World Evangelism Podcast

Empowering Congregations through Intentional Training and Outreach

• W. Austin Gardner • Season 1 • Episode 28

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How can pastors shift from crisis managers to proactive leaders? Discover the transformative power of mentoring and discipleship in ministry on this episode of the World Evangelism Podcast. Drawing from 2 Timothy 2:2, we explore how Jesus and the Apostle Paul set the gold standard for training faithful individuals to teach others. We’ll discuss a common pitfall where pastors focus solely on crisis management, leaving church members feeling underutilized and frustrated. Learn actionable strategies to foster ongoing ministry involvement, ensuring each member finds their place to contribute and grow in their faith.

In our second segment, we emphasize the exponential impact of proactive outreach and discipleship. Through personal anecdotes and biblical stories, we illustrate the necessity of training others to continue the work of ministry, just as Adam and Eve taught their descendants to populate the earth. We also focus on empowering others for missions, encouraging you to share the message and bring friends along on this journey. Tune in to understand how being approachable and training others to replicate your efforts can foster a thriving, mission-focused church community. Engage with our insights to fulfill your divine calling effectively and inspire others to do the same.

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W Austin Gardner:

Welcome to the World Evangelism Podcast. I'm very glad you're here Excited about what God is doing. The Lord has blessed. We are now well over 500 downloads and that's exciting for me that little by little, a few more people are listening to the message. And today I am again in a discussion with you about mentoring, how to train men. It's the biblical concept of 2 Timothy 2 and verse 2. What you've heard of me, with a lot of witness around, I want you to find capable, able men, faithful and capable men, able men that are able to teach others also. And so that's 2 Timothy 2, verse 2 in Tennessee Hillbilly for you, which is where I come from. And we have gone over several things about mentoring. It's what Jesus did and it's what the Apostle Paul did.

W Austin Gardner:

And then we have discussed a little bit about the mistake that's made how pastors get off track in their ministry. They don't do it intentionally. They have a great heart, they love God, they fully intend to be greatly used of God and they're trying to do the right thing. But often we develop wrong goals because we judge the quality of our ministry by the quantity of people that we have and not by how much we're training them to do the work to help others. So I just want to briefly kind of give you one more part of that mistake. I just want to briefly kind of give you one more part of that mistake, and that is that pastors are often extremely good crisis managers. They're extremely good crisis managers. They're very good at finding hurting people that have fallen and need help to get up, and I think that's a great ministry. By no means would that be been as any kind of insult. They're busily discipling people back onto their feet and they'll find them and they may get saved and they may start coming to church and they become attenders, but seldom do they go on into further ministry.

W Austin Gardner:

And what happens is when a person really gets right with God and gets into ministry, they feel frustrated and empty. If they don't have a part to play. It's like being a part of the body that has no real meaning and no real purpose. It's just there. I may be a little toe, but I want to be a part. I want to have a job, I want to have a duty, I want to have something that I'm accomplishing with my life. That's how people feel when they get right. And so, pastor, not only do you want to get them saved and teach them the basic Bible doctrines and get them to be faithful in tithing, but you want to help them find ministry that they can get involved in.

W Austin Gardner:

We are so busy helping them get their lives put back together, but they end up bored. They end up like what am I supposed to do? Do I go back to the world? I had a friend. You know, and those of us that have been in church all of our lives and been doing church work, we're often eager for nights away with the family, not at church, not in the middle of everything going on. So we're looking for less, not more.

W Austin Gardner:

And yet he used to come home from work and go to the bar and drink and party and throw darts and play games and play pool and spend time with his friends. And he had a click. He had a place where he fit in and he wasn't alone and he gets saved. We tell him no, you can't go to those places, you can't do those things, and we only have church, sometimes now only on Sunday morning, or maybe Sunday morning and a midweek get together, and he wants more than that. Are we just going to leave him to go back to the world. No, we want to help them so they'll grow, and some of them we get very frustrated as pastors because people get saved in our churches and get baptized in our churches but then they say they want something deeper, they want to do more and they leave our churches to go somewhere they can be used of God, where they can be discipled and learn ministry and get placed in ministry.

W Austin Gardner:

And you know that's what happens. They do that. It frustrates us. I'm with pastors and they complain about. I can't believe it. I picked them up out of nowhere and I helped them do all these things and I did all of this, I did all of that. And that they left our church and they went there and blah, blah, blah, blah and it becomes a very negative thing. And they went there and blah, blah, blah, blah and it becomes a very negative thing. We get them in church and we give them heartfelt platitudes. We really mean it. We say you know God's working in your life and it's all going to be okay and you'll grow into this and you'll get used to it.

