Ministry Model Components (Models Series 3 of 5)

So far in this module we've taken a look at planter models, sending models, and parenting models. For the remaining part of this lesson our focus is on ministry models. In developing your ministry model, you're beginning to answer the question, how will my church ministries work together?

Now it's often helpful to start at the end and work backwards or to begin with the end in mind. Envision a picture in your mind of what you would like your church to look like in two years. Be both visionary and realistic here. This is not meant to be a picture of your dream church or what you would like the church to look like if everything goes perfectly. It's also not meant to be a picture of what you envision your church will look like in five or 10 years. Instead, picture in your mind the time when your church has just reached the maturity level of having the essential gospel ministries in place to be considered a healthy young church.

The ministries may not be very well developed, but they are at least there in seminal form and developing toward further stability and maturity. With this realistic vision in mind, in this article, you are going to create a ministry model flowchart. It will be most helpful if you do this with a document or on a sheet of paper to visualize the dynamics at work showing how you are planning to have your major ministries relate to each other.

A ministry flowchart is a diagram of all your churches future major ministries, showing how the key components relate to one another in the process of helping people grow towards spiritual maturity. A ministry flowchart depicts the logical ministry sequence by which people move from being unbelievers to being fully mature church leaders.

Now this is not a strategic planning chart to help you understand how you will get from where you are today to where your church needs to be in two years. We'll do this later. Instead, this is meant to be a snapshot of what you would like the church to look like after your initial few years of church planting ministry.

Before you begin this exercise, it's important to know that there are many different ways to create a flowchart like this. There's no infallible example to follow and often how the various aspects of a church fit together will depend on your unique cultural or stylistic factors that we have already studied. As you do this you are meant to be drawing from all the work you've done previously, especially with your mission and purpose statements. Based on the style's articles that you have completed, let's look at two examples of a ministry models flowchart.

The first is a flowchart for an attractional model. The focus is on drawing people in through what we called earlier, the front door of the church. This ministry model is meant to show a sequence of ministry development moving from the left to the right. You're meant to see here a sequence of ministries beginning with outreach ministries on the left side moving all the way through to leadership development ministries on the right side. Here you are meant to see a logical ministry sequence through which people are brought from being unbelievers to being fully devoted followers of Christ and leaders in a local church. Notice on the left side of this flowchart the outreach ministries.

Those are meant to channel people into attraction events and then worship in celebration, from which people are directed to a newcomer's class or other events seeking to lead them eventually into a small group and then involvement in some form of ministry and leadership development. If you look closely you'll see how all the biblical purposes are displayed in these components. The purposes of worship, discipleship, fellowship, and outreach. They're all here and they have all been designed to relate effectively to one another representing an intentional discipleship pathway leading someone from being an uninterested unbeliever to being a fully devoted follower of Christ and leader in the church.

Next, let's look at a second example. This one is a flowchart that is an example of a scattering model or what we called earlier the side door model. In this model, rather than seeing ministry sequence in a linear fashion from the left to the right, this model shows ministry sequence from above to below. Notice how in this model, corporate worship is very set apart from outreach. Rather than focusing primarily on attraction events and worship and celebration for outreach, the focus in this model is more on the mobilization of ministry teams doing outreach ministries through cell groups. Just as we saw in our study of ministry styles earlier, your ministry model flowchart will always have both dynamics of front door and side door represented. It's just normally helpful for you to know which of these dynamics is most effective in your unique cultural context.

Now you're ready to begin the exercise. In the next article, I'll begin to walk you through in great detail, step-by-step, the process that you can take to begin developing your first draft ministry model.