Almost nothing has a higher impact on team culture, health, and effectiveness as much as who you recruit to the team. A good team member will be a joy to the team and the leader, and be a strong contributor to the ministry. An unhealthy, underprepared, or poorly fit team member can cause conflict, distraction, and even result in a team fracturing or leaving the field.

But how do you determine who you should invite to the team?

Our first post on recruiting was about broadly networking and casting vision to invite a pool of potential recruits to the process of evaluation. The second post was about the filtering process of gathering information and discerning the team fit of potential teammates. In that process, we recommend that you host them on a vision trip to allow them to hear from the Lord on location as well as you and the team getting to know them in person.

After you’ve done all the work of networking, casting vision, evaluating, and hosting them on a vision trip, you need to discern whether to give them an invitation to join the team or not. In our experience of recruiting and evaluating 30+ units for our teams in Thailand, we’ve had very few obvious green-light people to invite, and only some very clear red-light rejections. Most potential recruits fall into some kind of a yellow-light area. 

In this post, we’ll provide a recruiting evaluation grid that helps you measure a potential new recruit’s health and role fit versus the impact on your team and your degree of investment as a leader.

Difficult Decisions

Before we launched to Thailand, we went through our first season of recruiting teammates (including the ones from the soup terrine story). At the time, I was leading a missional community with other people that had a similar vision of wanting to serve overseas. We also took a vision trip to Thailand together a couple years before we launched.

I always highly valued loyalty, and just assumed that those in our group that had the vision to go overseas would eventually serve on the same team together. We did life together, prayed together, did ministry together, dreamed about the future together.

About a year out from our projected launch date, it was time to quit our jobs and go through the formal process of applying to an organization, going through evaluations, and officially forming the team. I knew each person would have development areas, but it didn’t even cross my mind that someone would not be considered qualified to go.

As I debriefed the evaluation process for my teammates with my supervisor, he mentioned that there were some red flags that came up with one teammate. He recommended that we at least give them a yellow-light and have them go through a 6-12 month season of development before having them re-apply.

I was surprised and distressed. This news would be devastating for this person.

Sure, there were some instances of difficulty that we had encountered. And yes, I wasn’t totally sure if that person would be willing to follow my leadership. And yes, we kind of knew they had some family of origin challenges that were unresolved. But telling them not to join the team? They had oriented everything in their lives towards this. What would the team think? What would happen to our relationship with this person?

But thankfully, my supervisor in his wisdom projected out how those things would play out on the field. If those things were a 3 out of 10 in concern and intensity in the States, they would quickly become 9 out of 10s and have the potential to fracture our team.

After prayer, discussion, and discernment, we made the decision to give this person a yellow light. Someone suggested that one of the evaluators from the organization give the bad news. But my mentor, also in his wisdom, said that I needed to be the one to take the responsibility for this decision and deliver the news, out of respect to this person and for my own development.

In a very difficult 2+ hour conversation, we told this person that there were some concerns and that they would need to go through a 6-12 month development process before re-applying.

It did not go well.

Eventually, this person broke off all contact with our team and levied accusations against me to other mutual friends.

We tried to pursue some conflict resolution through a counselor but that still didn’t go well. Ultimately, their response confirmed that this was the right decision, even though it was one of the most challenging team and leadership situations I had gone through to that point.

Our first year on the field was filled with conflicts, culture-shock, and challenges to the max with the team we did lead overseas, and I’m not sure we would’ve survived if we had added this person and their challenges. Even though it was painful and burdensome at the time, I’m thankful for wise mentors that helped a new team leader make a hard decision that I otherwise would not have had the courage to make.

Over the next decade on the field of evaluating and inviting several units to our teams, we’ve learned some of the key lessons in deciding who to invite and who to say “no” or “not yet” to. The stakes for teams and ministry among the unreached are incredibly high, and team leaders need to be thorough, wise, discerning, and prayerful in their evaluation and selection of potential teammates.

Recruiting Evaluation Grid

Hopefully your sending organization or church is assisting with recruiting, assessing, and developing potential new candidates for your team. There is a minimum baseline in the first category of the recruit’s character, health, and spiritual maturity that most agencies will be able to assess and either move them to the next step, put them on a development plan to later re-apply, or tell the applicant they’re not ready. Those baselines will vary for each agency, but some standards include freedom from addictions, health in singleness or marriage, consistent pattern of growing relationship with Jesus, and basic levels of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. 

What they aren’t taking into account, and you as a team leader must measure, is you and your team’s own readiness to receive that specific person in this season of your ministry and team. The final decision needs to be made by the team leader, not the sending entity, as the TL will be the one taking responsibility for that teammate. 

