to Better Help Churches, Disciples and Leaders Flourish!
Ascending Leaders recently took a big step in hiring a full-time operations manager, our first full-time position in addition to our President. We needed someone to oversee projects and respond to staff needs so that our President could focus on further developing Ascending Leaders to better serve churches, disciples and leaders in the future.
Because this step was so critical, we took ample time–it took us 12 years to take this step– and conducted a rigorous review process. We went from 80 resumes to 20 applicants, to 8 initial interviews, to 3 finalists, to the very person God had in mind for Ascending Leaders. We are thrilled to welcome Rhonda Spriggs to the role of operations manager and to our Ascending Leaders team!
Rhonda brings almost twenty years of experience in the marketing database sector of business. God has blessed her with a effervescent, relational and detail-oriented personality, a high adaptability to others, and phenomenal management skills. Her strong customer service bent will please churches, disciples and leaders we serve. Rhonda is also the chair of the MBA Alumni Association of Houston Baptist University and has participated in her church’s volunteer youth ministry in Houston’s Third Ward for almost 20 years.
Mike says,
I am very excited to bring Rhonda on board as Ascending Leaders’ full-time operations manager. Not only does she love Jesus and have a passion for serving Him – she also has a BA and MBA from Houston Baptist University, where one of our board members is president, two of our team members are students, and three of my kids are alumni. We can already see the significant difference Rhonda will make in allowing Ascending Leaders to foster deeper discipleship and in freeing me up for greater focus.”
During her first day on the job, Rhonda was already asking each Ascending Leaders team member what she could do to support their work – and started doing just that! Her presence is already a tremendous blessing and making an impact on our team. It will not be long before those we serve will feel the difference Rhonda is making.
Rhonda shared,
I am so very excited to be working here at Ascending Leaders. The mission of helping others grow in their discipleship is very meaningful to me. I love the Lord, and I am excited to be within an organization that has the same values.”
Welcome to the team, Rhonda! We are excited to have you, too!
Our Guests for this Episode – Joel and Patricia Hogan:
Joel and Patricia Hogan have served with Christian Reformed World Missions for 33 years. Additionally, they have spent 17 years as missionaries in the Philippines and 16 years in Grand Rapids, and for most of that time Joel served as Director of International Ministries. They have been blessed with four children and 11 grandchildren. Joel and Patty are Spiritual Directors and are committed to helping people to grow in intimacy with the Lord.
“A lot of churches are very program-based. But we’re discovering that our programs and participation in programs doesn’t necessarily equate to discipleship growth. Making disciples is our mission . . . but how do we know when we’ve made one?”
Bob Johnson, the pastor at Chapelwood UMC in Houston, perfectly captured this common issue in churches when he and Mike Johnson met to discuss the stages of disciple growth for our podcast.
Bob pointed out,
There seems to be no direct or very strong correlation between how busy I am in church ministries and my growth as a disciple.”
Matt McClure and Peter Cammarano, two other head pastors Mike interviewed for our podcast, confirmed the problem. “We ran into the roadblock of assumption,” said Matt. “That assumption was that as soon as you do a ministry within the church, it is discipleship.”
“My denomination wanted to know about activity,” added Peter. “They wanted to know, as I like to say it, ‘how many hineys were in the pews and how many dollars were in the plate.’ But discipleship seemed to be more than THAT.”
Through Ascending Leaders, these pastors tried a new way of measuring discipleship growth in order to know how best to help their conversations. They used the Scripture-based Four Stages of Faith.
Jesus’ last command to His disciples was, “Make disciples” (Matthew 8:18-19). In the gospels, we see actually how Jesus did that with the twelve and with other disciples. He gave four distinct invitations that correspond to each stage.
The first invitation is “Come and See.” We see it especially in John 1:38-39, in which the disciples ask, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” and Jesus replies, “Come, and you will see.” Essentially the disciples are wondering if Jesus might indeed be the Messiah, and Jesus invites them to come and observe him. The “Come and See” stage applies to people who are not yet believers but who are interested in seeing what Christianity is all about.
