Yesterday, I reacted to an essay which argued for pastors being faithful running Sunday morning, likening it to a football team’s successful play:

Week after week, the work of the church looks about the same. We gather to sing and pray and open the Bible and preach it. We baptize new believers and bury old saints. We take the Lord’s Supper together. We sit with the sick, we comfort people who are grieving, and we go looking for the ones who have wandered off. The songs and the sermons change, but the shape of the thing stays remarkably steady. Sunday comes, and then it comes again. – Josh Reavis, “Run It Again,” August 18, 2026.

That would be fine except the mission of the church is to “equip the saints for works of service” (Ephesians 4.11, 12), and one duty of pastors is to train “reliable people who shall teach others also” (2 Timothy 2.2). A pastor friend of mine used to say, “We can’t put all the weight of the church’s mission on the Sunday morning service. It can’t carry it all.” Amen.

My friend and Navigator colleague Ron Bennett has written a marvelous little book: Intentional Disciplemaking: Cultivating Spiritual Maturity in the Local Church. He explains that if our objective is making disciples, we need more than the Sunday morning service. He likens the process to golf: you can’t put the ball in the hole with just the driver. You need…

• a Driver: the Sunday morning service – worship and celebration
• the Long irons: mid-size groups (20 – 70 people) – community
• the Short irons: small groups (3 – 12 people) – training
• a Putter: one-to-one – in-depth training/mentoring

To go back to “the play” analogy, football teams have more than one. Moreover, to run that play (or any play) requires individual disciplines, training, and practice.

This is not rocket science, but many pastors seem to have trouble getting beyond the Sunday morning service as their primary ministry method. Why? Stay tuned.

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (Colossians 1.28, ESV)