Preparing the Ground for What God Pours Out

Across the arid landscapes of the American Southwest, the Ancestral Pueblo peoples—often called the Anasazi—learned to cultivate life where rain was scarce and the ground was dry. They grew corn, beans, squash, and other crops by carefully collecting the little rain that fell. They built terraces, channels, and small barriers that slowed the rushing water, directed it toward their fields, preserved the soil, and protected their crops from erosion.

The rain alone did not explain their abundance. They had prepared systems capable of receiving and stewarding it. When rain strikes hard, dry ground, much of it quickly runs off, carrying precious topsoil with it. Yet through patient preparation and wise cultivation, these communities learned to receive the rain, direct its movement, and turn a seemingly barren landscape into a place where life could flourish. They sustained communities for generations in a land others might have considered a wasteland.

This offers a powerful image for the church. We pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We long for revival rain to fall upon spiritually dry ground. We ask God to awaken hearts, restore His people, and bring many into the life of Jesus. But the question is not only whether God will send the rain. It is also whether we are becoming the kind of people—and building the kinds of churches—capable of receiving, stewarding, and sustaining what He gives.

An outpouring may awaken spiritual hunger, gather large crowds, and produce powerful encounters. But when leaders lack inner substance, relational health, and formative structures, much of what has been received may quickly run off. What was meant to nourish lasting life may leave behind exhaustion, confusion, or even disappointment.  It can even leave behind erosion.

We cannot manufacture the rain. Only God can pour out His Spirit. But leaders are responsible for preparing the ground. Leadership in the church is therefore not merely the stewardship of a message. It is the stewardship of a life, a culture, and a formative environment. Our responsibility does not end when the sermon has been preached. We must also ask whether we are living under that message and whether the churches we build are helping people become what we proclaim.

The responsibilities of a formative leader can be expressed in three movements:

1. Be continually formed by Jesus.

2. Embody the life of Jesus before others.

3. Build environments and systems that form people in the way of Jesus.

These responsibilities belong together. When one is neglected, leadership becomes fragmented. Our words may remain compelling, but the life beneath them becomes divided, and the structures around them begin forming people in another direction.

1. Be Continually Formed by Jesus

A leader’s first responsibility is not to lead others. It is to remain under the leadership of Jesus. Leadership never moves us beyond discipleship. We do not graduate from being followers because we have become pastors, teachers, or ministry leaders. We never cease walking, learning, and growing under the leadership of Jesus.

The issue is not perfection but direction. Healthy leaders are people who are actively and continually being formed by Christ. We cannot rest on the laurels of past growth or yesterday’s faithfulness. Jesus is still leading, correcting, refining, and transforming us throughout this lifelong journey.

Those who lead others must remain willing to be led themselves. This requires us to ask difficult questions:

• What are we trying to form in others that we are unwilling to allow Jesus to form in us?

• Why would we value something for others that we do not value enough to pursue ourselves?

• What does that discrepancy reveal about our motives, our loves, and what we are truly seeking?

We may want people to become mature because mature people can carry greater ministry responsibility. We may want them to become generous because generosity supports the work. We may want them to become humble because humble people are easier to lead. But do we value maturity, generosity, and humility because they reflect the life of Jesus? Or primarily because they help produce the organizational outcomes we desire?

That question exposes whether formation has become an external pursuit without corresponding internal substance.

• Do we truly believe the message we preach is good enough to govern our own lives?

• Are we calling others into surrender while protecting our own resistance?

• Are we requiring accountability from others while avoiding correction ourselves?

• Are we asking people to trust Jesus where we have quietly stopped trusting Him?

The problem is not that leaders are unfinished. Every leader is unfinished. We can faithfully call people toward realities we have not yet fully reached, provided we are honestly submitting ourselves to that same call. The deeper problem begins when leaders treat themselves as exceptions. We cannot promote wholeness while remaining content with division within ourselves. We cannot continually call people into the way of Jesus while excusing our own departure from it.

The prayer of Psalm 86 speaks directly to this condition: “Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.” — Psalm 86:11 NIV.  The psalmist does not merely ask to understand God’s way. He asks for an undivided heart capable of walking in it.

