Stay, serve, share, send

You have found someone. They receive you, they are asking real questions, and they know half the street. Now what?

Four moves, and the order matters.

Stay

Stay in that house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move from house to house. — Luke 10:7 (OTB)

The instruction is to settle. One relationship, given real time, instead of thirty given none.

This cuts against the instinct that says wider is better. It is also the move most people skip, because staying is slow and looks like nothing is happening. Nothing is happening — for a while. Then everything does, all at once, through a network you could not have reached by hurrying.

Notice the small detail: eating and drinking what they provide. You receive from them. You are a guest, not a benefactor, and that is part of what makes the relationship real rather than a project.

Serve

Meet the need in front of you. Pray for them — out loud, by name, for the thing they actually mentioned.

Serving is not a technique for earning a hearing. It is what love does, and it must be real whether or not anything else ever follows. If you would stop serving them the moment you concluded they would never believe, that was never service.

Share

Not a lecture. Open the Bible together.

This is the move the rest of the library exists for: sit down with one passage and the discovery questions, and let them meet God in the text rather than hearing your summary of him. “Would you like to read it and see what it says?” is a smaller ask than most people expect, and it puts the authority in the right place from the first meeting.

Start the study in their home, with their people, if they will have it. Where the first study happens shapes everything that comes after.

Send

This is the one that gets dropped, and the one that decides whether anything multiplies.

From early on, assume out loud that they will do this with someone else. Not “come back when you are mature enough.” More like: “Who else should be hearing this? Bring them next week.”

Their network is an asset you can never replicate. The temptation is to pull them out of it — into your group, your church calendar, your programme — and in doing so cut the exact relationships the gospel was about to travel along. Leave them where they are, and coach them there.

Which one is hardest

Be honest about which of the four you skip. Most people have a consistent one.

If it is staying, you are probably busy. If it is serving, you may be treating people as projects. If it is sharing, it is usually fear. If it is sending, it is usually the quiet belief that they are not ready — which is often really the belief that you are needed.