 Okay, let's get started. Here's what I found. Raising up leaders is like the holy grail in ministry. It's like this mysterious high goal that changes everything as a flood of powerful people get released into the things that I'm feeling called to as a leader and I'm feeling called to as a pastor. And when I imagine that idea of I'm raising up leaders enough that people are coming alongside me and what I'm doing, it's so inspiring and feels just out of reach that, you know you pack out a workshop like this. Even coming to this conference when God grafted me into this radiant network, one of the things that struck me is that I would meet the different pastors in the network. So many were leaders that Pastor Lee had raised up personally. I was a group's pastor at his church and now I plan this church. I was the worship pastor at his church, now I plan this church. I was the administrative assistant at his church and now I plan this church. I mean, these churches that have gotten started all over because of one man who knew how to raise up leaders. And so we read books on it, we attend workshops, we use new tools, we try new systems and ideas, we do whatever we can to try to learn the secret of actually raising up leaders. But I'm not sure what your experience is. It's one of these things that really is holy grail like and it frequently feels kind of just out of my grasp as I'm reaching for it. When I was finishing college before I started in ministry, I helped manage an ice cream truck company down in Virginia Beach, Virginia. And it was a crazy, we would bring in like 30 or 40 employees a year from Eastern European nations who just wanted to make money all summer long and they would just go sell ice cream like crazy. But because a lot of the people that were brought in did not actually have a relationship with the people in the company, the boss really wanted to make sure nobody stole ice cream because that was one of the ways you could make a lot of money. And so what he had me do one time is he said, I want you to install these locks and all these chest freezers where we store all this ice cream, maybe 30 freezers in this area of the warehouse. And so I got a drill gun and some drills and I just began putting these brackets on for these locks into these freezer and I would screw it in and screw it in. It was hard going through the tough metal of the freezer. And as I went on, I don't know what was going on, but it was getting harder and harder and I would have to push and push and push and push to try and get these screws in to try and put these locks on these freezers. And I got down to the very last freezer, number 30, and I'm putting this bracket in to this thing and I cannot get the screw to go into the freezer. I am like pushing, pushing, pushing. There was a wall behind me. So I put my two feet up against the wall behind me and I'm like leveraging my whole body to try and screw this one screw into this freezer. And all of a sudden it goes in and the freezer goes boom, boom, boom. And it begins to blow up like a balloon. The whole freezer does. Somehow I hit the free online of it basically and it just went and just blew up the whole thing like a balloon. And so now I gotta tell my boss I just exploded one of his freezers. And so I walked back to the office where he was and I'm like, hey, I gotta show you something. And I brought him out and I was like, I just was doing what you said and I was screwing the things in right where he told me to and this happened, the freezers like boom, right in the middle of us. And he goes and he begins to inspect my work on the other freezers. And as he's doing it, he just starts shaking his head like this. And I'm like, this is not a good sign. And I go, what's wrong? And he said, you installed all the brackets backwards. The way the bracket's supposed to work is the metal folds over the part that you screw so you can't do it. I had installed it the other way so anyone with a Phillips head screwdriver could come steal all the ice cream from our freezers. I did not understand the secret and no matter how hard I pushed, no matter how hard I worked at it, I actually ended up causing more damage than good. And when it comes to trying to raise up leaders in the body of Christ, I can learn a hundred tips, I can master all the programs, I can try and get all the little things from three ring binders like Pastor Lee was talking about today. But if I do not understand the secret, if I do not understand the essential reality of what God wants to do in that situation, it does not matter how hard I push, how much I work at it, how far I reach or what the strain is, I actually will end up missing what God wants to do through me. And so what I want to share with you today is the secret of raising up leaders, the secret of raising up the next generation that would multiply your ministry and the call of God on you. And I want to look today at the life of Paul and kind of really what I see as the turning point in his ministry, the season where he discovered the secret and it happened in the winter that changed everything, the winter of AD 52. You see, Paul had just finished his second missionary journey, planting churches in Philippi and Thessalonica and Corinth, among other places. His personal ministry was becoming more and more effective. He'd already started eight or nine churches in major cities across the Roman Empire. And after visiting Jerusalem, he went back home to Antioch to spend the winter. He saw old friends, he rested. And what we see and how he changed things after this point, something began to happen during this winter. And it doesn't tell us exactly what happened in the scriptures, but I imagine during this time, he was ruminating on his experiences of his last missionary journey, of all these churches that he planted and he was thinking about how Barnabas had first brought him to Antioch and everything he had taught him. He was thinking about how John Mark had abandoned them on their first missionary journey together. He was thinking about how Barnabas still wanted to take John Mark on that second journey and Paul wanted no part of that and actually split up his partnership with Barnabas. I think he was thinking