In Neil Cole's Organic Church, Cole stresses the importance of constantly bringing up the next generation of the church leaders. His approach though is a little different than a lot of other ideas I have heard. He encourages leaders to push brand spanking new Christians into the battle to learn quickly what it means to stand up for your faith. A lot of the time we talk about the need to study the Bible and be discipled after someone is saved and then maybe after a year of doing that, you can go out and share and defend your faith to the world. Cole argues (and I have to agree with him here) that the best way to learn how to be a Christian is to be immediately thrown into situations where you have to stand up for your faith. This grounds you in your faith, and gives you a foundation, where you cannot separate faith from action.
I know it can be scary letting someone loose who has minimal knowledge of the word, and only a few days ago was sinning up a storm, but we are in a battle against a very powerful enemy and not only can we not afford to waste time training new believers, but the best training for battle is actually fighting in the battle. We need to unleash new passionate Christians on this world and stand back and watch as they win the world over for Christ. Don’t worry about them, they have the ultimate helper inside them (The Holy Spirit!).
David, I found your post interesting because often as leaders when we are nurturing baby Christians, we sometimes have a tendency to protect them from ministry until they "are ready." But I think the author of your article has a point because part of growing as a disciple of Jesus is actively partnering with the Holy Spirit to fulfill the Great Commission. So it seems that as leaders we need to be careful that we are not training disciples who are fat in the Word but evangelistically out of shape. Therefore, early on in a new believer's walk we as leaders need to teach and model the truth that embedded in a disciple’s DNA is a compelling desire to proclaim the Gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit. With that being said, I also think that it is a leader's responsibility to recognize that when a new Christian enters ministry, it is the leader's responsibility to teach the disciple about the importance of rest and spiritual warfare. Without this teaching and accountability, we are sending new believers out into the battle field without training and ammunition. So as leaders we must commission believers soon but equip before sending.
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