Keep in mind that you won’t know everything perfectly unless you’ve had significant life-on-life experience with them, so a lot of this is doing your best to assess well and solicit feedback from people that do know these candidates. Also, you’re evaluating the readiness of this teammate to join your team at this point in time. For example, a more challenging candidate might not be good to add to a newly forming team, but in 6-12 months, with more team stability and more personal development, they might be a great fit! 

Remember, your goal is to recruit teammates that will eventually thrive and be able to contribute well to your team and ministry. Every new person transitioning to the field will likely have their cross-cultural stressors and struggles, but if the teammate’s foundations and the team’s environment are solid, they will be able to overcome those difficulties and become strong team members.

We would assess the potential recruit in these 5 areas – character/health/maturity, calling to missions, gifting and role in ministry, impact on team, and leader investment in development. Evaluate the potential candidate on this scale from 1 to 10 to help you have more of an objective grid for whether or not you should approve this teammate at this time.

1. Character, Health, and Spiritual Maturity
   Main question: Is this teammate healthy and spiritually mature enough to thrive on the field?
   (1 – unhealthy and immature; 10 – strong health and maturity)
   1. Freedom from addictions
   2. Strong and growing personal walk with Lord
   3. Self starter and flexible
   4. Good interpersonal skills and communication 
   5. Emotional awareness and health
   6. Health in singleness / marriage / family
      
2. Calling to Missions
   Main question: Is this potential teammate’s calling rooted in solid foundations that can persevere through challenges?
   (1 – weak foundation of calling; 10 – strong foundation of calling)
   1. Scriptural basis
   2. Prayer
   3. Pattern of affirmation
   4. Community 
   5. Personal experiences 
      
3. Gifting and Role in Ministry
   Main question: Are this potential teammate’s gifts, skills, and experience able to contribute to the ministry?
   (1 – gifts and skills are underdeveloped OR don’t align with the primary ministry work; 10 – demonstrated competency in gifts and skills that would contribute well to the ministry)
   1. Awareness, development, and practice of spiritual gifts
   2. Skills and competencies
   3. Ability to do main ministry activities 
   4. General ministry experience
   5. Strong learner and self developer 
   6. Leadership experience and potential to be a leader
      
4. Impact on Team
   Main Question: would receiving this potential teammate generally strengthen or disrupt / burden the team overall
   (1 – would be disruptive/burdening to receive, significant adjustment to help transition; 10 – gifts and personality are strong benefits to team and has strong chemistry with team)
   1. Has gifts that can serve the team (hospitality, shepherding, worship/prayer, etc.)
   2. Generally easy to get along with v. draining/challenging personality
   3. Demographics that match what the team needs (ex: single girl needing another single gal to co-labor with)
   4. Good relational chemistry / team player
   5. Stage of Team Development (forming, storming, norming, performing) – consider how much storming there currently is and if that’s the right time to introduce a teammate 
      
5. Leader Investment in Their Development
   Main Question: What level of personal investment and development by the leader would it take to get them to a point of thriving and contribution to the team and ministry? 
   (1 – high investment of time and energy by leader; difficult to lead; 10 – lower investment by leader, generally easy / joyful to lead)
   1. Submission to your leadership
   2. Fit with your leadership style and giftings
   3. Amount of time and energy investment by leader to help them thrive and become a solid contributor based off your capacity
   4. if teammates can help carry the burden of investment vs. solely on the leaders

If you don’t know the answer to some of these categories, try to get feedback from the candidate, the agency, or those that know them well. Ask for them to be as brutally honest and direct as possible. Many times, references will want to give the best version of feedback since they want to help those they’re connected with. But it’s important for a TL to draw out the realities of a potential teammate since there is such a significant impact on them and on the team.

Making a Decision

After you’ve assigned a 1-10 score to each major category, figure out what the average score is across all 5 categories.

If you have an average of 8+, you should have a pretty solid candidate and situation to invite them to the team.

If you have an average of 4 or below, there likely needs to be some significant development for the candidate or on your own team before you can reconsider, likely after at least 6 months.

If any individual category is at a 2 or below, they are probably not at the standard to pass for that category and you shouldn’t invite them to the team.

The challenging situations are when you have someone in the 5-7 range. Discuss with other team stakeholders (teammates, mentors, supervisors), and weigh the pros/cons of inviting this person to the team. Understand that if you invite someone in the 5-7 range, it will likely take significant investment to help them thrive and begin to contribute to the ministry.