about this young man he met on his last trip, Timothy, and the way he'd invested in him and what he began to see. And as he ruminated on these things, God began to change something in Paul. He began to shift something in the way he viewed the world and in the way he viewed ministry and it literally changed everything for him. In fact, I think you could say it changed history. So I'd like to tell the story of what Paul did after that winter. The story comes from combining really the happenings we see in Acts chapter 19 and 20. If you have your Bibles with you, you might wanna kinda flip open to that place but I'm really combining some of the stuff there with things that he mentions and a bunch of his letters that he writes along the way to kinda tell the story. And so when the winter is over, Paul begins to walk out the plan that God had planted in his heart during that long winter of 52. And he left Antioch with this young disciple named Titus that he was bringing with him on his journey. So I'm gonna show a map just to give a little picture kinda here of what happens. We'll pop up for us. This may just turn off. Okay, looks like TV's off. We'll skip that. So you're gonna have to imagine the map here, okay? Yeah. Okay, so Paul leaves Antioch and travels with this disciple Titus and he begins to travel through this region of Galatia which is where he'd planted churches before. And as he's doing that, strengthening the churches he already started there, he picks up Timothy from Lystra and another young man named Gaius from Derby. And during this time, we're not sure exactly at what moment but we know from who joins him later when he arrives at Ephesus, he sends some messengers or some letters over to Greece and Macedonia where he's planted a bunch of other churches. And in that, he invites them to send to Ephesus other young men that had been raised up in the church planting stops he'd made before. So a letter goes to Thessalonica, a messenger asking for them to send two promising young believers, Aristarchus and secondess to join him. Another letter goes to the Berean Church asking them to have a young man named Sopater meet him in Ephesus. Another letter goes to Corinth asking for Erastus to come meet him in Ephesus. And Paul is doing something different than he's ever done before in any of his trips or any of his ministry. He's using a brand new strategy for advancing the kingdom of God. He's gathering the young men of potential from all the churches he has planted into one place at Ephesus. Men from different nations, cultures and backgrounds are being gathered for something new. And so Paul travels through what's kind of the modern day nation of Turkey to get to Ephesus with Titus and Timothy and Gaius all traveling with him. And during those first few months that he's there he begins to preach the gospel to start a new church in the city. Also we know at this time he starts making tents in the mornings. And so he had left Aquila, Priscilla there on a trip before and so they're a part of his team that's there. He finds 12 disciples from someone named Apollos who had preached maybe an incomplete gospel to them before. He leads them to full knowledge of Christ. They get filled with the Holy Spirit. He spends three months preaching in the synagogue and more people are coming to Christ and the church is beginning to grow and there's more and more disciples. But then the Jews begin to resist him in the synagogue and he decides to leave and he takes with him these disciples, these young men and women who have gotten saved there in Ephesus and those that came to join him from these other cities that he invited to come to this place. And they go and they began to meet daily in what was called the Lecture Hall of Tyrannus. It was a school that was in the city and in the morning this guy Tyrannus would teach whatever he taught in the school that he started. But Paul was able to use the building in the afternoon from about 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. while the rest of the city's all doing a siesta and napping and having their lunch break. He would gather these people there and he would begin to teach them and he'd begin to train them. And we don't know exactly what he's doing during this time but we can piece together some of it from the scriptures. We know he continues to make tents every day. It says to support not only his needs but also actually to support the needs of these disciples. It says he's gathering together with them daily from 11 to 4 to disciple them and train them in the school of Tyrannus. It says they're reasoning together. And Paul begins modeling for them what apostolic ministry, what leadership looks like. We know he's casting out demons during this time and he's performing miracles. In fact, during this training period it's probably the height of the anointing that was on Paul's life over his entire ministry. This is the time you've read about before when literally he's praying over handkerchiefs and aprons and they're being brought to the sick people and they're being healed. A handkerchief he prays for would go to a person who's de-impossessed and immediately they would be set free. I mean, he's operating at a level of spiritual power he'd never seen before and probably we've never seen in our lives. And at the end of those two years, Paul's disciples had gone out throughout that whole region what was known as the province of Asia. Maybe the western half of modern day Turkey. And in two years his disciples start more churches than Paul does in the whole rest of his ministry combined. And even more importantly it says in those two years the gospel is known as preached through the whole province of Asia. It goes to every town. It goes to every city. This entire province is really this nation is reached with the gospel in just a two year period as these disciples are mobilized to go do it. The kingdom of God literally starts to transform a nation. And as we hear this story and kind of see this picture begin to develop we ask ourselves what happened? What did Paul change? What caused this turning point? This explosion of multiplication? This revival really. This moment that raised up the leaders that would actually be