Jesus then extends the invitation to “Come and Follow Me.” In Matthew 4:19, he states, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” This is the stage in which people take the step of actually becoming followers of Christ. It’s also the stage in which you may face the most danger of becoming stuck. Your initial enthusiasm can wane and complacency take over. We call this “The Wall.”
As you traverse past the wall, the third invitation becomes more personal: “Come and Be with Me.” Mark 3:14 states that Jesus appointed the twelve “that they might be with him.” Being becomes here more important that doing.
You might think that in this third stage, you’ve arrived at the most intimate time with Christ. But Jesus gives a fourth invitation. We find that in John 15:4, where he says, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit in itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” The increased intimacy of being with Jesus leads to deeper surrender and fruit-bearing that comes from remaining deeply connected to Him.
“For us at Prairie City,” Matt stated, “it was really a God-gift to engage with Ascending Leaders and scripturally lay out this maturing process as we grow closer to God.”
Of course, not everyone wants to have their discipleship journey measured and given labels. As Peter Cammarano described, “We did get some pushback. People would say, ‘If you’re telling me I’m at stage 2, does that mean you’re putting me down? Is it an attempt to classify and contain me?’
“Well no. If you’re on a trail, and your goal is to get to the end of the trail, you probably want to figure out what challenges are going to be in front of you and how not to slide back. At the end of the day, don’t you feel good about getting to the next place?”
Mike concurred: “In my twenties, I did a lot of hiking in the Cascade mountains, and I learned that the best way to identify hikes is by the elevation gain. I actually did myself a favor by not trying to take on a hike that had too much elevation gain. If you think of the stages, think of it as elevation gains, you’re actually doing yourself a favor when you say, ‘Okay, I’m ready for this elevation gain but not for that one’ or, ‘Now I want something more challenging than a walk around a meadow.’”
“That would have been super-valuable information for me five years ago,” said Matt. “Because I kicked off this discipleship thing with small discipleship groups, and that’s like ‘stage 4 elevation gain.’ I got together some leaders who were interested in it, but with most of them, it just fell flat.”
Peter shared the story of when he joined some other church leaders on a three-day hike. The water had been rationed out over the three days.
“I remember that last day. We had only a mile left. But you couldn’t see very far, and it was really hard to know what your progress was. So, I had signaled for a break, and we drank the rest of the water. Some of the guys had given me some of their water; they were concerned that the pastor was not going to make it to the end of the trail. But here’s the one thing that made all the difference. The guy in charge of the hike said, ‘Peter, it’s x number of steps’ – I think it was something like 2500 steps in a mile.So I started counting each in my head, and after we made the mile, the guys said, “Pastor, that was the fastest mile you’ve ever done. What made a difference?”I said, “You told me how to measure my progress.”
Peter concluded,
What a powerful experience, to be able to be challenged. To be able to mark your progress, and then to experience the beauty of something that you’ve always had but now is new. Isn’t that essentially what we’re talking with discipleship?”
Hear the conversation between Matt, Peter and Mike in episode 1 of the Discipleship Podcast for Church Leaders.
Ascending Leaders recently hosted a training for our adjunct coaches. These are the experienced men and women who partner with church leaders to help them grow their congregations into fruit-bearing discipleship. Together they represent:
200 years of ministry experience
6 theological schools
4 denominations
These coaches came from across the country to share their insights and to get oriented with Ascending Leaders. Among the group, three new coaches were present. Meet our latest additions and hear what makes them passionate about discipleship!
Ryan Poe
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My passion for clear, transformational discipleship was birthed out of my own frustrating experience with discipleship that led me to nearly walk away from vocational ministry. However, God used various seminary courses to ignite a fire in me as a disciple and as a pastor. I have returned to seminary to research effective learning approaches that may (with prayer and discernment) be appropriated for use in the church.
I was introduced to Mike and AL through one of my seminary courses. In September 2017, I accepted the Discipleship Pastor position at a multisite church in Indiana and am working with our church leaders to define discipleship, develop a clear pathway for discipleship, create a personal development plan for the church, design a one-year new disciple small group experience, and write curriculum.
I look forward to continuing my learning from Mike and the other adjuncts about effective ways to walk alongside church leaders as they cultivate healthy disciple-making processes and cultures in their churches.”
