Emphasis and Balance in the Biblical Purposes (Purpose Series 4 of 5)

Most church planters are uniquely gifted for and passionate about one or two of the five priorities. This is why it's often difficult for church planters to establish a new church that has both a healthy emphasis on the ministry priorities that reflect that church planters unique calling and gifts, and a healthy balance on all the remaining priorities, what we call the vital signs of the church.

The purpose of this exercise: number one, to clarify one or two at the very most ministry priorities that best fit your unique calling and gifts. Two: understand how you can and should have both a healthy emphasis on these two that God has given you, and yet a healthy balance on all the remaining priorities listed here.

Step number one. I want you to identify one or two at the most of the ministry priorities that you, not your core-group that you have or that you envisioned or your new church, that you are most passionate about and which best fit your unique giftedness and calling.

There used to be, years ago these spiritual gifts profiles or questionnaires to help people find their unique giftedness. There's an extreme there, but I would almost rather have that than what is most common, and that is almost a neglect of people in the church finding their one or two areas of giftedness and passion.

Being able to focus in the area of giftedness and passion, that's what Romans 12 is all about. That's what 1 Corinthians 12 is about. That's what 1st Peter 4 is about. That's what Ephesians 4 is about. About the members of the body finding their giftedness and working together, diversity and unity. At risk of doing kind of a parallel to a spiritual gifts questionnaire.

A little bit later in the curriculum, you'll see church ministry priorities by Tim [Keller]. A teaching church, what it looks like. A teaching, worship church, what it looks like. A teaching fellowship church, what it looks like. A teaching evangelist church, a teaching mercy church. Now notice, he took teaching and he just added the other four. Then he left teaching all by itself, and he did the same thing.

A worship church, and then a worship fellowship church. You see what I'm saying? No more do I want you to take this too seriously than Tim did. The goal here is so people will really get the idea that in these five areas that are non-negotiables is like the Greek axiom, “all truth is God's truth.” Do you know yourself? Do you know which one of these if you had to say one? I'm not camp, because someone always says "Well, I'm perfectly balanced and we should always strive for all those areas."

I want to say just imagine if somebody did that in a church. I'm going to serve and give and show mercy and teach equally with no connection to my unique giftedness. It's kind of like fighting with the law of gravity, you just don't win that fight.

This is what I'm asking you to do here: step number one, I want you to say or write down "What are the one or two?" Then number two, list the remaining three or four in order of what you believe best fits your unique giftedness and calling. If you selected learning, and just learning as your one emphasis, you might then list the remaining emphasis in this order. Outreach would be next, priority on my list, worships next, fellowship. Do you know yourself? Do you know which one or two you'd put first? Then, can you put the other ones? No one can fill this out for you.

Number three. Based on your list of ministry priorities above, what type of unhealthy, new church are you most likely to plant because of this? What would it look like? I have lost track of people that have told me "This is not fair that I didn't go through this exercise before I went into church planting. I planted the most unhealthy church. I'm not even there now because of this, and I was clueless about what I was even doing. I was just pursuing my passions." In other words, that one or two areas that really lit my fire, lit everybody else's fire, we went for it.

Either in your mind or on paper, I want you to put down what you are prone to plant as an unhealthy church plant, unless you're more aware of yourself and the biblical purposes.

Then, number four, the last part: record what you need to emphasize often against your natural propensities, gifts and passions in order to plant a healthy, new church that has a healthy focus on all five.

Once you've seen what you might create, now I want you to write what you're going to need to focus on to not deny your areas of passion, but actually plant a healthy church. You can have five vital areas that are healthy, but do all you can and tell me it's going to be perfectly balanced. I promise you one or two of those things are going to be areas of passion and they're going to mark your church. The sooner you know it, the better it is because you will focus on those other areas more, where naturally you wouldn't.

Let me give you some churches. St. Andrews Church, what would the Pastor of St. Andrews Church, what kind of church would he put here? Worship learning? Yeah, you see us worship and teaching. Our worship and preaching, what you learn is pretty critical.

What about John MacArthur on the other coast? What would you say? I mean they worship and its' biblical and they do outreach, that's a learning church.

I could show you other churches, they're mercy churches. I don't want you to think it has to be a combo, but I know if MacArthur was here, he'd say "Learning." R.C. would probably have to say "Worship and learning." I say that because it's okay to just be one. I won't let you be more than two because you've lost all distinctiveness.