W Austin Gardner:

But it might be summed up and what we do often as pastors is we help the hurting but cannot lead the serving. We can help the hurting, but we can't lead the serving, and we want to learn how to do that. The pastor doesn't know what to do with people when they get over their problems. So then they get bored and walk away discouraged and they say church isn't what I thought it was and it just wasn't what I was looking for. And much of that is not because of Jesus. It's maybe because we have a one-man show. We have people in place and the newer people don't have any place to come except to be a spectator, and Christianity was never meant to be a spectator sport. Pastors are often so afraid of losing their better ones that they never train the ones that could become better. The pastor knows how to love, but he doesn't know how to lead. The pastor knows how to love, but he doesn't know how to lead.

W Austin Gardner:

So let me just take you to the next stage of this discussion, of this conversation, the next thing I hear you know I mean after we've made them. We know Paul said this. We know Jesus did this. We know we ought to. Fact is, I believe most of us would agree with that. I believe most people believe we should be discipling. We don't know how, and I want to help you learn how to do that. But the next thing I often hear is I can't wrap my mind around it, no-transcript. How can we imagine that we could do something that would impact the entire world? I've been asked that dozens and dozens of times, and so I'd just like to talk to you and say that Jesus gave us Matthew 28, 18 through 20, and he told us to go and teach all nations and baptize them and then teach them to observe all things. And we act like it can't be done. I would remind you that the early church they took it for real and in one generation they were doing amazing things. The fact is, much of it led by only one man, the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul. So maybe we ought to get in our minds that if we would follow the biblical pattern and the biblical mandate, we would be able to accomplish what God wants us to accomplish in trying to evangelize the world and our generation. We say to ourselves well, it's impossible for one church to reach the world, and so we just give up and we become very inwardly focused. We've already invited everybody.

W Austin Gardner:

In the first church that I worked in, a very dear lady, godly lady, good woman, loved Jesus. She was with her husband. They were the Sunday school teachers of the young couples in our church. It's the first church I had the privilege of working in and we only had like three or four couples. And she made the comment. I said why don't we have more couples? And she said well, they know we're here If they want to come, they can. And I said, well, why don't we do more inviting? And she said, well, they know we're here If they want to come, they can. And I said well, why don't we do more inviting? And she said there's a sign out there in front of the church that says all are welcome. They know that. I said, well, maybe we ought to do more. And I think that's the frustration. I think we invited them a few years ago and we tried a few times and we've given up. We're not continuing to do it.

W Austin Gardner:

If you want to think about the impossibility of doing what we've been called to do, I want to just take you to a funny comparison. Let me take you back to Adam and Eve and remind you of what the Lord told Adam and Eve to do, and maybe from there we can gain a little insight about how we could do what we're supposed to do. He says to them this is funny be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, refill the earth, fill the earth up with people. Now, what in the world? But you don't hear any complaints from Adam and Eve. You don't hear any. I don't think we can do that. It's never been done before. You don't hear any of that sort of thing coming out of their mouth. They just got busy doing what we have to do reproducing ourselves.

W Austin Gardner:

So Adam and Eve began to have children, sons and daughters. We know three of them, they're famous Cain, abel and Seth. They had a lot of children and those children married each other and then those children had children and the world populated itself to multiply millions, if not billions. Before the flood they were able to do what they thought they should do. Now they did. They lived hundreds of years, but they could have never had enough children by themselves to fill the earth up. So they knew what we've got to learn. It's not about what I do, it's about what I teach others to do. So Adam and Eve had children and their children had children, and their grandchildren had children and their great-grandchildren had children. And that's what we're to do Our church is to have another church that has a church. We're to win somebody to Christ that can win somebody to Christ. We're to disciple somebody that can disciple somebody else. We're to pray and teach somebody else how to pray that can teach somebody else how to pray. Adam and Eve could raise a family that would raise a family, and that got the job done. They were able to raise a family that could raise a family, and that's what ended up happening Now, when we talk about how we can't get this done.

W Austin Gardner:

Jesus came to the earth and he never really traveled very far. He never really went to a lot of places. Now he did speak to some big crowds a few times and he had a healing ministry and he did a lot of stuff, but he did what we're supposed to do. It wasn't about how many people Jesus could minister to. It was about how many people Jesus could train to minister to people. So Jesus trained 12 that trained many more, that trained many more, and that chain continues until today. Jesus trained people that could train people, and that reminds us of two or three things. It's not about what you do, it's about how many people you train to do what you do.