Matt McClure
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I love Jesus, and I believe God is leading me to train as an Ascending Leaders coach. God has ignited a zeal for discipleship in his church and for his people in me. My interactions with Ascending Leaders over the last five years has been God-honoring and inspiring, and I am excited to be apart of this ministry. I’m loving the opportunity to collaborate on discipleship with like-minded leaders.”
Marilyn Wadkins
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I have been passionate about discipleship for many years. My passion for leadership growth lead me to annually bring teams from the church I was serving to the Willowcreek Leadership Summit. There was a great deal of frustration on our leadership team around translating what we learned from the Summits to our congregation. When Reveal first came out, I encouraged our church to participate. Like some other churches, we were surprised by the results.
I am extremely passionate about the value of coaching in any situation. I became certified in Executive and Life coaching in 2013, took Vibrant Church Initiative’s training, and began coaching churches in 2014. After visiting the Ascending Leaders website, I took a couple of their courses and participated in a session of DiscipleOn. It was fascinating to work with a variety of denominations from all over the country struggling with the same challenges.
When people grow in their faith, there is hope. When their relationship with God is strong, the world is a better place.”
We at Ascending Leaders are thrilled to have these three coaches join our team. Mike Johnson said after the training, “The adjuncts present are terrific disciples—patient, passionate, gracious, hospitable spirits, bright, deeply and widely experienced, jovial. I couldn’t have asked for any better, and I look forward to serving with them further.”
As a church ministry leader, sometimes you realize your congregation is stuck. They’re repeating the same patterns. Signs of genuine discipleship and spiritual growth are sparse. If you’ve experienced this frustration, you’re not alone. In fact, there’s an online community dedicated to church leaders for sharing experiences and resources and receiving guidance in how to help their congregations move forward as disciples of Jesus. This is the DiscipleOn community.
Tim Eisenga is a church leader who joined the DiscipleOn. We at Ascending Leaders were privileged to have him share his experience with us. Here’s what he wrote:
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“DiscipleOn has been a blessing to me and therefore the church I am serving, and I am thankful to God for that. DiscipleOn helped me to learn more about growing and leading discipleship within a church context. It was great to meet other people working to lead discipling within other churches and learn from their experiences and get ideas from listening to each other. Mike Johnson lead with many great topics that were applicable to the whole group.
Highlights for me included expert webinars with Mindy Caliguire, Greg Hawkins, and Bob Johnson. Mindy really challenged us to shepherd our churches well while also taking care of ourselves spiritually and emotionally. Greg demonstrated to us that being strong spiritual leaders who abide in Christ is a critical factor in growing disciples. And Bob demonstrated how he had a well-planned out discipling plan for people of all levels in a large church. The experience and conversations with these experts was very inspirational.
DiscipleOn helped me personally get support and encouragement from the group participants. The result of this was that I had more perseverance to keep moving the discipleship topic forward within my church, and discipleship has been growing as a result.”
Registration for the next DiscipleOn community closes this Saturday, January 20th. Register now and join us this February-June for the encouragement, support, and direction you need for yourself and for your church. Don’t disciple alone!
For more information and to register, click below!
After they had crossed the Jordan river into the Promised Land, why did the Israelites leave a pile of stones beside the river? The stones came from the bottom of what should have been a dangerously flooded river bed – instead the river bed was dry, because God had parted the waters. The pile of stones memorialized this demonstration of God’s power and love. It was later named Ebenezer, meaning “stone of help.”
Coaching Zuni Christian Reformed Church is Ascending Leaders’ Ebenezer. We wanted to commemorate the power and love God showed to us during our first decade as a ministry by serving another ministry in a low-income area, at no cost to them. With financial help from Faith Formation Ministries of the Christian Reformed Church and a foundation, we donated two years of free coaching to Zuni Christian Reformed Church on the Zuni Reservation in New Mexico.
Now, the Zuni Church has finished with the coaching and has increased its impact in the Zuni community. Tim Eisenga, director of discipleship, and Mike Meekhof, the pastor at Zuni Church, both reflected on the coaching they received from Dr. Mike Johnson of Ascending Leaders.
