by Peyton Jones: I don’t believe in sitting down and strategizing…the world’s needs are greater than my resources.

I can’t do everything, but I can do something, and I will not let the everything I cannot do, keep me from doing the something that I’m called to do.

Business models operate with the idea that you can draw lines across a whiteboard, predicting what you’re going to be doing, and how you’re going to branch out in the next couple of years. Great when you’re flipping widgets, but not so good when you’re dealing in Holy Spirit filled believers. I’ve talked about the gift driven model in Church Zero, but we don’t use lines. We use concentric rings. Inside the ring is our team symbolized by a bunch of dots. Outside the ring are the lost dots. We draw arrows from our dots to them. Those arrows represent our spiritual gifts. Once they are reached, we draw an arrow around the dots outside of the original circle. Now we have more dots.

More dots = more gifts.

But which ones? If we’ve just reached 3 creatives and want to reach the lost, then we figure that’s where the Holy Spirit wants us to go next. If he brings us 3 bikers, then we do stuff bikers like. If he brings us 3 single mothers then we start a mother’s support group. All of these are relational and involve these people getting involved in their own communities with things they are already familiar with. Paul became all things to all men, and therefore, we allow these people to stay themselves. They follow us into battle, but in reality, you might say we’re actually accompanying them. They perceive us to be in charge, but our plan from day one is to release them to do things through the power of the Holy spirit that they never dreamed possible.

Therefore, the question that anyone who wants to be effective in outreach has to ask is “How has the Holy Spirit equipped the people in front of me to reach this town?

When I started my first church plant, I’d been in ministry for 14 years, and a missionary for 5. I was burnt out. I told the team that I had a broad canvas, and a few brush strokes, but they needed to fill in the details. They didn’t know what I meant. I told them that I didn’t want to be in ministry anymore…just a normal guy.  I told them that I didn’t have a red bat phone to heaven that was ringing off the hook with calls from the commissioner. Plus, I didn’t want to be Batman. (Did I just say that?) We looked around the group and asked, “What gifts do we have here?”  We couldn’t use a business model or five year plan, but decided to use an organic model with no clue what we were doing. All we knew was that if the Holy Spirit was real, he’d lead us, move us, and reach the people through us that he was gunning for.

We had people who liked cooking, so they started a group that taught young single mothers how to cook healthy foods. We had college students who were addicted to Halo. We started tournaments. People got saved, and discipled in that group. They also got their butts kicked at Halo. Our guys were good.

So how do I find my gifts?

---

Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.