The 99% Problem: What If We Equipped More People to Serve?

"So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:11,12 

In one of the churches I pastored I hosted a sermon writing small group on Tuesday evenings. Several people from our church would meet with me to work on the sermons to be preached. I won't go into all the details of how this system worked but suffice it to say we worked on a four week recurring cycle with one person assigned to take the sermon through various stages of development until the person who was actually going to preach the sermon took all of the work that had been done and finalized it for presentation, first to the group for critique, and then to the church on Sunday. When I left this church I left them with at least a half dozen people who were trained to preach sermons. 

In Paul's letter to the Ephesian church it is pretty clear that all of the various ministry offices in the church exist for the purpose of equipping the people of the church to do the actual work of ministry. I also note from this Scripture that when church people are engaged in the work, the body of Christ becomes stronger, there is unity, knowledge increases, and the result is a church full of mature believers. 

In 2024 at the Lausanne conference in South Korea one of the speakers spoke about the 99% problem in the church. The point being made was that only 1% of the people in the church are actively involved in ministry. This group is largely the paid clergy. If the statistics are true it means that 99% of the people who could be engaged in making disciples, as Jesus commanded, are not actively engaged. Imagine what would happen if we were able to mobilize and train only 10% of the available work force to engage in disciple-making and works of service for the Lord. In the final push before the return of Jesus let's train and release God's people for works of service in the communities around them.