the next generation leaders of the whole early church. And what I want to do is look at Acts chapter 19 and 20 where that story takes place to look at four keys for raising up the next generation of leaders. In Acts 19, 11 to 12, like I told you before it says this. God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them and their evil spirits came out of them. And so this incredible anointing has come on Paul in this season where unlike any other time of his ministry there's just this incredible power of God that is flowing out from him. I mean it's the stuff we talk about when we're talking about revival. It is happening here in Ephesus. And this power is flowing through him in a way that he's never experienced before. I mean it's the stuff you really only see in Jesus through the whole New Testament. And this incredible ministry is happening of flowing from him to others. But at the same time when Paul looks back and he describes what happens during the season in Acts chapter 20 as he's giving a speech to the elders of this church that got started in Ephesus he says this in verse 34. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. And it's in the context of Paul saying nobody financially supported me during this time. Not only was I actually providing for my own financial needs but I was selling enough tents that I provided for my own financial needs and these nine young men that I brought with me to Ephesus I was taking care of their needs as well. And so we see this picture develop where during these two years every time Paul woke up in the morning he needed to choose between two pieces of fabric. A handkerchief or the rough burlap of a tent. There was a handkerchief there that he could pray over and have it touch his skin and it would go out with incredible power that would bring him incredible acclaim and bring healing to people all across the city. Or he could choose to take the rough burlap of a tent and with callus fingers begin to work it over and over and over again. Probably getting up at four or five in the morning to be able to do this and sell it before he's gonna go in the afternoon and meet with the disciples. And he would take this time to do this and work this tent so that he could provide for the financial needs for these other young people to go into full-time ministry. And the report we have over this season is that Paul again and again chose tents. Sure there were miracles that happened. There were moments of the handkerchiefs but every day he's getting up in the morning and he's taking six hours that he could be laying hands on handkerchiefs and instead he's making tents. I mean I think about myself, if I was in a stage of my ministry where I touch a handkerchief and it goes and brings healing to people or I touch an apron and you take it immediately the demon is cast out of that person I would have like a handkerchief assembly line working all around me man. I'd have 10 disciples, okay you guys do like a fireman's brigade just kind of rub the thing on the back of my head you know why I'm writing the letter here to the other churches that I started and we'll pass it on here we're gonna get this ministry happen and it's gonna be multiplied. I mean there's nobody like me literally on the earth right now things touch me and then they touch other people and they get healed. Like there's no one doing that Peter ain't doing that right now that's not happening in the other cities it's not happening in other places. We need to seize this moment of anointing. We need to grab on to what God's doing in this moment. But instead for two years every morning I choose your future over my present. I choose your opportunity over my glory. I choose you over me. Every afternoon he could have gone out and won Ephesians to Christ we know he can do it he's done it in so many other cities already. He could have preached in the synagogue he could have led people to Christ out in the city but instead every afternoon instead of getting the impact himself and making the difference and having himself being lifted up he meets with a few men in the school of Tyranus and he trains and he teaches them how to do it instead. Man during this time he could have traveled to the other major cities of Asia Minor just like he had in Greece and Macedonia and Galatia before this. He could have secured his fame as the ultimate church planter of the early church planting dozens of churches across this region too just like he would do in the other places. Instead he stayed in Ephesus and did not leave for these two years because he was looking at these young men young women and saying I choose your future over my present. And this is the first key to raising up leaders and this really is the secret this is the one thing that actually matters. I must choose tents over Hinker chiefs. I must choose tents over Hinker chiefs. I must choose your future over my present. I was on a phone call with a pastor in the network recently he was calling me to see if there was any young men in the school that they could hire for ministry being a youth pastor in their church. And hey, how would you check and see what's happening with the music here? It's very groovy behind me, but okay it's grooving, isn't it? I was talking to this leader who was looking for a young youth pastor to join his team and he told me the story of how he got started at ministry. He was a young volunteer leader serving in his church and his pastor came to him and said, I want to hire you to be the youth pastor in the church. There's just one problem. The church doesn't have enough money to pay both of us. So I'm going to go buy a vocational that you can go into full time ministry. And as this pastor is sitting here telling me the story and he says, our church is still the same size. And so now I'm making the decision. I want to hire a youth pastor in our church so a young person would come in and so I'm going to go buy vocational. And this is the thing I'm talking about here. This is the perspective of Paul. This is choosing tents over handkerchiefs. I'm not consumed with maximizing my platform and my moment. Instead, I'm investing into your future. And so what happened in that winter of 52 is not that Paul realized the importance of raising up the next generation. He already knew that. He'd had a front row seat to Barnabas raising him up. He'd gotten to invest in Timothy already. He knew the workings of it and how to do it. The secret that Paul discovered in the winter of 52 is this, the price tag for raising up the next generation. And here's the reality of it. The price tag is that I need to die. You have to lay down your life. You have to die to what you get from ministry. You have to decrease. You have to choose tents over handkerchiefs. And the reason that so many pastors and so many churches and so many movements fail to raise up the next generation is they are just not willing to pay the price. Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it will bear much fruit. Paul himself up to this point had not been willing to pay the price. He had looked that situation with John Mark right in the face and said, I want no part of this. But then he watched as Barnabas did pay the price. And I think it began to shift his thinking. As he invested in Timothy himself and saw the impact of what it would mean to raise up a next generation leader that began to affect his thinking. And now he is coming to ministry with a totally different plan, not traveling all over the place himself, but building a base he's going to send other people out from because he has realized I'm going to choose tents over handkerchiefs. I'm gonna choose their future over my present. Well, what do I mean you have to die? That's like a little extreme here, you know, like, what are we talking about? What I mean is what John the Baptist was talking about when he looked at Jesus taking his praise, his acclaim from the ministry that he started and he said, he must increase, I must decrease. We call it dying because decreasing is not fun. Okay, nobody wants to decrease. Nobody wants our platform to shrink. Nobody wants myself to become smaller. Myself to become less. Myself to have less praise or less encouragement or less love from others. Nobody wants that. It is dying and very difficult to embrace that. But I must let go of what I internally get from ministry. I mean, I'm looking around this room, so many pastors, so many leaders that have sacrificed in so many ways to serve the kingdom of God and you've laid down so much, but we have to be honest too. There's also some stuff we get from ministry, isn't there? You know, I need to let go of the love and the loyalty that I get from ministry. I can remember as we were planning churches among college students in China, one girl named Christine got radically saved and her family totally rejected her because of it. Kicked out of her own house, could not go home. And so my wife, McKayla and I, we took her into our house and basically just adopted her during that season. We discipled her and we poured into her. She was a powerful evangelist in her own right. God used her in incredible ways. But because of that way, we administered to her and we had poured out our lives for her, she had tremendous love and loyalty back for us. I mean, she would say things like, wherever you guys go, I'm gonna go with you. I'm with you all the way till the end. Anything you ask of me, I'll do for you. And as you minister, you have that kind of love and loyalty that's stirred up in the hearts of some people. I think we've all done this long enough to know not in the hearts of everybody, but in the hearts of some people. And that does something a little for you on the inside. I'm not sure, I like being loved. I like the feeling that someone feels so loyal to me, they'll run all the way till the end with me. And that gives me a little something in my heart. But if I am not willing to die to that and lay that down, I actually actually end up inadvertently becoming a brass ceiling on the growth of other leaders around me. Because here's what happens. When I actually develop leaders, they start to get the love instead of me. I remember around the time our two daughters were born, we had about two and a half years we were not in China and we were back here in the States and I had another leader I'd raised up who was leading the work in China. And we began to send all kinds of new missionaries over there that were joining young adults and I would go over to visit the team and I began to notice it wasn't really the same as it was before. This guy Alex and Jodi that we raised up that we're leading now, people didn't love me, they loved Alex and Jodi. And I didn't really like that feeling. And so again, I had to go back to the secret place and say, Jesus, if you need to bury me, that you're kingdom that could go forward, I don't need the love and approval of these people. I don't need glory for myself. I don't need my own ego to be stroked. Lord raise up Alex and Jodi, bless them, send them farther than I'll ever go myself. And he did, they're leading a whole denominations missions movement right now, it's incredible. It's not just that love and loyalty though, you get a certain amount of praise and recognition for them being in ministry too, don't you? Pastor, great sermon, that was amazing, that was the best I ever heard. And you have these kind of moments where you feel these things of kind of the praise and the affirmation of other people and that's something that you get from ministry. And when that's taken away, it doesn't feel good. I remember about five years ago when our family moved back from China and we'd worked so hard to raise up leaders that hopefully could kind of just maybe barely fulfill the void that we left when we were gone and we knew it was not gonna be the same as when we left and of course it's not gonna be as good but the kingdom can go forward still you think. And I got back to the states and within three weeks the churches had grown to the largest they'd ever been. And you're really happy but there's another part of you that's like that wasn't exactly how I thought that was going to go. I was imagining like struggle, dip, and then growth, right? Not like I leave and immediately gets better. I was talking to my friend about it and he says, Toby, you're really like Jesus. And I was like, really? And he's like, yeah, when you leave the Holy Spirit comes. Which