt’s stories!
I love Doug’s story because on a nearly daily basis, I still get to see Doug using his leadership gift. He is now on Community Christian Church’s directional leadership team, and he is multiplying his gift through others and helping hundreds and thousands of people find their way back to God.
Recently, I had breakfast with Matt, and it was so rewarding to hear that our nine-month investment in his leadership residency has multiplied into a whole family of new sites and churches. Matt is just getting started!
The great thing is, Doug and Matt are not the only ones. There are so many others. Some of your church’s hero makers might become church staff, but the majority will make heroes of others even as volunteer leaders themselves.
Some of your church’s hero makers might become church staff, but the majority will make heroes of others even as volunteer leaders themselves.
Just through the two organizations I know best—Community Christian Church and NewThing—there are now thousands and thousands of leaders who have been mentored and multiplied into implementing hero-making practices. Some of them are consciously competent, and some of them, fortunately, don’t know any other way! Whether leaders are developed in the culture or attracted to it, hero makers are the result.
A Picture of a Hero-Making Culture
FIGURE 12.3
If you want to have your own stories of multiplying leaders like Doug and Matt who multiply other leaders, you first need to understand what a hero-making culture looks like. I want to give you a quick picture of one, using a simple diagram taught to me by Brian Zehr of Intentional Impact.53 Any strong culture has three components: values, narrative, and behaviors.
1. VALUES
At the core of any hero-making culture is a strong set of values. These values are both the convictions of your mind and the passions of your heart. You are convinced that these values are grounded in the truth of Scripture. You can point to the life of Jesus and how he was a hero maker when he told his apprentices they would “do even greater things” (John 14:12). You can reference Jesus seeing in a ragtag bunch of fishermen and working-class guys more than they ever saw in themselves, when he said, “Come, follow me” (Matt. 4:19). They were shocked that he believed in them. Jesus spent time with them, and then he sent them out by twos, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and now I’m giving it to you, so “go!” (Matt. 28:18–19). And you see those hero-making values lived out by Paul, who passed them on to Timothy by insisting that his apprentice think in terms of four generations of reproduction (2 Tim. 2:2). These are strong values because they have theological integrity and are consistent with Scripture.
But they are also values because they are what makes your heart beat fast and what holds your attention late into the night as you talk about them and dream about them. Sometimes these values are made into a creed (see chapter 13), and you repeat them over and over to keep them prominent in your head and heart. Sometimes you print them out and post them on your wall to display your commitment, or download them and make them the wallpaper on your laptop or phone so you see them several times a day. Values are at the core of hero-making culture.
2. NARRATIVE
Narratives reinforce and bring values to life in a hero-making culture. Narratives are the language and stories of any strong culture. If you have ever worked in a place that had a strong culture or been a part of a team that had a winning culture, you know they have their own “speak.”
If you have frequented Chick-fil-A, you know that if you say, “Thank you,” they always respond with, “My pleasure.” It’s so predictable that I sometimes play a game by trying to see how many times I can get them to say, “My pleasure.” My record is currently fourteen times in one trip! Chick-fil-A has a strong culture of
customer service and a language that reinforces that culture.
There are certain words a culture may use that you don’t hear in other places, and those words have special meaning in that culture. In a hero-making culture, those words might be apprentice or leadership path or ICNU.
Along with specific language are the stories that make up a hero-making culture. Doug and Matt are both great examples of hero makers. By telling stories like theirs in private, small circles or from the platform, I can give life and color to the concept of hero making, in ways that help create a hero-making culture. Such stories show you how to live out the values. Good stories make values sticky and become like folklore. You repeat these stories over and over because they remind you of the moments when you got it right, and so others remember them too.
Telling stories in private, small circles or from the platform is an important part of bringing the values to life in a hero-making culture.
I had told Doug’s story to my coauthor, Warren, several years ago. As we were working on this chapter, he said, “I hope you’ll tell your story about the guy you mentored at Starbucks.” Not only had that story stuck with Warren all those years, but Warren had recently told it to someone he is mentoring at his church.
That’s the power of a compelling story. But you’re not limited to vintage stories, because hero-making cultures always birth new stories. The new stories are what you celebrate; they bring the emotion that tells the whole community that we will still trade our lives for our values!
3. BEHAVIORS
A strong hero-making culture needs more than the two components of revealing the values at its core and having an ongoing personal and public narrative to express those values. A third component is the most important: behaviors. Those are where you, as a leader, live out your message. Behaviors are you being a hero maker in real life.
Why do only 4% of all U.S. Protestant churches have a hero-making culture? I say that because at present only 4% of all churches ever reproduce a new site or church. Stay with me here: Why are there so few churches with a hero-making culture? It’s not because lots of churches don’t understand the values; they do! And it’s not because they don’t tell stories of disciple multiplying; they may have to get them from some other church or organization, but they do find stories to tell. I’m convinced that the most significant reason why so few churches have a hero-making culture is because their leaders do not live out the hero-making practices! Sorry if my words hurt! Your reading this book suggests that you want to be part of a church with a hero-making culture. But don’t stop with just wanting it; you need to do it!
When we teach a set of values and tell stories to reinforce them but do not live them out personally, we are implicitly saying, “You just have to sit there and listen to me teach truth and tell good stories, but you don’t have to really do it.” Leader, you are the primary culture creator. Leader, you will get the culture you deserve. You will reproduce who you are!
