Church Ministry Purpose Statement (Purpose Series 5 of 5)

In this last article we move from your own self awareness of these priorities and how they can affect you personally, and how they can create a church that is either healthy or unhealthy, balanced or imbalanced. Now we're going to take that down to the application of this concept with the emerging core group. Every core group member, although having never had this training, you can be quite confident they have one or two areas they're very passionate about. We'll also see this under styles. There's a certain way that worship should be done. There's a certain way that prayer should be done, that kind of thing.

The effort to establish a healthy emphasis on ministry priorities in your church plant is not yours alone. Your core group will also have their own ministry priorities. Learning how to integrate their priorities and purpose and your personal priorities as the leader is a vitally important part of planting a healthy church. The convergence and the potential of great positive synergy or negative is usually related to how well you are aware of the dynamics that are at play while it's happening.

I will go through this exercise using myself as an example. That will hopefully prepare you to actually go through the exercise in following. Let’s just imagine that there is a core group that you have, a small group of people that have gathered to join you in planting this church. You're going to ask them what I just asked you, but when you do that you're going to do what I haven't done so far. You're going to figure out what kind of core group this is, similar to is it a learning church that's healthy but has all the others? Is it a worship mercy church? Church planters are normally greatly helped by understanding their core group well. Guess what, your core group falls into one clearly defined category. The way you find it, you just ask them.

I have just asked you to say which one or two are yours. If you were to pretend, you are now the core group, I am the church planter. Now I'm going to ask you to raise your hands. How many of you in my core group listed worship as your number one category? Let’s say four people raise their hand, write down four. How many of you put learning as your top priority? All of a sudden nine people raised their hand. How many of you put fellowship? Seven people raised their hand. How many of you put outreach? Three people raised their hand. How many of you put mercy? No one listed it first.

What do you have on your hands? You have a learning fellowship church. You have a learning fellowship core group. That's very interesting that we just all listed of the five primary purposes that God has given us, we all listed those that we would say and corporately, isn't it interesting that we're learning fellowship?

Number two: assume that these are the ministry priorities of your church's core group. Using Keller's priorities, record below what you believe would be the unique strengths and weaknesses that this core group's ministry priorities represent. This is identical to what you did for yourself. Now if you have a learning fellowship core group, what kind of dysfunctional church are they going to become unless they are led well? Basically, they're going to become a church that doesn't focus on the poor. Outreach in word or deed is a significant void in this church. Unless you have evaluated like a physician would evaluate a human body, you're evaluating this visible body of Christ and you're seeking to understand her corporately in terms of emphasis and passion and focus. We got a people who are just wired basically to be devoted to the Apostle’s teaching and to fellowship, not so wired to prayer, not so wired to caring for the poor, not so wired to seeing people added to the church every day who are being saved. A wise church planter exegetes himself, his culture and his core group.

That's why in terms of what does a church planter do and emphasize, especially during the early phase of church planting, be very wary of anybody who tells you this is what you focus on. What you focus on then is related to what the greatest needs are for taking this embryonic community that has a strong focus in one or two areas and keep fanning those flames because that might be what emerges here as Christ builds his church, but you need to make sure that what you're planting is a healthy church. That's a very unhealthy core group right now. The area of ministry of word and deed is almost nonexistent. What I'm telling you is you can do that with any core group.

Notice the next thing, this is where all this is going. On the basis of your ministry priorities, how well would you fit with this core group? How many areas of overlapping ministry priorities do you have? How important do you think agreement or overlap is? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having complete overlap? What that would mean is you are the church planter, you just polled them, and you are a learning fellowship church planter, and your core group is learning fellowship. Sometimes that happens because of who you are and how they are drawn; like draws like. Sometimes, especially if you go with a core group that existed before you, it's completely dissimilar. In other words, the analysis comes back, they are learning fellowship and guess what you are, you are evangelism and mercy. They've just called you because they love you and they love your wife, and they love that proposal you wrote, and they just think God has called you. You take them through this exercise. What insights do you gain?

Let's say it's me. I said we'll use me as an example. I am a learning, outreach person. If I were the church planter and you were the core group and you were learning fellowship the question is how much overlap. Is it a complete overlap? Is it no overlap, or is at least an overlap in an area? Well, it's pretty clear that we have commonality in learning. They as a group have a propensity to focus more on fellowship than I do collectively as a group, but I focus more on evangelism. That's very valuable information if you're a church planter. What is this group prone to say about me on the way home? I already know. "He doesn't love people. He loves the word. He loves the lost. When's the last time you had any time with him? He's out winning people to Christ. He can teach, but when is the last time you hung out with him?" I am a learning, outreach person and my compass almost every time it's just going to go right there.

Healthy Christians maintain balanced development in their personal ministry priorities, your personal worship, learning, fellowship, outreach, mercy, but they also learn to focus their ministry in light of their unique gifts and passions. In a similar way, the healthiest church plants are normally those that maintain both a balanced focus on all five of these and they actually know what they are uniquely gifted and passionate about doing best. That's what it means to serve out of strength, but in the context you learn as a church planter what it means to serve out of weakness.

When you are planting your church, learn to minister not just out of your strength and develop your church plant in light of its unique strength, but learn to minister out of your weakness. In the example, if I am a learning outreach person, that means that if I'm going to develop a healthy church, that means that I must focus on fellowship in a way that you could say doesn't come very natural to me. I need to prioritize relationships. I need to prioritize group time. I need to prioritize worship and prayer at a new level. When you are doing that, two things are happening, you are consciously planting and developing a healthy church because you have an acute awareness of what are the vital signs of health. You know what their propensities are and what their propensities for vital signs are to neglect. You also know those about yourself. You actually model before them serving not just out of strength. You affirm that, but you serve out of weakness as well.

For me, it means moving into the areas like of fellowship and relationships where I have tons of self-protective layers for me to move more deeply in relationships would cause me to not feel as in control or to feel more fear of rejection or not being approved. Whatever those heart issues are. I have to move out of my areas of strength, learning, teaching, outreach, and actually move into these realms where I don't have a naturally propensity. When I do, I need Christ more. It's in my weakness as I seek to serve in areas where I don't feel competent that he loves to show his strength.