Gaining By Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send

FOREWORD

When I was a young boy, my dad taught me to play a game he called Giveaway Checkers.

It was a simple game. The goal was to give away all of your checkers by putting them in a position to be jumped and captured by the other player. The first one to give away all of his checkers was declared the winner. In essence, you won by losing.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my dad was teaching me a powerful lesson about the marketplace, marriage, and ministry — because in each of these important arenas, those who give away the most end up gaining the most.

In the following pages, J.D. Greear shows how this simple but profound principle of gaining by losing applies to church life. With solid theology, unassailable logic, and a host of real-life examples he shows us how to play Giveaway Church.

It’s a game we all need to learn to play, because in God’s economy the church that sends the most wins the most. Yet few pastors or churches actually play Giveaway Church or have a desire to do so.

It’s easy to see why. Our culture at large doesn’t celebrate those who grow their fruit on someone else’s tree. We may praise kingdom impact, but we reward church growth. We may talk a lot about kingdom priorities, but more often than not our success is measured by how many people we keep, not by how many we send. In the church world, the pastor or church with the most checkers wins.

So what’s gone wrong? How did we come to a place where we wax eloquent about the Great Commission, storing up heavenly treasures, and servant leadership — but in reality send out so few? Why is it that we love the idea but resist the reality of becoming a Giveaway Church?

I think one reason is that we too often have a truncated gospel.

Now, I’m not talking about doctrine. I know the gospel. I can teach it well. But like many of you, I have often settled for a head knowledge that focuses on the facts instead of a heart knowledge that fully grasps the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice and the scandalous improbability of a God who turns rebels like you and me into full-on sons and daughters of the king.

The simple fact is, anytime I can get my arms fully around what Jesus has done for me and all that lies ahead, it’s hard to be stingy with the people, resources, and platforms I’ve been entrusted with.

A second reason is our long history of clergy-centered ministry. By lifting up those in vocational ministry (pastors, evangelists, and missionaries) as a special class of people who are uniquely called into ministry, we’ve unintentionally restricted and downsized our sending pipelines.

Every Christian is called into full-time ministry. Once we step over the line and begin to follow Jesus, everything we do is supposed to be done in his name, representing him, with the goal of advancing his kingdom.

But clergy-centered churches tend to downplay this. By seeking to identify and send out a few well-trained and fully funded missionaries, they inadvertently raise the entry bar to ministry so high that few can climb over it.

In contrast, Giveaway Churches lower the bar. They seek to identify and send out Jesus-following engineers, accountants, entrepreneurs, teachers, and truck drivers who are willing to ply their trade wherever they are needed to help the cause of the gospel. They understand that the frontlines of evangelism and ministry are most often found in the marketplace, not within the walls of our churches.

A third thing that makes Giveaway Churches so rare is our natural spiritual myopia. It’s easy to confuse our castle with God’s kingdom.

Now, I want to be clear. I am not against church growth or big churches. I pastor one of the larger churches in the nation. But when I stand before God, the ultimate measure of my ministry and stewardship will not be found in how many people we jammed into our campuses on a weekend. It will be measured by what those people did once they left the building.

I recently had dinner with a friend who is one of 66 pastors and church planters who have come out of a small church in Oregon. A number of them planted so-called megachurches, including a few that rank among the largest ones in the country. That’s a Giveaway Church. The pastor and congregation understand the exponential multiplying power of sending. They don’t see it as a sacrifice. They see it as an investment.

While the church I pastor has been applauded and honored for its impressive growth and community impact, I have no doubt that when we both stand before Jesus, the unknown pastor of that little church in Oregon will receive a reward far greater than my own.

That’s why I encourage you to read carefully and reflect deeply on the principles and practices spelled out in the following pages. You will find a roadmap that will guide you out of the swampland of a truncated gospel, clergy-centered ministry, and a myopic view of the kingdom. You will also find a game plan for becoming a Giveaway Church, the kind of church that will one day hear, Well done, my good and faithful servants.

—Larry Osborne

Author of Sticky Church and Sticky Teams Pastor, North Coast Church, California

INTRODUCTION

Farmers in Oklahoma during the late 1930s faced an excruciating choice.

Throughout the 1920s, rain had been plentiful and the harvests abundant, and many city workers had left their factory jobs in the Northeast for a chance of a fortune in the great American Midwest. The stock market crash of 1929 motivated even more to take the journey west.