is really funny except it felt true. And again, I had to go back to the secret place and say Jesus, I don't care if anybody knows my name. I don't care if I get any of the credit. I don't care if I get lifted up at all. I don't care if I look like the loser who just need to get out of the way. Lord, I just want your kingdom to go forward. I want young people to be raised up for your purposes. I want the next generation of leaders to go further than I was able to go. I want them to stand on my shoulders that they can go to a place that I wasn't even able to reach myself. Lord, I am willing to fall to the ground and die if it would help you bear fruit. And that desire I have for importance, praise, and your credit is always going to be a lid on my ability to develop other leaders. And no matter what tips you try, what programs you establish, how many principles you try to throw at the thing, if you do not deal with this issue in your heart, you will subtly undermine the process so that it cannot go forward. I actually have to deal with my heart. That's the secret. That's what Paul realized. That's what he learned. That's what he saw on his Master Jesus with the 12th. Is he actually had to lay down his own life that the next generation could be raised up? And so do you choose to preach every week? Or do you give others the opportunity, even though they're not as good as you yet? Do you always pray for the sick? Or do you ask others to step in and do that role with you? Do you make every decision in the church? Or do you give leaders your developing the chance to make real weighty decisions? Are you too busy planning for your ministry or the next week to give young leaders the chance to ask you questions? That's choosing handkerchiefs over tents. That's the wrong decision. Are you too busy preparing sermons for the crowds to prepare a lesson to help a young leader grow? Would you be willing to take on an extra part-time job so your disciples could serve in full-time ministry? Ask yourself that one. That's where it gets real personal. That's where it gets real. What am I in this for? What am I doing here? And so this is the thing we have to settle in our heart first before we try to understand everything. Anything else of what the scriptures teach on this is am I willing to lay down my life? Am I willing to die? Am I willing to sacrifice my now for your future? And until I actually can count the cost on that, we're just playing games when it talks about raising up leaders. You will walk out of this workshop, you'll have a couple of principles from some of the rest of what I'm gonna talk about today and you will just be playing games. It's not going to happen. You cannot do it without laying down your life. Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it will bear much fruit. I wanna talk about a couple other things here that we see of how this kind of plays out. And the first one is this, or the next one is this. Lots of intentional time together. Key number two, lots of intentional time together. This is why it actually demands that I'm willing to lay down my life before I can even really enter in the door or the gateway to this. Is it actually takes a lot of time. And as you look at Paul in this passage, you actually see three kinds of time he's spending with those he's raising up. The first is this idea of discussing time. Paul says, as I read before, that became stubborn, as some of the Jews, and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation. So Paul withdrew from them and took his disciples with him and it says he was reasoning daily in the Hall of Tyrannus from the fifth to the 10th hour, which is from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord both Jews and Greeks. That phrase so that is so important. What was happening in the afternoons in the School of Tyrannus was the operative thing that caused the whole nation to hear the gospel in two years. Because of this, so that the word of the Lord spread to all of Asia. And this word here for reasoning that talks about what he's doing in the School of Tyrannus is it's actually not lecture even like what we're doing right now. The idea is like a two-way conversation, discussion where people are asking questions and you're giving them input and you're teaching little something and then they're sharing something back and then they're discussing with each other a little bit and that's the picture of what Paul's doing with this small group of young men and women who are in this place with him. And it says again, from 11 to four every day. That's a lot of hours every day. Five hours of his day every day. This is what Paul's investing himself into. I mean just do an audit of your own time and you're working ministry right now. How many hours every day are you investing into raising up other leaders? Probably not an hour, right? If you actually spread it out over the week. Paul and how he's choosing to divide his time five hours every day, not on the streets, not with the crowds, not traveling and church planting, not praying over handkerchiefs, not sealing healings, not casting out demons, but investing in a few young people. You know in emphasis during this time, this is a pretty radical commitment because everyone in the city would kind of shut down and have siesta and lunch during this time. But actually there was a saying about emphasis that more people were sleeping at 1 p.m. than 1 a.m. That was like kind of what the city was known for and so he's taking these hours that's kind of totally counter-cultural and they're giving them together to raise up other leaders. What does this look like for us? Man it could be a regular setting where you're weekly meeting or even daily meeting with different people that you're mentoring to pour into their life just like Paul's doing here. This could be regular one-on-ones. You're doing with different people that you see. God's got a call on their life for ministering your church and you're raising up to the next level. This could be something you do over distance in Zoom even. There's all kinds of ways to do it but the issue is are you willing to pay the price and the price tag is enumerated in time. It takes radical amounts of time to raise