This is the deeper call of formative leadership: to become increasingly integrated people whose teaching, loves, motives, relationships, and pursuits are being brought into alignment under King Jesus. When we recognize that we have veered from the path, the answer is not image management. It is repentance and realignment. We return honestly to Jesus and allow Him to confront what has become divided within us.

Before we prepare the ground around us, we must allow Jesus to cultivate the ground within us.

We Remain on the Field

A helpful image is that of a player-coach. Leaders may help coach others in the life of faith, but we are still players on the field. We continue learning to trust Jesus in real circumstances. We confront fear, weakness, disappointment, and temptation. We still have to listen, obey, repent, and begin again.

We are not coaches standing safely at a distance from the life we call others to live. We have not arrived while everyone else is still traveling. We remain fellow travelers and fellow apprentices. We may help others recognize the path because we have walked portions of it before them, but we never cease walking under the leadership of Jesus.

When leaders see themselves only as experts, directors, or coaches, they can lose touch with their continuing need for formation. They may instruct others in surrender without practicing it themselves. They may speak about dependence upon Jesus while quietly depending upon gifting, influence, or institutional power.

A formative leader remains both guide and participant. We help others follow Jesus while continuing to follow Him ourselves. We may sometimes walk ahead, but we never leave the field. We remain in the life of faith with those we lead—still listening, still learning, and still being formed by Christ.

2. Embody the Life We Teach

Formation is not only taught. It is also witnessed. People learn from our teaching, but they also learn from how we carry pressure, respond to criticism, and handle conflict. They notice how we use authority and how we treat people who cannot advance our ministry. The church does not merely need clearer explanations of the life of Jesus. It needs credible models of people who are actually learning to live it. 

People need to see what repentance looks like. They need to see forgiveness and patience lived in real relationships. They need to see leaders repair relationships when wrong has been done, when they have acted insensitively, or when they have failed to love others well. They need to see leaders acknowledge failure without hiding behind their position or collapsing into shame.

We must embody the very message we promote and the call we place before others. This does not mean leaders must publicly display every private struggle. Healthy leadership requires wisdom and appropriate boundaries. But it does mean that our visible lives should increasingly agree with our public teaching.

• If we preach humility, people should see us receive correction.

• If we teach reconciliation, people should see us repair relationships.

• If we call people to depend upon Jesus, they should see that we are not driven entirely by ambition, urgency, or control.

The authority of Christian leadership does not rest only in speaking truth. It also rests in truth becoming visible through a life.

Pastors, when we teach or preach a message we are unwilling to live, we proclaim a divided message. When our words and our lives point down two different paths, people will usually follow the path we walk before the one we preach.

If those we lead begin walking in the direction our example has shown them, we must acknowledge our responsibility. The lives we model may one day become part of what we must answer for—unless we hear the call, turn again, and entrust ourselves to the way of Jesus. We do not need to have arrived, but we must be honestly moving in the direction to which we are calling others.

A leader’s life becomes part of the formative environment. Our lives either help the rain penetrate the soil, or they harden the ground beneath the message.

3. Build Environments and Systems That Form People in the Way of Jesus

Leaders are also responsible for what they build. A church may sincerely desire mature disciples while operating through systems that consistently produce something else. We may preach intimacy with Jesus while constructing a culture built around constant activity. We may call people into deep community while organizing church life almost entirely around large events. We may speak about multiplication while keeping meaningful ministry in the hands of a few gifted people.

Systems always form people:

• If a church primarily rewards attendance, it will form attenders.

• If it rewards visibility, it will form performers.

• If it measures faithfulness mainly through busyness, it will form busy Christians.

Leaders must therefore ask more than, “What are we teaching?” We must also ask: What is the life of our church actually training people to become?

We cannot call people into a certain kind of life without building the realities that cultivate and sustain it. We need both the relational culture in which this life can grow and the organizational structures required to support it.

A healthy relational culture allows people to be known, loved, and challenged. It creates room for honest confession and meaningful encouragement. It teaches people to walk through conflict, repair relationships, and take increasing responsibility.

Healthy organizational structures protect space for those realities. They distribute ministry rather than concentrating it. They create pathways for participation and multiplication. They keep the life of the church from being carried primarily through events, platforms, and a small core of highly visible people.