But in 1931, the rains stopped. To make matters worse, years of poor farming techniques had destroyed the grasses that preserved moisture during times of drought. The dry ground resulted in massive dust storms, which destroyed remaining fields. Fortunes were swept away in the clouds of terrifying, dull gray blizzards.

By the fall of 1939, thousands of farmers returned empty-handed to the East Coast. Some that remained faced an excruciating choice: they had just enough grain to feed themselves and their families for another year — but probably not much longer than that. If they planted these seeds and no rains came, their families would not survive the year. But if they held on to these seeds, grinding them into flour for bread, they forfeited any chance of receiving back a harvest.

Many planted, in faith — in hope — that rain would come.

In the fall of 1939, it did.¹

Planting always involves risk. We release control of something we need in the hopes that it will come back to us in multiplied measure. But once we let go of it, we forfeit any ability to use it for ourselves. Seeds you plant you can no longer consume. Yet without the act of planting, there will never be a harvest.

Jesus turned to this principle of the harvest when he wanted to teach his followers how to extend his kingdom on earth:

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (John 12:24)

I’ve always thought it was odd that Jesus described the seed going into the ground as dying, because I don’t think of a seed going into the ground as dying. I think of it as just beginning to live.

But in one sense, a planted seed is dying. As its outer shell disintegrates, it ceases its self-contained existence as a seed. It has been given over to the earth.

In the same way, God grows his kingdom only as we take our hands off of what little portion he’s given to us, die to our control of it, and plant it into the world. That feels just as scary to us as to those farmers planting their precious, remaining seed in the dusty plains of Oklahoma and praying for rain.

The Seed in Your Hands

In this book I want to press you to consider — whether you are a church leader or an ordinary Christian trying to figure out the best way to use your life — one, primary question: If you looked at every one of your blessings as kingdom seeds, how many of them are you planting in the fields of God’s kingdom, and how many are you keeping in storehouses to use as food?

If you are a pastor or church leader, I want you to ask this of the organization you lead. How many of the seeds God has blessed you with are you planting into kingdom fields — fields that have great potential but yet may contribute little to the bottom line of your organization?

Let’s be honest: Too often, we church leaders measure the success of our ministries by one criteria and one criteria alone: How large is it? How large is the attendance? How big is the budget? And so we spend all our money on things that will increase our attendance, our budgets, and our capacity.

But if John 12:24 is true, then Jesus measures the success of our ministries not by how large we grow the storehouse, but by how widely we distribute its seeds. Jesus’ measure of the church is not seating capacity, but sending capacity.

To church leaders and individuals alike, Jesus presents a very clear choice: preserve your seed and lose it; plant your seed for his sake, and keep it through eternity (John 12:25).

The Future of the Church

I believe that every church, every ministry, and every follower of Jesus Christ ought to be devoted to planting — giving away — what they have for God’s kingdom. I am not against large churches — I pastor one. But as I will show you in this book, I believe that churches that give away both their people and their resources are the churches that will expand the kingdom of God into the future.

Throughout this book I will share stories of how God brought our church (and me, personally) to this conclusion. I warn you: The journey has not been easy — in fact, at times it has been downright painful. Like most young aspiring pastors, I graduated from seminary and had my sights set on acquiring a big, notable ministry — one with a big attendance and big budget and even bigger attention for the guy behind it. But early on, God confronted me with my idolatrous and self-centered approach to ministry. He showed me that quite often when I had prayed, "Thy kingdom come, what I really meant was My kingdom come."

There are two basic questions about discipleship that we have to ask ourselves over and over, in every new season of life and in regards to whatever resources God has given us stewardship over:

— Whose kingdom are we actually building: ours, or God’s?

— Do we really believe that Jesus grows his kingdom most as we give away what he’s given to us?

Throughout this book I will introduce a number of ministry plumb lines — key phrases that we use at our church to keep our ministries and our lives centered on sending. I hope that they help you evaluate the shape of your ministry and consider its trajectories.

If you are a church leader, I hope this book helps you to see that your greatest kingdom potential lies not in your ability to gather and inspire your people at a weekly worship meeting, but in your capacity to equip them and send them out as seeds into the kingdom of God.

If you’re not a church leader, I want you to understand the crucial role you play in the church’s future. I believe that the future of Christianity lies in your hands, not in ours (that is, the hands of your church leaders). That’s not pep-talk rhetoric. Jesus’ promises about the greatness of the church are about ordinary people being filled with the Spirit, turning the world upside down. As leaders, our job is not to gather you, amaze you, and collect your funds; our job is to help you discover the power and potential of the Spirit in you.