Regardless of how they grade out, it’s essential to bring the decision to the Lord in prayer. It’s always a step of faith to invite someone to your team, and you as a team leader are making a substantial commitment by inviting someone to your team, to love, serve, and shepherd them through the challenges on the field.

Some Cautions and Guidelines

This evaluation grid is trying to help quantify some important categories so that team leaders can make wise decision about inviting team members. But you can be very thorough in the evaluation process and still be surprised how someone reacts to the field. Some great candidates that we invited really struggled on the field when things didn’t go their way. Some riskier candidates ended up thriving and doing really well in field environments. But by doing the work of evaluating and praying, you can have eyes open for each teammate’s potential pitfalls and weaknesses.

A caution for newer team leaders: team leaders at the beginning of launching a team are at the highest urgency to add teammates. If you find yourself convincing yourself that they should be on the team, but you know in your heart that they aren’t a good fit, don’t invite them. The team is at its newest and most fragile at the beginning, and recruiting even one person that is unprepared and challenging can be very costly to the leader and the team.

Take risks for potential leaders. Younger, more immature leaders may rock the boat and be somewhat difficult to lead at the beginning. But if you’re able to win trust and develop them well, they can multiply your impact and be worth the investment.

Understand your own giftings and tendencies as a leader: If you are shepherd-gifted, you may have a higher tolerance / capacity to take the time of investing in someone to get them to the point of thriving and contributing. If you are more of an apostolic/evangelist-type leader, know that when you invite someone to the team you are committing to shepherding them. Also know that you might get impatient or frustrated if someone takes too much of your time and focus because your tendency will be to focus on the external ministry.

Knit to the Soul

We’ve gone through some of the biggest ups and downs of our adult lives with our teammates. We were together making awkward noises in language school, joyful team Christmases away from home, celebrating new churches planted, and experiencing the first new babies born on the field. They’ve been with us through crises, cancer, and burnout.

It’s hard to imagine facing the realities of the field with anyone else.

It’s the generous gift of the Lord to bring significant people around us for the calling and work He has prepared for us. They are simultaneously brothers and sisters, friends, co-workers, confidantes, and caretakers. It’s worth giving time and focus to find people who are the right fit.

And, the Lord already knows who He has chosen to be on our teams. We can have faith that if we are prayerful and discerning, He will bring the right people.

As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

1 Samuel 18:1

My grandparents ran a wholesale grocery in Venezuela that my dad worked at during his college years. So it’s part of his heritage to go and visit a grocery store in whatever new country or city he visits.

With us living in Thailand, he’s almost as excited about the bounty of fruit as he is to visit us! He wakes up early with his jetlag in full force, and is back before we’re up with bags and bags of fruit. Durian is particularly popular in Southeast Asia and a delicacy for my dad. But it’s terribly stinky and is banned in most hotels.

One time we stepped off the elevator into the hotel floor where my parents were staying and immediately smelled the durian down the hall. Of course, my dad was the culprit, willing to even break the rules and invoke societal / hotel staff shame onto us for the sake of his precious fruit!

When he looks for fruit, he’s focused on two things. Quality and quantity. That the fruit tastes fresh, sweet, and delicious, and that there’s a lot of it!

The word fruit or fruitful shows up in Scripture 200+ times. But it’s a word in ministry that can sometimes bring up tension, especially when we value one type of fruitfulness over another. It happens when we as leaders are trusting in our own effort to produce fruit instead of bearing fruit through God’s methods.

The Warning of Not Bearing Fruit

There is a troubling passage in Matthew 21 where Jesus encounters a fig tree that does not bear fruit.

In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

Matthew 21:18-19

The tree has leaves on it! It looks like it is supposed to be healthy and bearing fruit. But it has no fruit, and Jesus curses it and it withers.

Right before this happens, Jesus drives out all the merchants from the temple, because they’ve made God’s house of prayer into a den of robbers. And he also condemns the chief priests and Pharisees for looking like spiritual people but not bearing any spiritual fruit.

John 15 has a similar warning, that a branch that does not bear fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire and burned.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away… If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

John 15:2, 6

This idea of fruitfulness, or the lack of it, used to keep me up at night. What does it mean to bear fruit? If I don’t bear fruit, will I be cut off and burned? Or cursed like the fig tree?

What is Fruitfulness?

So what is fruitfulness?

Like my dad, when we think of fruit and how to evaluate it, we think of two things: quality and quantity. For quality, we look at the fruit’s health, flavor, and condition. For quantity, we look at its ability to reproduce more of itself.

Scripture also defines Kingdom Fruitfulness in these two ways – quality and quantity. For the disciple of Jesus, the quality of their fruit is the fruit of the Spirit, or their Christ-like character. And the quantity of their fruit is the multiplication of disciples. Let’s look at these two aspects.

