Mobilize is a mentoring program that establishes a bond of loyalty and a relationship of cooperation between the pastor and members. It is a pastor’s tool for motivating and training members for spiritual leadership and ministry together.

One of the greatest demands on the life of a pastor is time. Therefore, Mobilize: Lay Ministry is designed to help pastors to maximize the use of their time by providing a structure and resources for mentoring local church members in small-group settings on a once-a-week basis.

God never intended for pastors to do ministry alone. Jethro counseled Moses in Exodus 18:14-18 not to try to handle the entire load of ministry by himself. God wants a support staff to grow up around the pastor to help bear the overwhelming burden of the church’s ministry. As Bishop J. David Stephens emphasizes, “Mobilize has an answer for unlocking the potential of the many capable people sitting on your pews.”

Ministers who have utilized Mobilize give passionate endorsements:

• “The Mobilize program is the best on the market. I have friends in other denominations who want our Mobilize program. We need to utilize these resources for the healthy growth of our local churches” (Bishop Kyei-Poakwa, Southern New England, Director of Education).
• “The Mobilize program is one of the best-kept secrets in the Church of God. I use Mobilize every year, seeing many members become strong in supporting ministry leaders” (Paul Keeter, Pastor, Fayetteville, NC).
• “If churches today are to grow, then believers must switch their mentality from a focus on the preacher to that of the church doing ministry” (Pastor Bryan Cutshall).

1. To develop a culture of faithful servant-ministers in the local church.
2. To emphasize the establishment of biblical covenant-team relationships between pastors, local church leaders, and members.
3. To provide effective and cutting-edge ministerial resources that encompass the training and formation of spiritual integrity in every believer.

The biblical foundation for Mobilize: Local Leadership Development is summarized best in Romans 12:1-8. In this passage, Paul urges all believers to present their bodies as a “living sacrifice” to be used by God. Furthermore, he says that every believer has received a charismatic gift (that is, “a gift of grace”) from the Holy Spirit as a member of the body of Christ.

But, in order for all the gifts to be properly manifested in the local church, Paul explains that the entire body of believers—the pastor, the leaders, and the members—must experience a transformation in the way they think about “ministry.” Note carefully his words:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness (Romans 12:1-8 NKJV).

For a local church to reach its full potential as the body of Christ, its pastors, church leaders, and members must experience a new “mindset.” This “transformation of thinking” (literally, a “metamorphosis”) involves three essential truths which enable all believers to find their place of ministry in the body of Christ.