I was recently a part of a Ministry Leader restructuring in a small sized church, a few hundred people. The problem was that the ministry leaders weren't doing their jobs and that was making disciples, instead they were playing church.

No where in the Bible does God outline that there should be a Ministry Leader. There are Pastors, Elders, and Deacons, but that is as far as the structure goes. Everyone else is called to make disciples.

Obviously some structure is needed in larger churches, but God never calls for it.

So what was recently done was all the ministries except the children's ministry was stripped away and the leaders were taken out of leadership.

What takes place now, is if I want to be a Disciple-maker I go talk to the elders and say I'm going to start a Disciple making group called Media for Ministry for example. They know me and where I'm at on a Disciple making level and say OK go do it. Now anybody that wants to join me is welcome to. It can be as small or as large as I want it to be. All the while I'm looking for other potential Disciple-makers in my group to go out and do the same thing.

This is done for any area that anybody can think of. Somebody can decide to do a Marriage-retreat, or want to do the Valentines Dinner. The position of Leader no longer applies and its not something to work towards like in a corporate environment and people don't take and keep control of certain area's. Everybody wanting to be a Disciple-maker however, has to agree that if they are told no, they can't do something its because they aren't ready yet. They will be put under somebody to learn from then released to start their Disciple making.

This is a small enough church, that it can be restructured and re-learn itself. This is something new and there isn't a set way of doing it, other than what is laid out in the Bible. It is a learn as you go concept for now and will be working itself out.

All the people at the meeting for the most part were doing the discipling to some extent already and welcomed this change with open arms. Those that opposed the idea were the exact people that shouldn't have been in the leadership position to begin with. It gave old leaders new breath and released the responsibility of taking care of entire sections of the church by themselves. The men's and women's leaders no longer have to take care of all the men's and women's problems. They can be dealt with on a much smaller scale.

So this concept is going to take shape more and more as situations arise, but in the end, those that God really wants will step up and start making disciples, which is what he calls us all to do.

I wanted to post this in here because I find this relates to an open source community and we are all familiar with open source communities. I also just wanted to get some feed back and see what you guys thought. I'm not a pastor, elder, or deacon. I am just another person that goes to the church who thought this was a really good idea.