John Russell Dunn

The following devotional appeared in Spanish on the GenesisMesoamerica website: www.transformaelmundo.com on August 14, 2014.

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” Mark 16:15

What does catalytic leadership mean?

In a fire, fuel sacrifices itself to mix with something foreign (oxygen) to create something new (fire). In the process, the cold is driven back and the darkness is driven out.

Once lit, fire spreads through all the fuel it can reach, one burning item creating enough heat to ignite something close to it.

So what keeps flammable things from bursting into flame? The room you’re in may have wooden furniture. There may be pieces of paper on the table or in a drawer. The walls may be made of wood or they may have flammable wall coverings. And we know there’s enough oxygen in the air to burn or we wouldn’t be able to breathe. Thankfully things don’t burst into flame all around us because there isn’t enough concentrated heat energy at any one place.

Catalysts allow chemical reactions to start when they might not otherwise. They speed up reactions by decreasing the energy necessary to get them started. Reactions happen faster because a catalyst controls the way molecules come together: the right ingredients, in the right proportions, with the correct orientation, with just the right speed (energy).

If we think about church growth as a flame, how do we make the flame spread?

As Christians, we give ourselves to reaction with God and become new creations. The hope it gives inspires us to spread the process to other people and the changes it makes in us attract those who don’t understand. In the process, the cold is driven back and the darkness is driven out.

So what keeps us from combustion? In the church, if each of us has a story to tell and a testimony to share, if we are all fuel ready to burn, why does revival break out only sporadically? Why do we seem to be inert, waiting for a spark? Maybe we could use a catalyst.

A catalytic leader is a man or a woman who accelerates church growth and the work of evangelism. He or she calls us to prayer, awakens us to our calling, equips us to testify and to teach, and facilitates our interactions with people who haven’t yet heard about Jesus. He or she concentrates the energy of evangelism by creating the most efficient arrangement of resources. Wherever he or she is at work, believers come together to seek God’s power and to equip and encourage one another. And new people learn about and accept Jesus and his saving work.

The right catalyst can turn a fire into an explosion.