up the next generation. Other kinds of time we see him doing here ministry together time. Doesn't describe it specifically but we know this is Paul's MO from the other things he's doing is he takes Timmy around with them in different cities and so they're probably talking about handkerchiefs together and so like what do you do with the handkerchief Paul before you pass it on to somebody else? Like you just touch with your hand you got a rubble of sweat on it like how does this process work here? And they're having these conversations. Hey Titus come with me. I'm gonna cast a demon out of someone. Hey Timothy get your stuff together we're gonna go preach on the street. Hey Gaius you see that blind beggar over there let's go pray for him together. And they begin to start this process of doing ministry together. We see this in Jesus example with his disciples. Jesus is not doing ministry alone he brings his disciples with him and almost everything he does. And when I was really early in serving the Lord probably 18 years old something like that there was a guy named Dave Alport who led a campus ministry. And he would invite me to go along with him as he would go to different college campuses to preach the gospel and administer to the different groups of this campus ministry. And I was so raw I had no idea what I was doing I had never preached I just picked up guitar and could play like three chords on it and not good with terrible rhythm. That's like that's where I was at at this stage and he would bring me with him and he would lead worship a lot of times these things he'd say Toby you hold the guitar and just kind of stand behind me and play the three chords you know I never get to that part in the song. And so I'm like you know in this moment and it did not sound like radiant worship all we were doing I'm sure. But he is basically involving me in what's happening and allowing me to play a part. He would preach sermon and God would move powerfully among these college students but he would take a break in the middle of his sermon to have me come up there for five minutes to share some kind of a testimony some kind of a story some kind of a little point that God had given me and he would include me in that thing. Man were his sermons better because I was sharing for five minutes they most certainly were not. Was his worship leading better because I was back there towing away on a couple strings behind him. It certainly was not. But he was choosing my future over his now. And I'm standing up here in front of you today preaching why because Dave Alport said I'm going to actually do ministry along with you. And one of the most practical steps you can do especially for those here that are in full-time ministry is never do ministry alone. It literally is that simple just never do ministry alone. You get invited to go preach somewhere bring someone with you to have him share a testimony as a part of what's happening. You get an opportunity to do something bring someone with you. You're going to go do something maybe do evangelism in the community bring someone with you while you do it just never do ministry alone. You're up early in the morning on Sundays preparing the last bit of your sermon because it's not feeling really good. Have some other person who's up there with you a part of what you're doing praying with you praying over you as you're doing that don't do ministry alone. If you will just commit yourselves to the act of involving other people in the process you will multiply yourself beyond your wildest dreams. So you got this discussion time you got the shared ministry time but one of the things we see with Paul here is just shared lifetime. He says in Acts 2018 as he's describing the season you know how I lived the whole time that I was with you. You saw my life. You saw how I lived. You didn't just see me on a stage. You didn't just see me in the school of tyrannous. You saw how I lived. What does this look like during this time? They're with Paul while he's making tents and when he smashes his thumb with the large mallet while he's doing things they hear what comes out of his mouth. Okay, when a customer treats him badly how does Paul respond in that moment? When a beautiful woman walks into the store to buy a tent what does Paul do then? How does he act? How does he work? What time does he get up in the morning? And they begin to see his life how he actually lives and it begins to change their character from the inside out. When I first went to China the leader that I served under was an incredible missionary named Kevin Graves. God's used him for revival all across China. He's way too important to spend even five minutes with me. But when I went over there he would invite me into his home. And I would see what time he got up in the morning to start praying. Actually I didn't see what time cause I got up later but I knew he was praying when I got up in the morning. He had seven kids. I would see the way he treated his wife. The way he loved his kids. The voice he used of gentleness when he talked with them. I was with them when we would travel and things would happen. The police are coming or some chaos would happen as we would be traveling and ministry in China. I saw how absolutely cool he was and utterly at peace as he trusted God in every situation. And it changed me. It made me who I am. It developed not just my ministry skills but literally the very character on the inside of my heart because somebody cared enough to actually open their life to me. One of my mentors says this. He says to teach you open the Bible. To preach you open your mouth. To make disciples you open your life. And there's no other way to make disciples. You can't do it only on Sunday mornings. You can't do it only in your office. You have to actually open your life because you teach what you know but you reproduce who you are. And that only gets caught as we actually share lives together. And so this is kind of the second thing and it's very costly and that's why I have to actually make the choice of whether or not I'm gonna lay down my life before I actually step in this because it takes time. It takes me saying, I'm not going to put that time into my sermon that would make