The ninjas

Let me tell you about the Ninjas.

It started at a Trellis and Vine Workshop Marty Sweeney and I were running in an old weather-board Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia. We’d been invited there by a young black pastor (whose presence in Atlanta was a remarkable story in itself), and our job was to do what we have done over the past four years since The Trellis and the Vine became an unlikely bestseller—and that was to help a bunch of pastors and lay leaders talk through the ideas in the book, and figure out what it meant in practice for their ministry and their church.

With 25 of us seated at trestle tables, this was one of the smaller workshops we’d conducted. 50 was more like our normal number, and Marty and I were hoping that this smaller group would have enough energy and momentum to carry it through. We needn’t have worried. Around 8 of the 25 were a bunch of Latino laymen from Miami who had been sent by their pastor to listen and learn and bring back ideas for their church. From the beginning, they were full of buzz. The questions and comments and laughter flowed freely.

And then, towards the end of the first day, we were talking about the importance of church ministry being both top-down and bottom-up; that it was no use trying to implement a ‘disciple-making culture’ in your church by simply decreeing it from above—you also had to sow it and nurture it from below. We talked about how you could preach on disciple-making, and hand out books on disciple-making, and even run seminars on disciple-making—but that your church culture would not change until you actually took 8 or 10 people and worked with them intensively, and started a groundswell of people who were taking the initiative to minister the word of God to others.

That’s how a church really changes, we said. Not only from the top-down public teaching and ministry, but from a long-term, bottom-up ministry of people work and training.

At which point, Miguel, the young, precociously smart son of the pastor of the Latino church, said, “You mean it’s like a Ninja take-over of the church!”

And this became the running joke of the workshop. ‘Vine work’ was public and pulpit-based, but it was not only that; it was also Ninja work (or ‘Neenja’ work as the Latinos pronounced it). It was private and unseen but highly effective; it was personal and skilled, conducted by trained practitioners who in turn trained others.

By the end, our new friends from Miami were simply ‘the Ninjas’, and we hugged and laughed and said goodbye at the end of our two short days, thinking we probably would never see them again.

A year later, we were in their church in Miami, running a workshop for Latino pastors from South Florida, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Puerto Rico. And we met the pastor who had sent the Ninjas up to our workshop. He told us how they had come back almost bursting, how they had poured it all out to him, and how (with his blessing) they had just started doing it—ministering to people, following up newcomers, chasing fringe people, leading groups, drawing others into the work, reading the Bible with people.  “These days”, said the pastor, “I meet a newcomer at church, and I offer to have him over for lunch and give him some spiritual help—but then I find out it’s already been done. He’s already been to lunch. Someone is already reading the Bible with him. And you know who it is? It’s the Neenjas!”



At the end of two wonderful, vibrant days with these gospel-hearted Latinos, Marty and I were presented with our own shirts—with “Ninja Take-over Team” emblazoned on the chest.

We were now officially Ninjas.

Of course, anyone can be. You don’t need a shirt; just a heart that wants to serve other people, and some simple skills of personal ministry (such as how to read the Bible with someone). You don’t need an invitation or a permission slip. In fact, the essence of being a Ninja is that you work only for your Master, and that you do his bidding quietly, unnoticed, unseen and unheralded.

You just work with people, with anyone and everyone, to see them come to know Christ and to keep growing in him, day by day, for the rest of their lives.