THE POWER OF TWELVE

In a couple of my coaching calls this month, I have been told (by very talented leaders) that they were struggling to get a committed core of people for their new church project. In both cases, their work focused on 20-something adults, who admired the new church, friended the pastor and liked the church on Facebook, and were even willing to pitch an hour of volunteering occasionally. However, in both cases, almost no company of highly committed persons came together at the core. Yet.

In such scenarios, anxiety begins to mount due to the expectations of the denomination that worship events occur, and that something tangible and visible to the bishop and financial investors soon appear! Derrieres must quickly find their way into chairs, in growing number.

Moving quickly to produce major events and weekly worship services without a solid team of people committed at the core is usually a disaster. Such new church projects often implode within a few months. This is the scene in the movie where I walk up as coach to find the pastor's family doing everything from making the coffee to playing the keyboard to watching the small children.

For all the change that is in the air in this young century, some things have not changed AT ALL. One of the most basic principles that Jesus taught us about spiritual movements is that you start by collecting a core. Jesus liked the number 12. As a coach, I have observed that when a leader gathers a solid twelve, all kinds of things become possible, and momentum often sets in!

I am coaching both of my planter leaders to double down on one major focus for now. Find their twelve! In each case, we are starting with the recruitment of twelve prayer partners who will pray twelve minutes a day every day for twelve months for the new church and for Person X, each of them praying for one of the twelve core disciples that God will lead to the new church. As the team of disciples materializes, the prayer partners will receive real names, so that each of them can lift up one of the twelve who are on a journey with God and each other.

For the twelve disciples, they will be asked to covenant together for one year - for some it will be a experiment in spiritual practice and intensity of life focus, that will last one year. For others, it will last a lifetime.

In highly non-religious populations, it may take a couple years to find twelve. But there is no sustainable church or world-changing movement coming any time soon that is not anchored by at least a dozen steady souls who are committed to a personal and collective journey with Christ.

Small events and low-maintenance gatherings can proceed - but there is to be no big launch of anything until there are twelve people committed to the cause of planting a new faith community together.

All the more reason, judicatory friends, to be careful flooding projects with cash before the first twelve persons have signed on! We may need to find a way to buy time on the front end, and save our cash for a later phase of the project.