it a little bit better for Sunday because I'm going to spend time with this young man or this young woman and invest in their life to raise them up for what God's called them to do. And in the short term it seems foolish. It seems stupid because you don't get the return two days down the road. You don't get it two weeks down the road. You don't even get it two months down the road but like Paul, two years down the road has multiplied your ministry beyond everything you're gonna do in the rest of your life combined. If I will invest in others first. Okay, number three, you gotta give them an opportunity to do it. Doing ministry together is great and an important step letting them twang the two strings on the guitar behind you while you're doing stuff. But at some point you actually have to give them the keys to the car to go do it themselves. And is at this point that many leaders get stuck because this is the price tag they're not willing to pay. Because they recognize rightly so this person cannot drive as good as me. And if I put my keys in their hand there is a real chance that we could have some fender benders along the way. Right, it's one of the saddest things in the world. You'll see like a 60 or 70 year old man with like a 30 year old son in the car and the 70 year old man is driving and the 30 year old is sitting in the passenger seat. I think it's one of the most depressing thoughts ever. Somehow that 70 year old who can't see anymore whose reaction time has slowed down with age is making the choice that basically I'm still better than you even though you're in my prime and I'm 70 years old physically. The blindness to fall into that trap is real though. And we can do it in ministry too. And we can continually say I am we're gonna teach you how to drive we're gonna go practice in parallel parking we're gonna do some k-turns here's how the highway works and here's you gotta be careful for kids on this street and all these kinds of things but there has to come a moment where you actually put the keys in their hand. And most people are afraid to do that. But we see Paul making that decision over and over again. He sends Timothy and Erastus all the way to another continent in Macedonia that they would take care of the churches that he planted there. He never leaves Ephesus during this whole time. Only these young people, these raising up go and they begin to plant churches throughout that whole province where dozens and dozens of churches most likely get started throughout all the cities of that province. You read it in the book of Colossians. It is the most impersonal disconnected letter of the entire New Testament. There's no greetings to people no tender love or anything like that, why? Paul didn't plant that church. Someone else did. They didn't love him like they loved Erastus who actually planted the church. He's passing on some theology but the relationship's actually with Erastus. Paul just stayed in Ephesus the whole time while these guys go and start everything else. You have to actually release him to do it. Again, when I was very early in ministry I was an assistant youth pastor when I was 19 years old and the youth pastor at church probably had 10 or 15 years of ministry experience. His name was Mark Scorsone. He took me under his wing and he just began to give me all kinds of opportunities. If I was a youth pastor and I had someone who was as inexperienced as I was I'd be like, that's a wonderful idea. Now we'll talk about what actually works, right? Oh, you want to do that for Nevandas to outreach. I only tried that 13 times over the last four years. It's not a good idea but he never talked to me once like that. I would come with an idea and he'd say, yeah, let's do it Toby. I'll go behind you, you do it. You get up there and talk about it. You want to do a battle of bands outreach to the local high school. I'll release all the money from the budget for you to do the thing. Well really, Mark, you had that plan for something else. I'll be like, nope, if you have it in your heart I'm going to get behind you, we're going to do this thing. And all my early experiences in ministry were under Mark basically letting me try stupid ideas and learning from them. But some of them stuck to the wall and some of them were powerful and they taught me things that I'm doing literally now 20 years later. We got to give them opportunities to do it. And then lastly, number four. We see Paul doing this new thing here that really was different than he'd ever done in ministry before. Which is that he begins to gather together young leaders. He begins to gather next generation leaders together. And this is a really big change from what Paul had done in ministry before. He was traveling with just one or two people and starting churches in different places. But now he plants an emphasis. If you count all the people that we kind of have record coming to be trained under him during this time it's probably up as high as 15 people or something like that. Of people that are coming here and they're kind of learning from him in emphasis and he plants in that place and he gathers them together. Why? Well one, I think you can train up more people if they're gathered together, right? When I'm traveling with just Timothy I can only raise up one person when I have those conversations. But if I have them gathered together in emphasis I can raise up nine or 10 at a time as I'm training up. That's part of what's going on here. But part of it too I think is when you actually get young leaders together there is a mutual learning and development that begins to happen. I don't know if you've ever had this experience either when you were being discipled or maybe even a school setting you're a part of a cohort or something like that where basically you as peers come together in addition to what's coming down from the leader who's imparting into you there's actually something that's happening from your time together as well that's raising you up. And we begin to see this happen with this group here. I remember my dad who led big churches for many, many years he told me the single most important decision I ever made in ministry and it was when I was already in my fifties said I started