Walk into almost any church and you will find them: people carrying genuine deposits from the Holy Spirit but with very little opportunity to develop or express what God has placed within them. There are prophets working retail, apostolic people managing businesses and spreadsheets, gifted teachers who have spent years sitting in congregations, and evangelists who carry a deep burden for the lost but have never really been given the opportunity to explore that calling.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with working retail, managing a company, raising a family, or serving faithfully behind the scenes. Calling is not validated by having a microphone, a ministry title, or a position on a church staff. The problem is something different. It is what happens when a person carries a genuine spiritual capacity, but there is no developmental pathway through which that capacity can be recognised, tested, matured, and eventually released.
In many cases these people are not unwilling to serve, nor are they demanding recognition. They may have served faithfully for years. The issue is that nobody has taken the time to discern what God may have placed within them. Nobody has called it out, helped them understand it, or created an environment where they could begin developing it. Sometimes a person does not need a platform as much as they need someone with spiritual discernment to look at them and say, “I see something in you. Let’s explore what God may be doing here.”
For some, that moment of recognition can change the trajectory of their lives.
The Church’s Original Design
When we look carefully at the ecclesiology of the New Testament, the Church was never designed to function as a spectator event. The early believers certainly gathered, worshipped, received teaching, broke bread, and prayed together, but the goal was never merely attendance. People were being formed into disciples who could participate meaningfully in the mission of God.
Ephesians 4 gives us one of the clearest frameworks for understanding this. Paul explains that Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. That distinction matters. Fivefold ministers were never intended to become a professional ministry class who performed the work of God while everybody else watched. Their responsibility was to equip the people of God so that the whole Body could function.
Somewhere along the way, we have often inverted the model. Instead of leaders equipping believers to minister, ministry has increasingly become something leaders do on behalf of believers. People attend, receive, contribute financially, perhaps volunteer in an area of church life, and then return the following week to do it again. There can be tremendous value in all of those things, but if that becomes the totality of our ecclesial experience, we have reduced the vision Paul gives us.
Serving within a local church is important. Churches need people who will welcome, organize, administer, work with children, serve on worship teams, set up equipment, disciple new believers, and care for practical needs. But filling organisational roles is not necessarily the same thing as equipping someone for their Kingdom vocation. A person can spend twenty years helping a church function while never being intentionally developed in the very thing God has placed within them.
The local church should therefore be more than a gathering place. It should become an environment of formation, discernment, activation, and deployment. In that sense, I believe the Church should function much more like an incubator.
An incubator does not merely contain life. It creates the conditions in which life can develop. There is protection, nourishment, attention, and an appropriate environment for maturation. Eventually, however, what has been developing has to emerge. The goal of incubation is never permanent containment.
That principle should shape the way we lead people.