W Austin Gardner:

My wife and I have been married for almost 51 years and I'm making this podcast, and the two of us had four children and those four children had 20 children, and already those 20 children have had one child. So we now have the two of us and then our four kids are married. That's eight, making 10. And the 10 of us produce 20 kids and three or four of them are married, making it 24, 25. And one of them has a baby that's 26, and others are about two. The multiplication is going crazy. My one son, one daughter and her husband had nine children. If they only ended up averaging three children apiece, they'll have 27 grandchildren, much more than I do.

W Austin Gardner:

I want to remind you that money was never the greatest need in world evangelism. Money is not the greatest need in a church. If it were the greatest need, jesus would have put more emphasis on it. The greatest need was people who would teach people how to teach people. The greatest need was a mentor who would train somebody to be able to do the same thing he was doing. Jesus dedicated his life to discipleship and mentorship, to training other men to get the gospel to the entire world. That's what Jesus spent his life doing.

W Austin Gardner:

Our problem is that we dedicate ourselves to doing ministry, not reproducing ourselves. You are doing a lot. I don't question that one bit. I am for that. I believe in that. You're doing a lot, but you're not training others to do a lot. The fact is, in a lot of ways you want to hold on to it because you feel more needed, more powerful. You're like the pastor who's carrying a jailer's set of keys he's got so many keys he can open so many doors. When there's a job that everybody ought to be doing, your job is not really to do the work. Your job is to train others to do the work. I often teach this. You know, when a missionary goes to the field, you will be everything. You and your wife and your children will do every part of the ministry.

W Austin Gardner:

I led the singing. I taught everybody from 12 and up, maybe everybody from 11 and down, or maybe it was 10 and up and 10 and down. I'm the singing. I taught everybody from 12 and up, maybe everybody from 11 and down, or maybe it was 10 and up and 10 and down, I'm not sure. I led singing. I preached, I read the Bible, I gave the invitation, I took up the offering, I did the counseling. After the service, I opened the doors, we cleaned up the place, we got everything ready. We did it all, but our job was to work ourselves out of a job.

W Austin Gardner:

Your job is to get where you're not doing the job. That's what mentorship is all about, and so I just want to talk to you just briefly about not doing the work. Not doing the work as much as training others to do the work. Your job is to train others to do the work. There ought to be somebody learning how to preach. There ought to be somebody learning how to play the instruments. There ought to be somebody learning how to do the counseling. There ought to be somebody learning every part of the ministry. That's your job. We'll get into it biblically in another week and I'll go through it just a little bit more, but I just want you to know that mentorship is you training others to do what you do, so that more gets done for the cause of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Now what are we going to do? We can't just sit back and wait for things to happen. We've got to get proactive at teaching and training others. Don't do without teaching, Don't teach without doing, but make sure you spend your time training others to do more for the cause of Jesus Christ. Your job is to help others do the work of Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve fill the world, noah and his wife and three sons and their wives refill the world again.

W Austin Gardner:

Your church can make a massive difference. You know the story of would you like to have $1,000 every day for 30 days, or one penny doubled every day for 30 days? Well, a penny doubled every day turns out to be an astronomical sum. You go from one to two to 4, to 8, to 16, to 32, to 64, to 128, to 56, now 5, then 10, then 20, then 40, then 80, then 160. And it's not long before you are at 1,000 and 10,000 and 20,000, 40,000, and it just keeps growing. What if you dedicated your life to prepare one person for the next year? Now, maybe you ought to try with three or four, and one will stick. But if you did that and then the next year each of you took one man and trained that man for another year, your church would grow. It would be slow growth, but it'd be lasting growth. It'd be important growth.

W Austin Gardner:

I want to thank you for listening to the World Evangelism Podcast and if it's a help to you, I ask you to share it with others and invite your friends. I am doing this because I really want to inspire missions and empower people to do what God's called them to do. I'm really doing this because I really want to help. I'm not doing it to hear my voice. I'm doing it because I really want to help you. Be all you can be for the Lord Jesus Christ. I know that you do not want to fail. I know that you want to succeed, and the best thing you can do is teach somebody else. Don't be one of a kind. Don't be somebody so powerful and so good that nobody could mimic you. Be a regular guy and train others to do something like what you're doing. Thank you for listening. Please give us a like, please share this and leave some comments. I'd love to hear from you. God bless every one of you. Thank you so much.