Tim said,
“Mike coached us through a process to reflect upon who we are as a church and what direction we see God leading us for the next years. I appreciated that he coached us in the process without directly telling us what we should do. Instead, he gave us a structure that allowed us to seek God’s leading, take ownership of what we were doing, empower members of the church to take leadership, and encouraged and challenged all church members to get involved.”
Mike Meekhof shared his perspective:
“Sometimes we get so embedded in ministry that we cannot see the forest for the trees. Mike Johnson’s wise coaching helped us see things from a broader perspective and gave us hope for becoming a more “beautiful bride” which Christ will make blameless of the final day.
As we looked at the history of the Zuni church, we could see clear strengths and weaknesses, signs of the Holy Spirit’s leading, and signs of our blindness and disobedience. Mike reminded us to look deeper and further, so that we could see God’s faithfulness and be renewed to face the challenges of the future. We are grateful for the gift that Ascending Leaders has given to us through Mike Johnson.”
Through these two years of coaching, Mike Johnson and the rest of the Ascending Leaders’ team have grown to deeply appreciate the unique, challenging, and hospitable ministry of Zuni Christian Reformed Church to the people of Southwestern New Mexico. In the culminating worship service, Mike Johnson, Mike Meekhof and Tim Eisenga, along with other worshipers, watched the families of the Zuni church physically build their own Ebenezer on the platform. Mike could not help but wonder if these past two years would stand as an Ebenezer in the life of the Zuni church as well as in Ascending Leaders’.
Not only does Zuni Church have a pile of rocks to symbolize their transition – now they also have a new building located in the center of the city, which empowers them to have a bolder outreach to their community. As Ascending Leaders crosses from one decade of ministry into the next, Zuni Christian Reformed Church stands as a living and growing Ebenezer of God’s amazing power and love.
Not only does Zuni Church have a pile of rocks to symbolize their transition – now they also have a new building located in the center of the city, which empowers them to have a bolder outreach to their community. As Ascending Leaders crosses from one decade of ministry into the next, Zuni Christian Reformed Church stands as a living and growing Ebenezer of God’s amazing power and love.
Click below for a free graph visualizing an example path Ascending Leaders takes churches on in their journey of growth. Might this be the kind of coaching your church needs?
Mike Johnson is about the intentional formation of people. Over the last fifteen years he has focused on the formation of people through innovating, creating, writing, coaching and teaching. Ten years ago he planted the ministry Ascending Leaders. In 2004 Mike received his Doctor of Ministry degree from Fuller Seminary. Prior to this Mike worked as a CR church planter and pastor in Missouri City, Texas. Mike and his wife make their home in Sugar Land, Texas. Their two children are married and live in the area. They are all employed in the field of education.
Christmas marks God in all his glorious divinity, making himself nothing, setting aside all the perks of divinity, to be made in human likeliness, and to suffer on this fractured globe for 30+ years for the purpose of redeeming humans for a relationship with Him. God gave up so much to bridge the gap and live in proximity to people like you and me.
Maybe it is that relational aspect of Christmas that every year this season gives me an urge to sit down for coffee with friends of Ascending Leaders like you, to hear more of what God has done in your life and family of late and to share what he has done in my life and in my ministry through Ascending Leaders. Of course that is not possible this holiday season because the year is almost over!
In place of a holiday coffee time together, please allow me to share briefly by email.
What a year God has given us at Ascending Leaders. We have grown our staff into the strongest and most positive team yet. Together we have helped more people experience more deeply the presence of Christ and grow deeper as His people. God has expanded the scope of the ministry of Ascending Leaders in ways I had not expected. We would never have gotten here if it had not been for your past support.
Our last trip this year and last event was to facilitate a new weekend “Stages of Faith” conference for 50 members of a church we are helping build a clear and simple disciple path to help people move forward. It was a wonderful weekend of God moving people to yearn to step forward as disciples and seeing ways they can each do that. One of their staff shared her gratitude:
“Mike, you have done an excellent job with us as a team at our church. We deeply appreciate your work and you. You keep us moving forward. You refresh and encourage us. You serve us well”.
