Falwell Urges Passing On Ministry Legacy

He backed up the warning with Judges 2:10, the passage where Israel stops knowing God after Joshua's death. A single generation, he argued, is enough to squander what was received and leave a nation without the revival God wanted to send it.

From museum to mission

In 2 Timothy 2:2, the apostle Paul commands that the teaching be entrusted to faithful believers who can instruct others: "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, ESV). Falwell saw a chain of four generations there and concluded that the gospel is not to be hoarded: it is to be handed on.

"A legacy is not a museum; a legacy is a mission," he said. An inherited structure either works as an evangelistic engine or turns into a monument to yesterday.

Then he opened Joshua 1. Moses had died, and God did not send Joshua to sit in the tent reminiscing about the good old days, but to get up and cross the Jordan. Moses brought the people out of Egypt; Joshua's job was to bring them into the promised land.

That's where his own story came in. In May 2007 he took over as pastor of Thomas Road after the sudden death of his father, Jerry Falwell. Of that transition, he said that God always uses another generation to carry on the work of the previous one, and that it isn't limited to fathers and sons.

He also tied work to calling. Businesses can be a platform for God just like churches, he said, and appealed to 1 Corinthians 4:2 on stewardship. As an example, Thomas Road started in 1956 with 35 adults in an elementary school; from that work, Liberty University was born in 1971 with 154 students, and today it has more than 167,000.

Character, team and family

At the end he left five guidelines: legacy is mission, not museum; honor your roots while extending the branches; reject personality-driven ministry and build teams; integrate your professional environment into your calling; and prepare for succession before the funeral, not during it.

On choosing collaborators, he was direct: talent builds a ministry quickly, but only character makes it last. And he warned that handing over responsibility without real authority to act doesn't count as delegating. He named Scott Hicks, chief operating officer of Liberty University, and Troy Temple, dean of the school of divinity, both in the room.

On Guatemalan soil, he gave another example. The partnership between businessman George Rawlings, Falwell and Carlos Vargas, founder of Esperanza de Vida, brought 45,000 children to a free camp this year, with 23,612 decisions of faith. The push, he stressed, did not come from a pastor but from a businessman.

He closed at home, with Psalm 78:4-6 as his foundation. The first church a leader pastors is his own family, he said, and he introduced his sons Jonathan Jr. and Nicholas, who serve in ministry roles.

Numbers don't sustain the faith: discipleship that gets passed on does. That task doesn't depend on the pulpit where you sit, but on what you do with what you've already received. This week you can choose someone older to teach you and someone younger to walk alongside. What part of the faith you were handed are you still keeping in a display case?