The agreement and the guardrails

Nothing in this whole pipeline is optional, but this chapter carries the part that is least optional of all. A name should never move from a ministry team to a church leader who hasn’t already agreed, in writing, to the terms of receiving it.

Signed, before a single name changes hands

Call it whatever your team wants — a covenant, a commitment, an agreement — but put it in writing and get a signature from church leadership before any contact information is shared. Six commitments make up the core of it: receive every seeker without pressure or judgment; assign a committed believer to study the Bible with them, meeting wherever the seeker is comfortable; use the discovery method rather than lecturing; never invite the seeker to a worship service until they have come to faith and want to join of their own free will; walk them all the way through baptism when the time comes; and keep the ministry team informed enough to know the referral landed somewhere real. A church that will not put its name to those six things does not get the names, no matter how sincere or well-meaning its leadership is. This is not bureaucracy for its own sake — it is the untraining written into a contract, so the old habit of inviting first and discipling later cannot quietly creep back in through the handoff.

The rules that do not bend

Alongside the agreement sit three safety rules, and none of them are suggestions. Follow-up happens between people of the same gender — always. Meetings happen in semi-public or family-present settings, never alone behind a closed door. And no money changes hands in the discipling relationship, ever, in either direction. These exist to protect the seeker, the person discipling them, and the reputation of everyone who made the referral possible. They are not there because your team is assumed to be untrustworthy. They are there because trust, once it protects itself with structure, survives contact with real life — and without that structure, one bad situation can undo years of earned credibility in a single afternoon.

Paul gave Timothy nearly this same instruction, in nearly these same words, when he told him how to treat the people in his care:

Do not harshly correct an older man, but rather encourage him as you would a father, and the younger men as brothers, the older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters, with complete purity. — 1 Timothy 5:1-2 (OTB)

“In all purity” is not a suggestion either. It is the whole reason the same-gender rule exists.

Send the already-churched back home

One more part of the agreement matters here: someone who checked the box saying they already attend a church gets pointed home, not recruited. The signed agreement protects that too — a committed leader honors it, and a partnering church becomes exactly that, a partner, never a competitor for the same sheep.

Recite this

Same gender. Semi-public spaces. No money. No exceptions.

Try it this week

If you lead a ministry team, find out whether the churches you refer to have actually signed anything. If you lead a church, find out whether your own team has agreed, in writing, to these same six commitments.

I will get the agreement signed by ________________, by ________________.