every Saturday having a mentor group with young men in the church and every single Saturday he would meet with a group of 12 or 13 men and he would just pour into their lives. But you cannot count the dozens of people that ended up in full-time ministry because of this one mentor group that my dad had. Why? He's gathering together young leaders and investing in them together. And to get really practical one of the things I've been praying about even as a part of my role at the North Radiant School of Ministry is how do we equip the local churches in this network, in this community, in this family, in this movement to do this at the next level? And so we've been putting something together I'm pretty excited about that's called the launch program and it's not something we're doing here in Kalamazoo it's actually a program that just empowers leaders and pastors in their churches to do this stuff. And so we'll have them come in here with Kalamazoo a couple of retreats a year and we'll have some classes for the knowledge but most of it's empowering pastors to do the practical mentoring and giving ministry experience that can only actually happen in the local church context. So if you're here and you're like I don't even really know how to get started with this stuff where do I go with this? This is something that we're gonna be talking about even tomorrow you can talk at the table you got cards on your chairs there that got stuff on it but it might give you kind of the first steps to actually walk out this dying to myself and investing in others process as you kind of take those first steps in that process. And so that's something I'm really excited about I was praying actually for just 10 people that would join this first year and I think we're gonna have like 30 or something like that it's like totally blowing up as pastors are like yes this is what I'm looking for this is what I'm needing we've been running a little like kind of pilot program of it here in Kalamazoo the last two years with nine young leaders in the church that are like working adult age and at five of them are already in full-time ministry just as they've been doing it for about a year and a half and so it's just cool that basically when you give pastors the resource to do what God's called them to do in the local church powerful things start happening for raising up leaders and so we're just excited for that but you know launch program time together strategies to release them into ministry all this stuff is great but if we have not settled in our hearts that we are willing to pay the price tag it is all just playing games and the key is not systems it is sacrifice it's not curriculum it's crucifixion it's not laying down a plan it's laying down your life and I want to end our time here just kind of having a moment you're probably not expecting this in a workshop really or whatever but I just want to have a moment with us before the Holy Spirit just what I need to do is I need to settle in my heart in advance just like Paul did during that winter in Antioch I need to settle in my heart in advance how am I going to live my life how am I going to do my ministry what is going to be my priority and am I actually willing to die to myself to lay down the love and loyalty I get from ministry to lay down the praise and recognition I get from ministry man maybe even to lay down some of the money I get from ministry that I could raise up others into what God's called them to do so would you just bow your heads with me when I just first began to see this picture and the pages of the scripture I was like shot through the heart by an arrow as I just realized Lord all the little subtle ways that I was promoting myself that I was keeping power in my own hands and that for all the talk I had of being someone who's trying to raise up the next generation I myself was actually the problem I was the ceiling I was the hurdle I was the barrier and Lord as you're giving others of us today Lord just even that same picture that same sense in our own hearts that same revelation will we just ask you for help Jesus I just ask would you help me deal with the things in my heart that would somehow get in the way of the fullness of your kingdom multiply would you deal with the impurities in me that would somehow keep me from raising up the next generation I can't do it on my own I need your help Lord but would you come and would you help me and Lord even in the understanding that you will you will meet us in that place you will prepare us with everything we need to fulfill your purposes over our lives Lord I just ask you and even I purpose in my own heart before you Lord I want to choose tents over handkerchiefs give me the wisdom that is necessary to do that help me to not be foolish help me to not be short-sighted I want to choose others future over my present and so Lord we just declare here even as a group I will be a seed Lord I give you permission to bury me stuff me down in the dirt for me to decrease that I would die that there would be abundant fruit unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it remains alone many of you actually feel alone in ministry right now and the Lord would say the solution to that is not actually just a friend coming alongside you one of the solutions to that is you have to die unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it remains alone but if it dies it bears much fruit Lord you can bury me you can kill me you can crucify me whatever you need to do Lord that your kingdom would be established that you would grow your church that you would grow your purposes in my life that you would have the fruit you deserve that you would receive the reward of your suffering but I step even in a fresh way with you to your crucifixion today Lord I will die with you I will be buried with you that I can celebrate the life you want to bring together and Lord we feel the weight of it we know we can't do it alone so we go out from this place today expecting you to come alongside us help us even deal with some of the junk in our heart Lord that I've had to deal with so many times over the years that I can fall through Lord I'm being a man or a woman that chooses tents over handkerchiefs