Ministry Model Development (Models Series 4 of 5)

In this article I am orienting you and preparing you to do your ministry model exercise. For many years I've done this exercise with church leaders around the world, and watched many of them gain great clarity about how to bring this concept of God's purposes for their community down to practical ministry. In those settings I usually ask leaders to gather a few materials. I recommend putting this exercise down on paper or in a document, and not just thinking through it. This will benefit you by making it more clear, and helping you to see how the various ministry components you're developing in the church can and should fit together. You will complete this exercise following this session in five steps. You will have access, in writing, to everything I am saying here after you complete this session, so just relax now and become oriented to the five steps you'll take following this article.

In the first step you will list each anticipated major ministry you will be developing in the church. I recommend aiming for eight to ten major ministries. Do not list more than 12, if you can, you will always be able to list more later. Before you do this, go back and read over your Mission statement you completed earlier. Review your answers to the questions “who are you called to serve?” that you did in your people profile. “What are their greatest needs? How will your church help meet those needs?”

Also be sure to go back and review your biblical Purposes statement you created earlier. Make sure that all the biblical purposes are reflected in the major ministries that you list here. This means you must be certain to list among your major ministry components, the ministries of worship, discipleship, fellowship, evangelism, acts of mercy, and leadership development. This also a very good time to review your Values statement, and be sure to include specialized ministries that uniquely reflect your values, like men's and women's ministries, ministry to singles or the elderly, to youth or to widows, or to orphans.

Once you have listed these ministries, your second step is to organize them together. Your task is to arrange those ministries now in a logical order, in ministry sequence. Select the sequence option that works best for you. Whether that be from the right to the left, from the left to the right, top to bottom, or bottom to top. As you do this, reflect your gathering or scattering outreach dial by determining your entry points into the church for people. Consider now practical ways that your ministry will fit in relation to taking someone from the beginning contact with the church to advanced commitments. In other words, as I shared earlier, organize the ministries in such a way that you can trace how a person can go from a new Christian to ministry involvement, to becoming a [mature leader through your church's ministry model.

After you have listed these ministries in a logical order and sequence, your third step is to draw lines between the ministry components to show your intentional discipleship pathways. As you draw these lines, begin to crystallize in your mind the discipleship pathways you envision for the spiritual growth of people, and the communication pathways between ministries and leaders. After you've completed drawing lines between the ministry components to show the pathways, your fourth step is to write names or titles next to the ministry components to show the leaders of each component. If you're already on the field, when choosing names and titles, be sure to identify present leaders responsible for some of these ministry components and then develop all the titles needed for future leaders of each of these components. Examples of titles you could put under these components would be something as simple as worship leader, small groups leader, or outreach leader.

Finally, step five is to review the ministry model you have created and determine the answers to each of these very important following questions.

Where in this ministry model are people most likely to be converted by coming to saving faith in Christ?

Where in your ministry model are people most likely to be discipled and nurtured, that they might grow to spiritual maturity in Christ?

Where in your ministry model will people have significant opportunity to be equipped to serve, using their gifts in and through the body of Christ?

Where in your ministry model are true leaders being developed in a holistic way?

Lastly, be sure to identify where in your ministry model is your church invested outside of itself to bless and to serve the community in which God is placing you.

Ministry Model Applications (Models Series 5 of 5)

In this final article, we are going to consider a few valuable uses of a ministry model that will extend well beyond just the beginning of your church development process. First, a ministry model developed with wisdom can increase ministry ownership both with you and those under your leadership. Like many things in pursuing transformational ministry, a ministry model must be reevaluated and tweaked as time and experience give you further insight. In fact, one particularly powerful way of developing ministry ownership is taking your ministry leaders through this very exercise that you're completing now so they can create their own ministry flow chart. Then you work together to create a new one that benefits from the insight of others.

