I have planted churches on two continents. I have trained pastors in cinderblock buildings in Arequipa, and I have taught the same lessons in comfortable buildings back home. In fifty years of this, I have heard one excuse more than any other, dressed up in a dozen different outfits. It sounds different depending on who says it. A church planter says it one way. A mission agency says it another way. A pastor who has stayed in the same church for twenty years says it a third way. But underneath, it is always the same sentence.

“I have to do this myself.”

That sentence has closed more doors than persecution ever has. It has kept more churches small, more fields unreached, and more men and women on the sideline than any government could. Most of us who say it do not even realize we are saying it. We think we are being responsible. We think we are protecting quality. We are actually protecting control.

Let's look at four ways that sentence shows up, and why every one of them is wrong.

The Excuse That Sounds Like Humility

“No one else can do it as well as I can.”

Say it slowly. Notice what it actually claims. It sounds humble on the surface, as though you are simply being honest about your own gifting. But underneath, it may be one of the proudest sentences a leader can say. It claims God gave you a skill He gave no one else in your circle of influence. It assumes He is finished raising up workers, and you are the last one standing.

I said this sentence for years about preaching, about counseling, about leading a men's meeting. Every time I said it, I was really saying something else: I do not trust God to grow someone the way He grew me.

He can. He has been doing it since Moses. The question was never whether God could raise up another leader. The question was whether I would get out of the way long enough to let Him.

The Excuse That Sounds Practical

“It takes longer to train them than it does to just do it.”

This one is true, and that is what makes it dangerous. Training does take longer. The first time you hand someone a task you have always done yourself, they will be slower than you. They will ask questions you already know the answers to. They may fail in front of people.

But this excuse only looks at today. It never asks what next year looks like, or what five years from now looks like. If you keep doing the work yourself, you will always be doing the work yourself. The ministry has a ceiling exactly your height. Train someone, and the ceiling disappears, because now there are two of you. Train ten, and there are eleven.

Slower today is the price of multiplication tomorrow. Every mentor I respect paid it.

The Excuse That Sounds Realistic

“They will never do it as well as we can.”

Maybe not. Maybe they will do it differently. Maybe, for a while, they will do it worse. But watch what this excuse quietly assumes: that our way is the standard everyone else must be measured against, and that God is not able to shape someone else into a faithful worker.

I have watched national pastors I trained outgrow me in ways I never expected. Not because they copied my method, but because they were free to become who God made them to be, in the culture God placed them in. They reached people I never could have reached because they weren't trying to be me. They were becoming who God called them to become.

The Excuse That Sounds Like a Fact

“There are no good nationals, or I can't find any.”

This one usually means something different than what it says. It usually means: I haven't looked long enough, close enough, or with enough faith. Leaders are rarely found. They are grown. Nobody looked like a leader before somebody invested in them.

David looked like the boy nobody thought to call in from the sheep. Peter looked like a fisherman with a temper. Timothy looked like a young man everyone underestimated because of his age. If you are only looking for someone who is already finished, you will always come up empty. Look instead for someone with a teachable heart, and be willing to give the years it takes to develop them.

Men Who Prove Every One of These Excuses Wrong

Look at the record. Moses did not lead Israel into the promised land. Joshua did, because Moses spent years pouring into him before he ever needed to. Eli trained Samuel in the temple, and Samuel became the prophet who anointed two kings. Elijah did not finish his ministry alone. He mentored Elisha, who asked for a double portion of what he had seen in his teacher, and received it.

It did not stop with one generation. Scripture speaks of the sons of the prophets, bands of men trained by mentors like Elijah and Elisha, multiplying influence far beyond what one man could have accomplished on his own.

This is not a modern strategy borrowed from a leadership book. This is the way God has always worked. He has never been in the business of building ministries that depend on one irreplaceable man. He has always been in the business of raising up the next one.

This is the way Jesus did it. This is the way Paul did it. It is the Bible way, and we will spend the rest of this series looking at exactly what that means for you.

Where to Start This Week

If you have said any of these four sentences, you are not disqualified. You are simply where every one of us starts. God is not asking you to feel guilty for wanting to do good work. He is inviting you into something bigger than what your own two hands can carry.

Here is a place to start this week: write down one task you have never let go of, and think of one person who could learn to do it with you. Not instead of you yet. With you. That is where training always begins.

In the next article in this series, we will look at the biblical basis for this whole way of doing ministry, straight from the words of Jesus, Paul, and the early church. If this is stirring something in you, subscribe to Ministry by Mercy, and we will walk through it together, one article at a time.

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