As I will show you, you — the so-called ordinary believer — you are the tip of the gospel spear. The greatest gospel movements in history have been facilitated by ordinary people like you, not church leaders like me. And the Great Commission will be completed only when we church leaders get serious about sending you out to do what God has called you to do, and you get serious about doing it.

We Are Under Obligation

In Romans 1:14 Paul uses a strange word to encapsulate his life and calling, one with enormous implications for both church leaders and members alike. I am under obligation, Paul says, to everyone who has not yet heard the gospel (see ESV). Many translations render under obligation as debtor, because Paul is invoking language that describes a debtor’s relationship to his creditor.

When you are severely in debt, your life no longer really belongs to you. It belongs to the creditor. You can’t spend money however you would like anymore. If your boss gives you a $10,000 Christmas bonus, you won’t be able to use it to take a vacation to Hawaii or to buy new furniture. The creditor has first and final say in how the money is spent. I once knew a church that was so severely in debt that representatives from the bank literally stood in the back of the lobby during the weekly offering, taking the money straight to the bank, where bank officials would decide how much the church could keep that week. The church was no longer free; it was under obligation.

Paul thought of himself as a debtor to those who had not heard about Jesus. His future was not free. But why did he owe them? Because he knew he was no more deserving of the gospel than they were. He was not more righteous, nor had God seen more potential in him (see 1 Timothy 1:15). Paul saw God’s grace toward him exactly for what it was — completely unmerited favor. Paul knew that placed him under severe obligation to the grace of God. Paul’s future, bright as it may have been, having a great education and all the right connections, no longer belonged to him. Every spare resource — every ounce of energy, every moment of his time — belonged to his creditor: the grace of God.

Every person who knows and understands the gospel is under this same debt of obligation. As David Platt says, Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every unsaved person this side of hell. If you are saved, you are under obligation to leverage your life to bring salvation to the nations. Those of us called to be leaders in the church are under obligation to train you up and send you out.

We pastors are not free to build ministries that mainly make life more comfortable for us. Each of us is under obligation to do whatever we can to get the gospel to those all around the world who have never heard. And that means releasing — planting — the seeds we have been given. It means letting go and sending out our very best to bring a harvest in God’s kingdom, even — especially — when it doesn’t benefit our church directly.

The gospel is that Jesus Christ died as a substitute for sinners, offered now as a gift to all who will receive him in faith. Jesus has instituted a new kingdom, a kingdom that someday will bring final and ultimate healing to the earth through his resurrection, but one that begins now when sinners are reconciled to him through his death. God has given to us, the church, the mission of preaching his offer of reconciliation to all people everywhere — that Jesus lived the life we were supposed to live and then died the death that we were condemned to die so that we could be reconciled to God. We signify the message of that new kingdom through acts of healing and extravagant generosity, which depict for others the nature of the kingdom Jesus is establishing (2 Cor. 5:14 – 21). Everyone who has received the reconciliation is sent on that mission. Every believer is sent. You go from mission field to missionary.

Our God Is a Sending God

Our God is a sending God. He sent his best into the world to save us. Jesus is referred to as sent forty-four times in the New Testament. After his resurrection, Jesus passed on his identity to his disciples: "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" (John 20:21).

To follow Jesus is to be sent.

Jesus’ command to every disciple is to go (Matt. 28:19). We may not all go overseas, but we are all to be going. This means that if you are not going, you are not a disciple; and, church leader, if the people in our churches are not going, we are not doing our jobs. A church leader can have a large church with thousands of people attending, but if people are not going from it outside the camp (Heb. 13:13), to pursue the mission and call of Christ, those leaders are delinquent in their duty.

Planting, investing, sending, and sacrificing are costly. It hurts. But the trajectory of discipleship is toward giving away, not taking in. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said, When Christ bids a man to follow, he bids him come and die.² Jesus did not say come and grow, but come and die. And he showed us what that means by his own example.

When Jesus laid down his life on that hill in Jerusalem, he had nothing left. Soldiers gambled for his last remaining possessions on earth. Everything he owned had been either given away or taken from him. But out of that death came our life. In giving everything away, he gained us. In Jesus’ resurrection from death, God brought unimaginable life to the world — to you and to me. Jesus was the first of many seeds planted into the ground to die.