When you put together values, narrative, and behaviors, you have a snapshot of a hero-making culture. You can’t just have one or two of these elements; you need to make sure you have all three. When all three are working together with integrity, you will have the kind of culture that reinforces and encourages the adoption of hero-making practices 24/7/365!
Seven Steps—Might Look Simple, but They’re Not Easy!
The seven steps in this chapter are a process for you to not only be a hero maker but create a culture that is continually encouraging hero making and developing hero makers. Just because I did the hard work of putting it into seven nicely outlined steps, don’t think it is easy—or that any of us have arrived. Don’t confuse easy to understand with easy to do. This may be the greatest leadership challenge of your life, but it will be worth it! I promise. If you create a hero-making culture, it will live far beyond you and far after you!
C’mon, commit yourself to being that and doing that. If you’re ready for that kind of commitment, let’s move to the final chapter, where I will show you how you can recommit yourself to that task every day.
Hero Maker Discussion Questions
OPEN
• Describe a time that caused you to really mature in your ministry abilities.
• Would you describe yourself as more “unconsciously competent” or “consciously competent”?
• If you’ve ever done a leadership internship, apprenticeship, or residency, what was the main benefit you gained?
DIG
• Read John 17, known as Jesus’ high priestly prayer for his followers. What elements do you see of how Jesus created or prayed for a culture of hero makers?
REFLECT
• Of the many ideas in this chapter, which resonated most with you as something you’d like to explore?
• What one specific action from this chapter will you take this week?
CHAPTER 13
A Secret to Be Shared
Big Idea: Hero making requires that leaders make a commitment by signing the hero maker’s creed and start each day by answering the hero maker’s question.
Brian Bolt’s journey from hero to hero maker almost cost him his life.
As a young man, he wanted to be somebody—the hero on the streets. He had been a drug user since age thirteen and later a military deserter who lived on the streets. One day he got into an argument and was shot point-blank in the head. “I watched blood come out of my head like a water fountain,” Brian recalls. “I was glad, because I was so hopeless. I just wanted to die.”
Yet God had another plan. When paramedics arrived, one of them said to Brian, “Son, you’re going to die. Before you do, I need to ask you this question: Do you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” The EMT led Brian in prayer. “I asked Jesus into my life there in the back of an ambulance.” But Brian didn’t die.
Brian struggled with his new commitment to Christ, and he went back on the streets. But two men came up to him with ICNU words. “I thought they were going to jump me, but instead they began to speak life and potential into me,” Brian says. “They were part of a church-planting church. They told me God has a plan for my life. They put me in a men’s recovery home connected with the church.”
Brian grew in his faith. “A passion came over me. I wanted to tell everyone about Jesus, that he could change anyone,” Brian says. That journey led him over several years through an internship program in a Pennsylvania church, where he met a pastor from the suburbs of Pittsburgh. “I told Brian that I’ve been praying for someone to start something in the city,” Jeff Leake says. “I believed in him and agreed to help him start a church.” Brian moved to Pittsburgh and started a Hope Home outreach.
The partnership between Brian’s inner-city center and Jeff’s Allison Park Church was a win for both. “The church, when it’s working right, is the greatest support system on the planet,” says Brian.
Brian knew that hero making was a secret too good to keep to himself. Now his life goal is to equip others to be hero makers. Specifically, now Brian is holding ICNU conversations of his own, giving permission to all kinds of church planters in urban centers. “The Holy Spirit impressed on me that we wouldn’t reach the whole city unless we plant more churches,” Brian says.
City Reach Network, a church-planting organization Brian founded several years ago, has planted churches and Hope Homes throughout the northeastern United States. At one point, they launched twenty-seven churches in one day.
“We want to keep doing this all over the country,” Brian says. “There’s such a need in the city. God wants to raise up strong churches that can multiply and bring new life into cities. Church planting and multiplication changes the future for people.”
Brian has come full circle. After finding his way back to God, he has come to embody multiplication thinking, permission giving, disciple multiplying, gift activating, and kingdom building. Brian is contagiously living out the secret of hero making.
How Will You Share the Secret?
Hero m
aking was never meant to be a secret. My singular focus in writing this book has been to instruct, encourage, and inspire you to join me in becoming hero makers and to share this secret as often as you can!
We know by Jesus’ example and instructions in God’s Word that hero making is the model for how to lead in a kingdom movement.
We know by Jesus’ example and instructions in God’s Word that hero making is the model for how to lead in a kingdom movement. We also see it lived out by how Jesus trained and released the Twelve, and then how he empowered and sent out others, whether it was a group of 72 (Luke 10:1–2) or 120 (Acts 1:15; 2:1) or the continuation of Jesus’ mission through the Holy Spirit as “more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number” (Acts 5:14; see also 4:4; 6:7).
I want to conclude by challenging you to make a life-changing commitment. I want to ask you to make a decision that will be a personal inflection point in your leadership. I want this to be a holy moment and marker event in which you turn away from any strivings to be a hero and instead aspire only to be a hero maker.
Will you do that? Will you join me?
If you are ready to make a commitment to being a hero maker, I want to ask you to respond in two ways: first, by signing the hero maker’s creed (see next page); and second, by starting each day with answering the hero maker’s question.
Wait! I’m serious about this being more than a moment when you nod your head in agreement. I want you to sign your name, put a date on it, and have two witnesses—people you serve with and see frequently—sign it as well. This is a real commitment! Then set a time when your witnesses can check in with you and confirm that you’re sticking to your hero-making commitment, asking you how it’s going and what you’re learning.
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