Secondly, a ministry model can help increase ministry vision. This goes hand in hand with ministry ownership. Just as a ministry model developed with wisdom can increase ministry ownership, a ministry model communicated with clarity can help keep the goal always in front of you and your church. There are a number of ways this can be done. Obviously, the ministry model can be stated and shared in all sorts of ways through church materials and church discipleship classes like a new members class. You can also do this in more creative and unique ways. I even know one situation where a church planter created place mats for a church dinner that had the ministry model printed on them. The goal is to keep it always before the leaders and members of your church as a way to help them envision the future and to see where their part in the ministry fits into and complements all the other parts of the ministry of the church.

Thirdly, a ministry model can improve ministry planning and budgeting. The planning and doing of ministry necessarily means dealing with money through wise budgeting and spending, being a good steward with the financial resources that God has given to your church. A ministry model can help immensely in the budgeting process, better ensuring that the allocation of finances be more in alignment with the true ministry mission and goals of the church.

Finally, number four, a ministry model can improve ministry management. As is stated throughout the New Testament, believers are given a number of different gifts and talents by God all toward the goal of mutual edification and service. As more people join in with the work of your church's ministry, there will be inevitable needs to recruit, place, train, and motivate people to serve in the areas in which God has called them. A well-done ministry flow chart is a natural church organizational tool that can help toward this end. A ministry model can help you, your leadership, and the people of your church see the number of different areas of service and need, and can help to show how all the different ministries of the church fit together.

These are just a handful of valuable uses for your ministry flow chart. Creating a ministry model is a lot more than a useful exercise at the beginning of a church planting process. It's an initial step that can and should continue throughout a church's life.

Styles Introduction: Part 1 (Styles Series 1 of 6)

In this article we continue our foundational work by looking at the topic of Ministry Styles in church development.

These articles are a continuation and practical application of the earlier articles on Philosophy of Ministry, when we answered the broader question, “How can I contextualize without compromise?,”

So we’ll be revisiting and amplifying some of these key concepts here.

The question here is: How does this church do ministry in this particular culture?

In our earlier articles on Purpose we saw how in Scripture God has made very clear what the primary ministry purposes of a church should be.

As with earlier modules, we will organize these purposes into these five major categories, sometimes combining the last two under Outreach in Word and Deed.

• Worship & Prayer

• Learning & Discipleship

• Fellowship & Community

• Outreach & Evangelism

• Mercy & Social Concern

Here you begin to answer the questions:

• What does worship and prayer look?

• What will discipleship and teaching ministry look like?

• What will fellowship and small groups be like?

• How will we be doing evangelism and acts of mercy?
  

We’ve established that because these purposes are so clearly set forth in Scripture, they must be seen as non-negotiable priorities in ministry development. In other words, all churches in all cultural contexts must always make these purposes a priority.

But the church leader must help determine how these biblical purposes should come to expression in the unique Ministry Focus Group being served. These expressions are called Ministry Styles.

The process by which a church leader contextualizes or adapts the Christian faith into the culture of the new church Ministry Focus Group (while being both faithful to the Scriptures and relevant to the culture) is called contextualization.

The deeper contextualization question in this session is: How can the biblical purposes be best expressed (Styles) in this Ministry Focus Group?

Answering this question well is no small thing when it comes to Church Development.

Let this sink in — the church planter directs how a cluster of people are going to worship. How they are going to pray. How they are going to learn the Scripture. How they are going to fulfill all the “one and others” in terms of fellowship. How they are going to reach out with the gospel. How they are going to love the poor.

I spent 15 years going across the Pacific working with indigenous church planters and cross-cultural missionaries in Asia. And one of the saddest experiences that I had was going into a small church worship service. Being invited into that church and the worship in that church was like many American churches in the late 1950s. The hymns were all from the late 50s hymn books. The liturgy, the style, the organ, was actually used. I felt like I had been transported back to the 1950s!  

How did this happen? Some very well meaning, well-intentioned cross-cultural missionary did not contextualize, and wrongly imposed foreign worship styles from another culture.

If church leaders fail to exegete the culture well and then create ministry styles that are unnecessary stumbling blocks to impacting the culture, then they are destined to have an unhealthy church.