This requires more than adding another discipleship program. It requires a compelling vision of the kind of people Jesus is forming and an intentional process through which people can increasingly become those kinds of people.

1. We need practices that help people walk with Jesus.

2. We need environments where people can practice His way together in shared life.

3. We need processes through which they can mature and eventually help form others.

The terraces and channels of the Ancestral Pueblo peoples did not create the rain. They enabled it to remain, penetrate the soil, and nourish life. In the same way, church environments and systems do not create spiritual transformation. Only God transforms people through the Holy Spirit. But wise structures can help people receive what God gives, practice what Jesus teaches, and carry that life into relationships and mission.

Poorly designed systems allow much of the rain to run off. A powerful gathering may inspire people for a moment, but where will they be known afterward? Where will they process what God has shown them? Who will help them obey? Where will they learn to repair relationships, practice spiritual habits, and take responsibility for others?

Without those environments, people may repeatedly receive inspiration without being formed into mature disciples. Events can serve formation, but they cannot carry the whole weight of discipleship. Programs can be useful, but they cannot replace shared life.

Disciples are formed most deeply in environments where they are known, loved, challenged, and entrusted with responsibility. If that is what we believe, our structures must reflect it.

When Revival Rain Falls

Revival is not merely a moment to celebrate. It is a gift to steward. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit should lead to more than heightened activity. It should form a people who love Jesus, embody His character, and join His mission. But lasting fruit requires prepared ground.

If leaders have not cultivated humility, accountability, and relational maturity, the pressures accompanying revival may expose what has remained unformed. If churches have not developed healthy environments and systems, increased activity may simply magnify existing weaknesses. More people may enter the church, but the same unhealthy culture will receive them. More ministry may take place, but the same few people will carry it. More attention may come, but leaders who have not learned to receive correction may become even less accountable.

The rain does not only nourish what is healthy. It also reveals the condition of the ground. This is why revival and formation must never be separated. We need the outpouring of the Spirit, but we also need the lifelong work of becoming people capable of faithfully carrying what He pours out.

We cannot keep asking God to repair from heaven what we remain unwilling to confront on earth. Prayer is not a substitute for repentance. Dependence upon the Holy Spirit is not permission to ignore what He has already shown us about forming disciples.

The same Spirit for whom we pray is the Spirit who calls us to truth, repentance, wisdom, and courageous stewardship.

Building Requires Courage

We cannot merely speak about reformation. We must participate in it. That means taking the difficult steps required to change structures that no longer serve the formation of disciples. It means confronting unhealthy cultures and releasing practices that mainly preserve institutional activity.

This work is rarely quick. It may disappoint people who prefer the familiar. It may reveal how deeply our systems have depended upon charismatic personalities, passive participation, or centralized control. It may require leaders to surrender power and trust ordinary believers with meaningful responsibility. But if we know our current systems are not producing the life we proclaim, refusing to change them is not faithfulness. It is avoidance.

Preparing for the rain requires patience. It means breaking hardened ground, creating pathways for the water, and protecting the soil from erosion. Much of this work happens before the first drop falls. In the same way, leaders must patiently cultivate the practices, relationships, and structures through which people can receive the life of Jesus and learn to walk in it together.

Healthy environments and systems do not transform people by themselves. Only God transforms people through the Holy Spirit. But leaders remain responsible for whether what we build cooperates with His work or repeatedly works against it.

The Responsibility We Carry

The responsibilities of a formative leader can therefore be expressed simply:

1. Be continually formed by Jesus.

2. Embody the life of Jesus.

3. Build environments and systems that form people in the way of Jesus.

Who we are shapes how we live. How we live shapes what we build. What we build helps shape who people become.

Leadership is not merely the stewardship of sermons, programs, or ministry activity. It is the stewardship of our own formation and the example others can see. It is also the stewardship of the relational culture and organizational structures through which people are being formed.

We are responsible not only to pray for the rain. We must allow Jesus to prepare the ground within us. We must embody the life we are calling others to live. And we must build churches capable of receiving, carrying, and multiplying what God pours out.

The rain is God’s gift. Preparing the ground is part of our stewardship.