That’s right, you read it correctly – Christ-centered pastors don’t make disciples, nor do they take care of people.   Instead, they do what Jesus did: they equip others to make disciples and to care for people. These pastors would rather equip ten people to make disciples than to make disciples themselves. Disciple-making and caring for people are too important and the personal rewards too bountiful for either to be reserved primarily for just one person in a congregation.

Biblical and Historical Precedence

The biblical precedent for such leadership is Jesus himself. Jesus spent most of his entire ministry reproducing his DNA (genetic code) in his small but diverse group of future leaders. He then sent them out into the world to do what he had not done – “to make disciples of all nations.”

Jesus was more concerned with multiplying his DNA than with personally adding people to the Kingdom. Multiplication, not addition, was his aim. Jesus taught us that the role of church leaders is to provide an environment in which others can grow to be disciples who make disciples.

Church leaders provide an environment in which others can become disciples who make disciples.

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An historical precedent is seen in the contrast often drawn between the effectiveness of George Whitfield and John Wesley. Whitfield, a student of John Wesley, initiated and popularized mass evangelism both within and outside of the church setting. He was the first “field preacher,” even before Wesley, and preached to more people than anyone of his day.

However, the revival Whitfield started would later be known as the Wesleyan Revival. Why? Wesley didn’t just preach to the masses. Wesley followed the example of Jesus and focused on equipping people to disciple one another. Wesley developed a discipling process that he used for forty years. And even though he never drew as many people as Whitfield, when he died he left behind a movement.

Jesus and Wesley could do what they did because they were clear about their role on this earth. They did not set out to be whatever their flock wanted them to be or to care for all the needs of everyone in their flock like so many pastors do in dying congregations. Instead, they focused on embedding their DNA in a selected core of individuals whom they equipped to go and to equip others to do the same.

In my book Growing Spiritual Redwoods, I describe the DNA as the mission, vision, values, and beliefs of the church or person. Jesus and Wesley were clear about their mission, vision, values, and beliefs. They passed this DNA on to the leadership they gathered around them. They did not train them to be followers; they trained them to be leaders of others leaders: to go out into the world and to embed in others the same DNA that had been embedded in them.

Earlier I said that Jesus gathered a small but diverse group of future leaders. The fact that Jesus called such a diverse group of people shows his understanding of gift-based ministries and his desire to multiply his DNA without cloning himself. DNA is a randomization device that God designed to individualize everything in the world. A female X chromosome and a male Y chromosome go through a process called meiosis which mixes up the genes in each individual so that each individual is different and carries characteristics of each parent to the offspring.

A church’s DNA should produce individuals who are different in characteristics and gifts but similar in their passion to bring people to Jesus Christ. Our DNA defines who we are without making us all exactly the same. It allows each part of the body of Christ to be different while focusing on the same God-given mission. It provides the parameters in which we can empower each other to work without having to ask for permission, resulting in a common vision being realized through our diversity. We can focus on what we have in common without giving up our uniqueness.

The Key to Christ-Centered Leadership

Here then, is the key to Christ-centered leadership:

The greatness of leaders is not so much in their skills and what they do with those skills as it is in how they focus those skills on ensuring the reproduction of the DNA at every level of the church and in every cell.

I call this process of reproducing fractalling.

The greatness of leaders is in ensuring reproduction of the DNA at every level of the church.

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Fractalling is the art of reproducing the DNA at every level of the congregation and in every cell (person). Although fractals are recent development of mathematics, the best way I know to explain them is to ask you to examine any leaf on any tree. Notice the large vein running down the middle of the leaf and the smaller veins branching out from the large vein. If you magnify this leaf, you can see that each one of the smaller veins has even smaller veins branching out from them exactly like the main vein. Every part of the leaf bears resemblance to the leaf as a whole. No matter how much you magnify the leaf, the pattern is repeated over and over. That is fractalling. Christ-centered leaders live to reproduce Christ’s DNA in others so that they can go and do the same.

Christ-centered pastors spend 80% of their time managing this process. They manage by the DNA, not by policies, manuals, or principles. They manage everything around this question: “Will this action enhance the DNA?” If so, they equip someone to do it. In essence, they are the keeper of the DNA.

Question: How have you seen a church’s DNA multiplied well in the next generation of leaders? Share your experiences in the Comments section below.

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