How to use them
Both failures come from love
Say that in the first five minutes of chapter 1, before anybody feels accused. A
team that hears “baiting” and gets defensive cannot be honest for the rest of the
session, and the honesty is the whole class.
Then keep it in the first person. Somebody will name another ministry’s failure
rather than their own — bring it back to the last time we served someone.
Hold the fixed wording, and give the reason
The Gateway question has fixed wording, and somebody will offer a smoother
version that the room likes better. Thank them, hold the line, and give the
reason — “because I said so” will not survive the car park.
Be able to say the sentence yourself without reaching for it. A facilitator who
fumbles the fixed wording has just taught the room that the wording is negotiable.
And when a team wants to debate whether it works before saying it once, get them
saying it out loud first. The debate usually dissolves.
Earlier is not lesser
Chapter 3’s prayer request gets heard as a softer, smaller version of the Gateway
question. It is not smaller in value — it is earlier in the sequence, and for some
people it is the only door there is.
Two related slips: somebody who wants to collect requests and skip the praying —
name what that turns the form into, before the class reaches chapter 5 — and, in
chapter 5, a team treating the praying as the warm-up and the calling as the work.
Say plainly which one this chapter thinks is the work, and consider spending some
of the session actually praying. It is the one chapter where the exercise can
simply be done in the room.
Watch for the caller who leads with the invitation because it feels efficient.
Efficient is exactly what it sounds like on the other end.
The small additions that undo it
Three well-meant instincts each undo a chapter, and all three sound like
diligence.
One more field on the form (chapter 4) — ask what it is for and who reads it;
usually nobody does. Box 2 treated as a formality for believers only, which
reverses the chapter and will be reversed in practice unless it is named here. And
“we all follow up” (chapter 6), which is the failure described as a strength.
When somebody’s objection in chapter 6 is really about trusting a specific church,
do not overrule it. Route it to chapter 7 — that is what the written agreement
exists for.
The three rules do not bend
Chapter 7 is the longest chapter and it should be. Two things to hold.
A church leader who feels mistrusted by the document: say early that it protects
them too, because what it makes visible is the referring team’s expectations. And
any attempt to treat the three rules as guidance rather than rules — there is no
version of this class where they bend.
The inversion arrives in chapter 8 as “we’re too small for the agreement”. Small
does not remove the guardrails; it means the same few people commit to them. Know
the smallest ministry in the room and walk that one through the pipeline in front
of everybody. And when a team starts planning a new outreach, the chapter says the
opposite: use what already exists.
The shadow list, wearing softer clothes
Chapter 9 lands on the leader’s own record, so go first and tell your drift as a
failure.
Then watch for its signature error: a leader who hears “make sure referrals land”
and starts building a tracking list of seekers. That is the shadow list chapters 6
and 7 forbid, and they will believe they are being diligent. “We’ll just check in
on a few of them” is the same thing in softer clothes.
And enthusiasm for fixing all three drifts at once reliably produces none.
Using the two books
The workbook is the participant’s: short lead-in, the questions, the space to
write. Print it front-and-back for a binder.
The leader book is this one plus the whole teaching and the facilitator layer
— per-chapter timing, what to prepare, and what to watch for. Keep it open in
front of you during the session. It carries answers and notes that are not in the
participant book, so hand out the workbook, never this.
