The Work Kept Going Without Me, and Why That's Really Good News

On July 1, I stepped away from Dare to Multiply for three months. No writing. No training calls. No checking comments.

Near the end of my time, I spent 48 hours alone in a cabin with no electricity, no phone, and no laptop. Just silence, solitude, and the Lord. It was wonderful…and also challenging.

In that kind of quiet and solitude, it took a while for my soul to settle. The urge to produce something, even if it was to finish off a book I was reading and tick the box, is strong. The leaders of that particular retreat center encouraged us not to read much, but just to connect with God in prayer.

I'll be honest, there were a few times I felt bored in the silence. God's teaching me that sometimes we have to let ourselves feel that, as we learn to deeply rest in God and just be with Him in His Presence. By the end, I was incredibly grateful to have had that time to simply be with Him. He met me in my anxiety and concerns, shared some of His mysteries with me, and spoke deeply into my own personal walk with Him.

Now, as I return, here's what I've come back to. Every week, a new blog post went out. The podcast kept releasing episodes, and my co-host Jenn Chang recorded some wonderful episodes on her own. My assistant kept everything running quietly behind the scenes. A fellow leader kept posting monthly teaching videos for a community of movement leaders I serve in Africa. And in a church in central Illinois, ordinary believers carried a training cohort through the entire summer without much contact from me at all.

I suspected it would run well without me. But it's a wonderful confirmation to find I'm not as needed as I sometimes tell myself I am.

The Humbling Part

Why am I writing to you about this? It is a little humbling to discover things can run well without you. For leaders, that can sting. We pour ourselves into the work, and somewhere along the way, being needed becomes part of how we measure our faithfulness and perhaps even our value.

Over these three months, God's helped me see it with different eyes. If the work had collapsed without me, that would have been a strong warning sign. It would have meant I had built something around myself rather than something God could multiply through others.

Jesus understood this better than anyone. On the night before He died, He told His disciples something that must have sounded impossible: “It is for your good that I am going away” (John 16:7). Jesus built His work with the idea that one day soon, He would no longer be physically with them. His leaving was not the end of the mission. That was how His mission multiplied and grew.

Built for Absence

In movements around the world, this is simply vital. In some areas, leaders are arrested, forced to relocate, or called to a new region, and the groups keep meeting. The stories keep being told. New believers keep baptizing new believers. In some tragic situations I've worked with, leaders have been killed. The movement must never rest on one person's shoulders. It must be built from the start to go on without any one individual.

Strangely, this is just as true for a pastor leading a congregation in the American Midwest as it is for a practitioner catalyzing groups in South Asia. It is true for those serving immigrant and refugee communities in the West, too. The question for every one of us is the same: if you stepped away for three months, what would keep going? We build for sustainability by creating systems that are simple and organic, that rely on insiders and never on top leaders to grow.

Whose Work Is It?

Paul taught this plainly when believers in Corinth were lining up behind their favorite leaders. “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” (1 Cor. 3:7).

The work belongs to God first. And, in another beautiful way, it belongs to the people He has raised up to carry it. Not to me. Not to you. Sabbath rest has a way of reminding us of that. We stop, and God does not.

A few days ago, Jenn Chang and I recorded a conversation on abiding for our Diving Deeper members. That morning, the Lord gave me a verse I will carry with me as I re-enter my ministry work.“My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exod. 33:14). His Presence goes with us in the work, too. I'll write more sometime with further lessons about this kind of rest, the kind you live and work from, not the kind that means stopping or taking a nap.

I'm so thankful to come back rested, grateful, and even more convinced than ever that multiplication happens through a community, not through a dynamic leader alone. I also come back with a question I plan to keep asking myself, and one I'd love you to ask too.

What in your ministry would stop if you stopped? And would those things matter? If they do, who can I start raising up now to carry those things forward without me?

If you'd like to go deeper, Diving Deeper members can hear Jenn Chang and me talk about rhythms, rest, and union with Christ in September's exclusive interview, recorded at the very end of my sabbatical. Find out more at multipliersmindset.com/dtmmembership. All previous Deeper Dive videos become immediately accessible to you when you join.

Something to Think About and Discuss:

• If you stepped away for three months, what in your ministry would keep going? What would stop?

• What resonated with you most in this article?

• What is one responsibility you could begin handing to someone else this month?

Share in the comments below or on our Dare to Multiply community.