The Fruit of the Spirit

So the first one is the fruit of the Spirit. Let’s read Galatians 5:22:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

Paul gives us a pretty clear definition of what fruit of the Spirit is in Galatians. All of these are attributes of godly character. The New Testament mentions fruit in this manner many other times. In Ephesians 5:9, that the “fruit of light is found in all that is good and true and right” or in Hebrews, where discipline “yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

When you have a relationship with Jesus, he changes you. He changes your character, your desires, the way you think and act. When we are saved by Jesus and put our faith in him, he gives us new hearts to obey and desire him. And he continually sanctifies us, prunes us so that we can look more like him in character.

When I started dating Jenn, I was only 19 years old. I had never had a girlfriend before! I was selfish with my time, mean, rough with my words, and I became angry easily (why did she start dating me?). Over the last 15 years together and 10 years of being married, being with Jenn has changed my character! Through a lot of time spent together and many tears, mistakes, and conflicts, I learned how to be nice in my words and affirm her, I learned how to give up my personal time to spend quality time with her, I learned how to calm down and be gentle instead of angry. I learned that when we choose restaurants, we are choosing the restaurant that she wants! Basically I just learned the very important point: Happy wife, happy life! I have changed a lot since being with Jenn. But being with Jesus has changed me incomparably more.

Being with Jesus changes who we are!

He can turn an angry person into a kind person because he is kindness.
He can turn an anxious person into a peaceful person because he is peace.
He can turn a selfish person into a loving person because he is love.

And the more we abide in Jesus, learn from him in his Word, and start living our lives according to the way he has taught us, we will change more and more. He changes our character, and the result is that we bear the fruits of the Spirit.

If you are unsure whether you are fruitful or if Christ is sanctifying you, look at what Paul lists out as the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If your desires, thoughts, and actions are orienting more in line with these things, the Spirit is working in your life! Thank God and ask him for more. 

The Fruit of Multiplying Disciples

The second type of fruitfulness that the Bible talks about is the fruit of multiplication. It starts with the very first command that God gives to man when He created the world in Genesis 1: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Later in Genesis 12, God gives this promise to Abraham that multiplication will happen through his descendants, to bear his image and His glory across the whole world.

But Jesus gave us a new command in Matthew 28, a Great Commission –

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all that I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19

So now, we are not only meant to multiply through having physical descendants, but through multiplying spiritual descendants, or by making disciples of Jesus.

This spiritual multiplication is seen throughout the Old and New Testament. In Mark 4 Jesus tells a parable about the Kingdom of God.

The sower sows the word. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

Mark 4:14, 20

He explains that in this parable, the sower sows the Word or the gospel, and different people respond to the Word differently. Some do not receive the Word, some receive but are not fruitful, but the 4^th soil, the good soil, receives the Word and bears fruit. And they don’t only bear fruit, but they multiply, 30-60-100 times!

How does the multiplication of disciples happen? Paul shows us in 2 Timothy 2:2:

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 2:2

Paul tells Timothy that whatever we receive, whatever we learn, we need to pass on and share with others. If you are a believer today, you have received the good news of Jesus. The Bible says that we need to share that gospel with others! And we need to teach those other people to share with others!

When we obey this command to make disciples and teach others to obey, and they teach others, and they teach others, we can multiply disciples. 30, 60, and 100 times! Through multiplication, we can see many thousands or millions of people come to know Jesus!

I first learned about multiplying movements when I was in college. Jenn and I were part of a campus ministry leadership team overseeing 300 students. None of us really knew how to share the gospel or how to disciple others. Maybe 5-10 people a year would come to faith, mainly by inviting friends to large events.

We went to a conference and heard Ying Kai’s story. He was a church planter in China in the early 2000s, in an area with 20 million people. At the rate that he was seeing people come to faith, about 200 people every 3 years, he would still not be able to reach even .1% of the population. He was challenged by the question, “How many people will hear the gospel today?”

From Matthew 28 and 2 Timothy 2, he created a simple method called training for trainers, or T4T. He would train people in how to share the gospel, and challenge them to share it 5 times each week. Every new believer was trained and challenged to share 5 times each week as well.

His first training group was with one group of uneducated farmers, just 30 people. He taught them how to share their testimony of how Jesus changed their life, and share a short gospel message. And they set a goal to share 5 times a week and train others. Within 3 months, this group of 30 farmers had led 200 people to faith and formed 27 small groups. And they were training all the new believers to also share and teach others. And then they started multiplying! By the end of the first year, 10,000 people had believed in Jesus and 906 small groups had started. At the end of 10 years, this one group of 30 farmers had multiplied into 1.7 million new believers, and 150,000 churches started! This is a true story of multiplication today!