Why would it surprise us that the power of God spreads throughout the earth in the same manner? Life for the world comes only through the death of the church. Not always our physical, bodily death (though it includes that sometimes), but death in the giving away of our resources. Death in the forfeiture of our personal dreams. Death in our faithful proclamation of the gospel in an increasingly hostile world. Death in sending our precious resources, our best leaders, our best friends.

When Christ calls any of us to follow him — whether he is speaking to us as individuals, or to our churches and ministries — he bids us, Come and die.

It is not through our success that God saves the world, but through our sacrifice. He calls us first to an altar, not a platform.³

His way of bringing life to the world is not by giving us numerical growth and gain that enriches our lives and exalts our name. His way is by bringing resurrection out of death.

We live by losing. We gain by giving away. What we achieve by building our personal platform will never be as great as what God achieves through what we give away in faith.

It’s one thing to know these things, to believe they are true. It’s another to implement them. That is what this book is about. What does it look like to live sent — in your personal life, in your ministry, or in the church that you lead?

I will warn you: It’s relatively easy to nod our heads at this point and say, Yes, like Jesus, we live by dying. But to go to the next step — to invest some of your most cherished resources, or say goodbye to those whom you love as they go to begin something new — that is hard, and it never gets easier. Yet it’s how God’s kingdom grows.

We gain by losing.

If you are ready to see what that looks like in practice, keep reading.

Part 1

Untapped Greatness

CHAPTER 1

Aircraft Carriers, Cruise Liners, and Battleships

Many people are bored in church. They are afflicted with a nagging sense that they ought to be doing something — that there is some meaningful mission they are supposed to be a part of. But they can’t quite get their mind around what that is, and so, in the meantime, they sit in church, try to pay attention, give their tithes, behave as best they can, and wonder if when they get to heaven they are going to be rebuked for failing to do whatever it was God wanted them to do.

They remind me of a California man named Larry Walters, whose story I heard many years ago.¹ Larry went out to the Army-Navy surplus store, bought seventy-five used weather balloons, inflated them, and attached them to a lawn chair he had secured to the back of his pickup truck. With several friends watching, he climbed into the chair, settled in, and had a friend untie the rope.

He was hoping, a friend later said, to observe the neighborhood from a slightly different angle, and gain a new perspective on his life. He took nothing with him but a peanut butter sandwich, a six-pack of beer, and a fully loaded BB gun.

Two and a half hours later, the Los Angeles International Airport reported an Unidentified Flying Object in the skies above LAX at nearly 16,000 feet. Lawnchair Larry, the reclining cosmonaut, was now three miles into the sky and a hundred miles from his original launch site. The pilot of the 737 who first spotted Larry said, Well . . . I see what looks like a perfectly still man sitting in a . . . is it a lawn chair? And I think he is holding a rifle.

In a rescue stunt that would have made comedian Chuck Norris proud, SWAT teams lassoed Larry, who had passed out in the chair, and ferried him safely to the ground. (In case you are curious, his intention had been to lazily saunter up to the right altitude, then use his BB gun to pop the balloons to keep him there. However, when he untied himself from the pickup, friends said he shot up into the air as if he had been fired from a cannon. He panicked and did the only thing he knew how to do in a stressful situation: break open the six-pack. About 2,000 feet in the air, he passed out.)

On the ground, after being revived back to consciousness, Larry was promptly issued a $4,000 ticket by local police for the obstruction of airport traffic. (He later got it reduced to $1,500.) A local journalist then asked him three questions:

Larry, were you scared? Larry said, Yes. (Actually, he said more than that, but as this is a Christian book, we’ll leave it at yes.)

Larry, would you do it again? Larry said, No. At least he’s a quick learner.

Larry, why did you do it? Larry said, I just got tired of always sitting around.

I find that a lot of Christians in churches feel the same way as Larry. They’re tired of just sitting around. They feel like they are supposed to be doing something in the mission of God but don’t quite know what it is.

They go to churches where they hear that Jesus is building his church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against them. But they don’t see themselves, or their church, prevailing against the gates of hell. They seem to be just getting by. Many can’t remember when a single adult convert — one truly brought out of darkness into light — came to Jesus in their church. And they certainly can’t remember one whose story they were personally a part of.

Study after study shows that most Christians have never even shared their faith — most indicating that somewhere 90 percent of evangelicals have never shared