Brian Proffit interviewed Tony Morgan, author of the TonyMorganLive.com blog and co-author of the Simply Strategic book series. He's also pastor and chief strategic officer at NewSpring Church in Florence, South Carolina. Tony's feature article on technology in ministry will appear in the July/August 2009 issue of Rev! Magazine.

Tony, in your blog on January 25, you said, "During the last month, over 650 people have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior at NewSpring." That's a pretty incredible statistic! Tell us more about what's behind that.

I was just talking with one of the guys at the campus we launched last July in Greenville, and since that launch we've already baptized 200 people at just that campus alone. It's interesting, because one of the criticisms we hear of megachurches is we're just pulling in people from other churches. I'm sure some of that's happening, but the reality is that people are meeting Jesus for the first time, and beginning to take first steps through baptism.

When it comes to how Perry [Noble, senior pastor of NewSpring] approaches ministry and how he teaches, it basically comes down to just listening to God and doing what he says. We can go back to some of the great fathers of our faith, even back to Moses, and just watch how many times he tried to just listen to God and do what he told him to do. And as a result of that God blessed his ministry. And that's what we're finding here at NewSpring.

I know in my life, when I accepted Christ and experienced life change, I didn't keep that to myself—I wanted to tell others about it. I think that's what we're seeing here. People are experiencing life change. We're seeing practical things like healed marriages, winning freedom from addictions, freedom from financial challenges. Because once God gets hold of your life He brings order to it. When that starts to happen, people tell their friends about it.

I sometimes get frustrated when people talk about our church being too big. I ask, "What do you want us to do? Do you want us to tell people that they can't tell their friends about us any more?" It's not like we're trying to go out and get more people. In fact, many times Perry is challenging people to find another church if they aren't interested in engaging and being an active part of what God's doing here. Really we're just trying to fulfill the great commission. We're trying to make disciples and encourage those people to make more disciples.

That sounds great, but I suspect the vast majority of church leaders would say they are also trying to listen to God and do what He tells them to do.

Maybe one of the other distinctions about NewSpring is that we're keeping it very simple. Sundays we're preaching the gospel and inviting people to take a step into relationship with Christ. That's what Sundays are all about.

Beyond that the next steps are pretty simple. We're asking people to connect in membership and then serve in the church. It's not a very complicated discipleship strategy. I think one of the problems most churches have is that they keep on plugging in new opportunities for people to connect without unplugging anything. So we see men's groups, women's groups, small group ministries, Bible classes, mission opportunities, serving opportunities, this event and that event. All we're doing is creating confusion for people.

This past week I was in northeast Georgia and I drove by this intersection. I saw a building that had 20 different signs on it. The first time I drove past the building I had no idea what those signs were all about. I just knew there were lots of signs. I pulled over to take a picture of it, and it turns out that all of the signs were trying to sell property in the community. They were pointing in different directions and had different names of companies that people could contact.

Those signs were doing people no good because there were so many that they were just creating confusion. My concern is that we're doing that in churches, too. People are coming through our churches and being offered 20 opportunities or more to make a choice about their next step in the church. But all they're seeing is noise.

We need to decide what we think a devoted follower of Christ looks like in our church, and what simple steps we're going to ask people to take so that they are encouraged to become fully devoted followers of Christ. At NewSpring our options are carefully structured, and as a result of that people are growing in their faith. They are also still engaged in their life where they can have an impact on other people. Where they're sharing life with other people they're also inviting people to become a part of what's happening at NewSpring. And more importantly, asking people to become part of the family of God.

It's very basic but because we've kept things so simple and so focused it's actually having a bigger impact on people's lives. It's counterintuitive, isn't it?

What would happen if we only asked people to invest their time in corporate worship and Bible teaching, reading their Bible, serving others, and making disciples? Rather than focusing so much on transferring knowledge, we focus on helping people love God, love others and make new disciples. Maybe groups and classes and ministry programs aren't the discipleship strategy. Maybe encouraging personal disciplines and serving and making disciples is the discipleship strategy.

This goes back to the early church. God called Peter to reach the Jews, and then Paul was called to reach the Gentiles. And for whatever reason, sometimes through the years the church has taken on this approach that we have to be the church for all people. In reality, the people in the early church didn't take that tactic. They thought they were called to reach a specific people. Because they kept focus on who God called them to reach, the reality is that they had greater success. And obviously we saw thousands of people come to know Christ in the days of the early church.

Our experience through the numbers and the stories we're hearing of life change... it appears that keeping it simple must be working.

Tony Morgan is author of the TonyMorganLive.com blog and co-author of the Simply Strategic book series. He's also pastor and chief strategic officer at NewSpring Church in Florence, South Carolina.