This is one of the top mistakes made by church leaders…the leader chooses ministry styles based on 2 things:

1) what the church leader prefers or

2) styles the church leader has seen be effective in another cultural context.

So with this in mind, let’s begin answering this question, How does your church do ministry in your culture?

Styles Introduction: Part 2 (Styles Series 2 of 6)

In God’s redemptive plan, He intentionally created cultural distinctiveness. God is on the side of culture!  Ethnicity and cultural diversity will transcend all eternity.

The goal of God’s mission today is not to eliminate cultural distinctiveness. 

We’re called instead to appreciate the uniqueness and diversity of cultures as a reflection of His image and for His glory. 

But God also calls us to influence and transform the sinful behaviors, values, beliefs and worldviews within a culture. 

That’s Contextualization 101.

Let’s take a moment to consider what this means. As stated in the Lausanne Covenant

“Because man is God’s creature, some of his culture is rich in beauty and goodness.  Because he is fallen, all of it is tainted with sin and some of it is demonic.”                                

There is a tendency in some church traditions to emphasize the depravity of man and the depravity of the world, over and against the dignity of man and the beauty of the world.

In other traditions it's just the reverse. Both of these dynamics are normally at play. Some of mankind’s culture is rich in beauty and goodness. Some is tainted with sin.

There are some who downplay any cultural differences, saying that they want to practice a de-contextualized, pure form of Christianity free of cultural distinctives that differ from culture to culture. But, as Tim Keller has said;

“There is no universal, de-contextualized, a-historical form or expression of Christianity.  Jesus didn’t come to earth as a generalized being.  By becoming human, He had to become a particular human.  He was male, Jewish, working-class.  If he was to be human, he had to become a socially and culturally-situated person.”     

There is no such thing as Christianity apart from a culture. There is no such thing as an a-cultural Christianity. It's not possible!

If it were, the eternal son of God, when he took on humanity, would have become an a-cultural being. Not black. Not white. Not Asian. Not Latin American. But a-cultural.

But he took on humanity through the culture of a Middle Eastern working class Jewish man in the first century—speaking Aramaic, dressing in that unique way, eating that food, worshipping in the synagogue in Nazareth.

The Incarnation of the Son of God was a contextualized act.

Divine Genius of Christianity
And so, Contextualization is unavoidable in church planting and development. In fact, every form of Christianity must adapt to aspects of its surrounding culture in order to understand it and communicate with it.

This is what has been called the Divine Genius of Christianity, which is modeled for us by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9.23

“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

So unlike other religions that must impose their unchanged ministry styles from a foreign culture and age on people today, Christianity is able to adapt its ministry styles to the unique culture and age of the Ministry Focus Group they are trying to impact—all the while preserving the one unchanging gospel that is true for all generations.

But in Christianity you can have a biblical church, a healthy church, faithfully manifesting the five biblical purposes, and the styles you use for these purposes can be so dissimilar in one part of the world that you wouldn't even hardly recognize it in another part of the world.
This why church ministry styles often look very different according to cultural context.

A church plant in city-center Tokyo, Japan will have very different Ministry Styles from a church plant in rural Senegal, Africa. 

And a church plant among the elderly poor in rural Bangladesh will have very different Ministry Styles from a church plant among wealthy, young people in urban Sao Paulo. 

The beauty and genius of Christianity is that, although churches may have dramatically different Ministry Styles, they can all faithfully carry out the same biblical purposes of the church – Worship & Prayer, Learning & Discipleship, Fellowship & Community, Outreach & Evangelism, and Mercy & Concern. 

Our goal is to contextualize without compromise…to be catalysts and facilitators for the development of these biblical purposes among a particular people group, without compromising the gospel.

Contextualize without Compromise

Church leaders need to be aware of two opposite and equally dangerous errors:

under-adapting or they over-adapting to culture…toward what's called ethnocentrism or syncretism.