These are compelling times of greater interest in discipleship in congregations. There is ample evidence for the role God has for us to play. If you have already donated this season, I hope this “holiday coffee” has given you a glimpse of what your support means for churches, and seeing the momentum of God’s work through Ascending Leaders encourages you.
If you have not yet supported our work this year-end, I do not want you now to miss out on the excitement and the joy of participating in this fruitful mission. In just ONE day, the opportunity to have your gift doubled by our Matching2Multiply crew will be coming to a close.
We need to receive any donations to:
Ascending Leaders
3927 Field Crossing
Sugar Land, TX 77498
postmarked Dec. 30 or 31 to be doubled and to count as a 2016 tax deduction.
Or by credit card by clicking here before midnight Dec. 31 (your time zone) to be doubled and to count for a 2016 tax deduction.
We are so very close to surpassing our goal to be able to launch at full tilt into 2017. Please help us get there!
Life for me, and for Ascending Leaders, has been full this fall. It is very good to not only see the need for discipleship in churches and the growing recognition of churches to address that need, but also the focus and resolve of the churches we work with to intentionally build paths for that. God continues to faithfully and wonderfully equip us to respond to that desire.
The executive director of another nonprofit recently told me she was frustrated that some of her board would not financially support the ministry. I am grateful that is not the situation with us—once again 100% of our board, many of our board emeritus and also some friends of Ascending Leaders whom together we call our Matching 2 Multiply 2016 Crew have pooled together this year to double all your year-end donations (a $200 donation becomes $400) and quadruple all National Giving Day donations (a $200 donation becomes $800). The opportunity to join in God’s purpose for us to help churches better make disciples is abundant.
In early October, I was presenting at a pastors’ conference in Tucson. One discipleship pastor there shared, “Lately people have been approaching me saying we need to do something to improve discipleship. I wasn’t sure where to turn. The last thing we need is another hyped program that provides limited results. Now this is something that makes sense and that we can apply in a way that fits our setting.” Thirty hours after the first words of teaching came out of my mouth, he registered for the last open slot of the DiscipleOn! community and thirty hours after registering was in his first Catalytic Gathering of DiscipleOn!
You can join in making moments like this possible as we head into a new year:
Ask God to bless our coaching, teaching and resourcing with a large harvest of disciples, leaders and churches flourishing.
Support us with a National Giving Day or year-end donation which our Matching 2 Multiply Crew will quadruple or double (up to a total of $40,000 in matching funds).
Invite us in 2017 to present to your church leaders or whole church on stages of discipleship.
Read the Winter Highpoint and be inspired by the DiscipleshipDifference God is allowing the Ascending Leaders team to make.
At 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday this past June I was standing on moist gumbo (clay) between the floor joists of a mobile home in 95ᵒ heat/75% humidity, cutting away muddy insulation clinging to the joists. Others had already spent over a day ripping out the drywall and insulation. This is what those in the flood relief world call “mucking.” It’s what is left to do after the Brazos River, which meanders through the county my family has called home for the last 26 years, floods 5 feet higher than ever before.
I drank as often as I could get a break to stay hydrated, and struggled with many thoughts that ran through my mind. The enormity of the recovery task—1,600 homes, and just this one home required a full day with a crew of seven. The sheer heat; I wouldn’t normally mow my own lawn in this heat. The realization that these people had lost their home and all its contents, with no time to prepare. The temptation to judge the owners for not purchasing flood insurance on their homes…of course even if they had, they likely could not find quality contractors to do the work before black mold set in.
Later I found out that this trailer had been home for a retired couple who had raised their family here. They shared with us their story of 40 years of work fixing up this trailer, one major project at a time. Their insurance company, after all these years, recently stopped covering mobile homes. They were meaning to find a new flood insurance company, but had not gotten around to it—so much energy had gone into insurance work surrounding critical health issues.
Amidst all this physical need around us, is also the acute need for churches, disciples and leaders across the U.S. and around the world to flourish. When not mucking out houses, we have been responding to requests from Arizona, various parts of Houston, Michigan, California, Georgia and other states to help churches. Read the Fall Highpoint to see how you can make use of Ascending Leaders’ help or how you can help us help churches, disciples and leaders flourish.
