Don't Wear Someone Else's Armor
Welcome to Lesson 27! In the last lesson, you learned why your process needs to be reassessed regularly. Now we want to talk about something just as important: making sure the process actually fits your church.
Throughout this course, you've seen lots of examples: stage names like Connect, Grow, Serve, and Go, sample checkpoints, tables, timelines, and templates. Those examples are there to help you get started. But they were never meant to be copied exactly. Now that you've gone through the whole course, it's time to step back and tweak everything to fit who God has made your church to be.
There's a great story about this in 1 Samuel 17. When young David volunteered to fight Goliath, King Saul tried to help by dressing him in his own armor: a bronze helmet, a coat of mail, and his sword. It was the best armor in the kingdom. But David tried to walk in it and said, "I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them." So he took them off (1 Samuel 17:39, KJV). Instead, he picked up his staff, five smooth stones, and his sling — the tools he knew and had used before. And with those, God gave him the victory.
Saul's armor wasn't bad. It just didn't fit David. The same is true of any process you borrow from a book, a conference, or another church, including this course. The principles are sound. But the specific shape has to fit your people, your setting, and your calling.
What to Keep and What to Make Your Own
In Lesson 23, we talked about being "firm on the why and flexible on the how." That same idea guides how you tailor the process. A few core principles are what make it a process church. Keep those. Almost everything else is yours to shape.
Keep these core principles:
A clear picture of what a growing disciple looks like
A few simple stages that describe how people grow
Every ministry connected to a stage and pointing to a next step
Personal relationships and guides walking alongside people
Measuring change and movement, not just attendance
Regular reassessment
Make these your own:
The names of your stages and checkpoints
How many stages you have (three to five)
Which ministries carry out each stage
How formal or informal your checkpoints are
What tools you use to track growth
How much of the process happens online versus in person
The words, stories, and visuals you use to explain it all
If you keep the core and shape the rest, you'll end up with something that is truly a process church, and truly yours.
Tailoring to Your Church's Context
Every church is different. A rural church of 60 people and a suburban church of 1,500 will need very different versions of the same process. Here are some ideas for tailoring the process to your context:
Most churches fit more than one row. Mix and match the ideas that fit you.
Questions to Tailor Each Part of the Process
Now walk back through the main parts of the process and ask how each one can better fit your church. Here are some questions to guide you:
Stages (Lesson 7)
Do our stage names sound like us? Would our people naturally use these words?
Do we have the right number of stages, or would fewer or more be clearer?
Ministries (Lessons 8–10, 14)
Are we trying to run more ministries than our people and leaders can sustain?
Which of our church's unique strengths should play a bigger role in the process?
Checkpoints (Lesson 11)
Are our checkpoints too formal or too loose for our culture?
Do our celebrations fit our church's personality? Some churches love public celebrations; others prefer quiet, personal ones.
Guides and growth plans (Lessons 12, 24, 25)
Do we have enough guides for the number of people we have? If not, how can we simplify?
Are our growth plan forms the right length for our people?
Tracking (Lessons 15, 19)
Is our tracking system too complicated for the people who have to keep it up?
Are we measuring the things that matter most for our church?
Digital and in-person (Lessons 13, 20)
Does our balance of online and in-person options fit the people we actually have?
What tools are our people already comfortable using?
Language (Lesson 16)
Does our process language feel natural in our church, or does it sound borrowed?
How to Tweak Well
Tailoring the process is good. But changing things too often or too quickly can confuse people. Here's how to make tweaks wisely:
Tweak one thing at a time. If you change five things at once, you won't know which change made the difference.
Test before you commit. Try a tweak as a pilot for a season, as you learned in Lesson 14.
Involve the people it affects. Ask leaders and members what would make the process fit better. They often have the best ideas.
Keep the core steady. Tweak the methods freely, but protect the core principles.
Write down what you decided. Keep a record of every change and why you made it, so future leaders understand your process.
Build on God-given strengths. Every church has something God has uniquely equipped it to do. Paul reminds us, "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:4, KJV). Shape your process around the gifts He's given your church.
Signs It Fits
How will you know you've tailored the process well? Look for these signs:
People use your stage names naturally, without thinking about it.
Leaders can explain the process in their own words.
The process feels like "how we do things here," not something borrowed from somewhere else.
Your volunteers can sustain it without burning out.
People are taking next steps and growing.
Your Church's Process Playbook
Once you've tailored everything, capture it in one place. A simple one-page "process playbook" gives every leader the same clear picture of how your church helps people grow. It's also a great tool for training new leaders and for your yearly review.
Use this template to build yours:
Keep it to a single page if you can. If it takes more than that to explain, it may still be too complicated.
Action Steps
Before you move on to the next lesson, work through these on your own or with your team:
Read 1 Samuel 17:32–50 and 1 Corinthians 12:4–7. Reflect on how God uses the unique tools and gifts He's given each person and each church.
Describe your context. Using the context table, write a short paragraph describing your church's size, setting, tradition, resources, and age makeup.
Pick your tweaks. Choose three to five ideas from the context table that fit your church best.
Answer the tailoring questions. Work through the questions for each part of the process and note anything that doesn't fit yet.
Choose your first tweak. Pick one change to try first, and plan it as a short pilot.
Build your process playbook. Fill in the one-page playbook template with your church's version of every part of the process.
Share it with your leaders. Walk your leadership team through the playbook and ask, "Does this sound like us?"
Pray for wisdom. Ask God to help you build a process that fits the church He's called you to lead.
This course gave you a sling and some stones. Now use them in the way God made you to. See you in the next lesson!
