Focus on Reproduction, Student Workbook, SW12

/ 3 9

F O C U S O N R E P R O D U C T I O N

III. Empower: Commission Leaders for the Church and Train Them to Reproduce.

Acts 20.28 - Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. Acts 20.32 - And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

A. Importance of Empowerment in reproducing urban churches

1

1. Reproduction is largely a matter of laying the right foundation for the church’s ongoing growth and development.

2. Empowerment is investment ; it involves providing the growing church with all the tools that it needs in order to “take the baton” and continue on the journey.

3. To define empowerment in terms of abandonment is to ensure that it will never go further than its bitterness against those who started the effort.

4. The Holy Spirit must show you who plant the church the difference between avoiding harmful dependence and being stingy and patronizing .

B. Keys to Empowering churches to reproduce

1. Empowerment is investment: identifying, investing in, and releasing leaders to accomplish their own God-given dreams and tasks in the Lord.