Is the Great Commission Scalable?

I share a lot of conversations with pastors. Recently, one brought up the idea of scalability in ministry. Like you, we had both been hearing the same thing for years. “Scalability is an important quality for any growing organization or profitable business.” So, after sitting through numerous presentations and reading a ton of articles about it, this is my best shot at a simple definition.

An organization’s mission is scalable when structures don’t hinder growth.

Or, maybe more simply put, scalability enables your mission statement to become a reality.

Before scalability was even a thing, it was a big problem. For years, many pastors, who quickly set a course toward oikocentric ministry, found traction is more difficult to generate within their church families than they had expected. Why? No strategy works if it isn’t scalable.

For pastors, the problem is seldom a lack of vision. Most of us have consistently found agreement on what we’re here to accomplish. Jesus said make disciples, and that’s what we all want to do. So why don’t we? Scalability. Structures get in the way. It may sound rather weird, but just because making disciples is what we all want to do, it’s not what we’re all trying to do.

Many local churches have vision statements that reflect a desire to bring people to Jesus paired with structures that promote inward focus and non-missional spiritual development. No matter how we spin it, one plus zero will never equal two.

Even as a child, I heard my pastors and leaders say, “It’s important that we tell people about Jesus!” (That’s vision.) But I never took their encouragement as personal marching orders. There were just so many people out there who were lost and so many verses I hadn’t yet memorized. And besides, I didn’t have much of an outgoing personality! It just made sense to me that such an important job should be left to the better-connected, better-informed, and more gregarious people in the world…who, by the way, happened to be my pastors and leaders. But with so few of them and so many people who needed Jesus, the ministries I was around simply stalled.

The most basic scalability factor is 8-15. That’s why I love the five steps of The Oikos Challenge. It allows a pastor to scale ministry by simply providing a core strategy that many churches sorely lack. Other structure conversations are usually needed as well, but The Challenge has filled the scalability gap for the many congregations we continue to work with at The OM.

Jesus didn’t just provide a vision to change the world, He also gave us a necessary structure through the oikos principle. Because, if the Great Commission was going to go global, it was going to have to be scalable. And while He predicted the Holy Spirit would provide us the power to succeed, Jesus knew humanity works best through structures, so He gave us one. In fact, Jesus modeled it, through His Church’s first oikos. He was very intentional about His own 12-man front row.