The organization that Ying Kai was a part of didn’t believe the numbers he was reporting. So they sent in a research team to confirm the statistics. They found out that he was under-reporting by almost 60%! God was multiplying so fast that they couldn’t even track all that was happening.

Many of us among the unreached are in places where this type of multiplying, exponential growth seems impossible. Just seeing one friend come to know Jesus would be amazing. And that is where it starts – by reaching out to even one friend. But from there, do we believe that God’s method is multiplication? That the things happening in the book of Acts, and in movements throughout the world, can happen through and around us?

Do we believe that Jesus wants us to bear the fruit of multiplication?

Which Type of Fruitfulness?

In Japan, there is a culture of giving super-expensive fruit as gifts. In 2023, two mangoes sold for 600,000 Japanese yen or close to $5000! We were curious at what all the hype was about, so we tried one much cheaper, but still very expensive, $10 mango. For context, a kilogram of mangoes is between $1-3 in Thailand.

Was it delicious? Very. But 10x the price delicious? Not even close. (Thai mangoes are also awesome.) It left us somewhat dissatisfied after basically only getting a couple bites each. On the other hand, I’m sure many of us have gotten a large but cheap batch of fruit that is bland, or mushy, or just not tasty. Lots of low quality fruit isn’t exactly enjoyable either.

In ministry or missions leadership, it can sometimes feel like we are stuck between the choice of focusing on quality or quantity of fruit. Some might be gifted shepherds and teachers who help people grow deeper in Christ, but can’t remember the last time they met a non-believing friend much less shared the gospel. Others may be seeing crazy huge multiplication numbers of new believers, but the discipleship level is shallow. All the training and coaching is focused on evangelism, and not much energy is spent towards pursuing holiness.

For me, pursuing multiplying movements means that I can often get stuck in the latter pitfall. So much of our focus is around how to get the gospel to 70 million unreached in Thailand that we can forget to ask if we are producing healthy and good quality fruit that is pleasing to God.

We’ve told our partner Mint’s story before, and it has been our joy to see her multiply in her region of Thailand. But a couple years ago during a coaching meeting, when we asked her about how her disciples are doing, she told us, “Many of them are sharing the gospel and discipling others, but they are struggling in their marriages. There’s a lot of conflict and they have never had examples of godly marriages.”

So her idea was to gather her disciples together, not for an evangelism or multiplication focused training, but a marriage / family camp! We invited Talia and her husband, who have a great marriage, to come and train on different aspects of a godly marriage, including centering their relationship around Jesus and learning to serve each other through their love languages like gifts and words of affirmation.

Through the family camp and some other coaching, one of Mint’s main disciples Bee felt convicted that she needed to share some personal sin with her husband, Not. They had been struggling in their marriage, even considering separation since it was so difficult. After she confessed, Bee and Not experienced newfound trust and restoration in their marriage. Later that week, one of the people Bee had shared with called her back and invited her to start a Discovery Bible Study in her shop! Bee attributes it to God’s kindness in giving her new disciples after she had the courage to obey the Spirit’s conviction in confessing sin. The fruit of heart change in Bee’s life led to the fruit of new disciples in her ministry!

Reflection

We know that Jesus gives a warning against not bearing fruit. And we know that abiding is how we get more of Jesus, which results in heart transformation and disciple multiplication. If you are bearing fruit in some way or another, praise the Lord for the work of the Holy Spirit in and through you!

But sometimes we have to self-assess whether we are producing fruitfulness in one category and not the other. Do we believe that abiding in Christ can help us to bear the fruit of character and multiplication, in our own lives and in those we lead?

Below are some questions for reflection, for your own life, in your ministry, or with your team.

1. Are you / your ministry / your team bearing the fruit of Christ-like character or of new disciples? If yes, then thank God for how He is working in your life!
2. Do you / your ministry / your team have a tendency to fall into the pitfall of quality over quantity of fruit, or of quantity over quality? Why? 
3. What would it look like if you could see both types of fruit consistently produced in your life? 
4. If you identify with one of these pitfalls, how can you reorient your heart and make tangible changes to address these issues? 
5. As a leader, how can you lead your team and / or ministry towards greater multiplication AND more Christ-like character? (e.g. if you have a ministry focused on care or teaching, how can you multiply those efforts? Or, if you lead a multiplication ministry, how can you emphasize greater health and deepen character?)