Gaining By Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send
People are leaving the church J.D. Greear pastors. Big givers. Key volunteers. Some of his best leaders and friends. And that’s exactly how he wants it to be.
When Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission, he revealed that the key for reaching the world with the gospel is found in sending, not gathering. Though many churches focus time and energy on attracting people and counting numbers, the real mission of the church isn’t how many people you can gather. It’s about training up disciples and then sending them out. The true measure of success for a church should be its sending capacity, not its seating capacity.
But there is a cost to this. To see ministry multiply, we must release the seeds God has placed in our hands. And to do that, we must ask ourselves whether we are concerned more with building our kingdom or God’s.
In Gaining By Losing, J.D. Greear unpacks ten plumb lines that you can use to reorient your church’s priorities around God’s mission to reach a lost world. The good news is that you don’t need to choose between gathering or sending. Effective churches can, and must, do both.
Top Highlights
“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.” (source)
“I often repeat to our students a statement I saw John Piper make on Twitter: ‘Lot moved to Sodom not for ministry, but for money (Genesis 13:9 – 13). It did not turn out well for Lot. How do you choose where to live?’” (source)
“What your organization does best grows out of what it loves most. To send effectively, we must love the glory of God and the lost more than we love anything else. Then sending comes naturally.” (source)
“The church is not an audience to be entertained; it is an army to be empowered. The large crowd will not change the world; the mobilized force of Spirit-filled believers will.” (source)
“Every virtue of the Christian life grows out of a deeper experience in the gospel.3 Spiritual growth happens not by going beyond the gospel, but by going deeper into it.” (source)
Product Details
- Title : Gaining By Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send
- Authors:
- Greear, J.D.
- Osborne, Larry
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publication Date: 2015
- ISBN: 9780310515258