Most organizations are led from a top down model. The church in America has adopted this very familiar corporate structure.

 From the beginning we have believed that “the work of service” mentioned in Ephesians 4:12 is the process of making disciple makers and is intended for everyone. To that end we have resisted adding a lot of staff so that all of us would have to take responsibility and engage in disciple making. Desiring to avoid a “paid professional staff” that would be seen as the ‘experts’ who do all the ‘works of service’ we have maintained a very minimal paid staff. In fact, almost everything that happens here, is organized by volunteers who give themselves away.

The organizational model we are following is more like the one diagramed below. Not only is it NOT top-down, it is driven by relationship in the context of community.

The positive benefits of this relationally driven approach is that it offers opportunities for deeper levels of ownership by our people. The culture has become a more ‘all for one’ type environment instead of people sitting around griping about what ‘the church’ isn’t doing. In addition we also have extra resources to give towards furthering His mission locally and anywhere around the world He leads us.

Ultimately we are not looking for more spectators but for those followers of Jesus sincerely interested in getting in the game.