<We introduced this basic concept in the earlier Philosophy lesson and described it there as the two Ministry Stances of “Cultural Embrace” where we risk losing the message to Sycretism and “Cultural Defiance” where we risk losing the audience to Isolationism.>

Ethnocentrism (Cultural Defiance) is the belief that one's own culture race or nation is superior to all others. The view that one's cultural ways of doing things is the correct and only way. The tendency to judge the behavior of people in other cultures by the values and assumptions of our own.

As Sociologist Charles Kraft has stated;

“Historically, westerners (like nearly all people) have tended to treat culture like we treat the air we breathe. We simply assume its existence and ignore it. Those who have taught and written on our relationship with God have, therefore, usually made little or no overt reference to the cultural waters in which humans exist.”

The other danger is Syncretism.

Syncretism (Cultural Embrace) is “The mixture of meanings from the respondent culture with new meanings from Scripture in such a way that the essential nature of each is lost.  The contamination of Christian faith, ritual, or beliefs through incorporation of inappropriate cultural components.”

Again, as Charles Kraft has written: “It is possible to go too far to the relativistic extreme advocated by most secular anthropologists...Our commitment to Christ requires that we see culture as context and instrument rather than as an end in itself.”   

Between these two dangers lies the very difficult goal: Contextualization without Compromise. Contextualization of the gospel to a culture always involves two things, Adapting and Challenging.

•       Adapting certain aspects of the culture into your ministry.  This involves embracing and learning from the culture as you seek to adapt to it (I Corinthians 9:22-23).

•       Challenging certain aspects of culture by your ministry.  This involves contending for the truthfulness of the gospel in the culture (Jude 3).

Ministry Styles must be developed in a way that is consistent with the principles and assumptions of the indigenous culture while remaining true to the foundations of Scripture.

In the rest of the articles you’ll be developing these ministry styles for your church.

Reminder of Earlier Discussion:

•       Which of these two extremes is the greatest danger to you?

•       What is one practical example of something that could help your church better engage the culture but might make them (and you) feel uncomfortable? Are you more at risk here of Cultural Embrace or of Cultural Defiance?

Determining Ministry Styles (Styles Series 3 of 6)

Now that you are beginning to understand more deeply the culture of your Ministry Focus Group (See Focus and Philosophy articles), you are ready to start defining your Ministry Styles for each of the primary biblical purposes.

Before you begin this process, two words of encouragement:

1.     Go Where the Wind is Already Blowing

A significant resource for helping church planters develop culturally relevant Ministry Styles can be found in the Ministry Styles of other churches that are presently having effective gospel ministries to the same Ministry Focus Group as the church planter. Through exploring where the Spirit of God is already blowing in a Ministry Focus Group, church planters can learn how to put up their sails and go for the ride! 

So, if there is an existing, healthy church that is using Ministry Styles that God is truly blessing in a similar cultural context to you, don’t try to reinvent the wheel.  Instead, humble yourself, learn about those styles from others and try to emulate them—if, of course, they can reflect your own philosophy of ministry.

2.     First Define Ministry Styles for the Ministry Purposes

As we learned in Foundations #7 Purposes, the primary Ministry Purposes (listed below) should be seen as “vital signs” of a healthy church. When one or more of these purposes are neglected, the church will inevitably become unhealthy. But when all of these purposes are given appropriate emphasis in the ministry of the new church, that church will normally grow and make a Kingdom impact on the world. Therefore it is very important for you first to define your Ministry Styles for each of the primary Ministry Purposes:

• Worship

• Learning

• Fellowship

• Outreach in Word & Deed

Exercises:

The rest of this article will be spent helping you define (or re-define) your initial Ministry Styles for each of the primary Ministry Purposes. 

The examples of Ministry Styles listed for each of the ministry purposes above are not meant to be prescriptive or exhaustive. They are designed to help you think more deeply about the Ministry Styles you will be (or should be) using in your own ministry context.

Thinking through effective and faithful Ministry Styles means walking through each of the biblical purposes individually. Let’s begin with Worship Styles

Determining Your Worship Styles

You will need to select a biblically-based, culturally appropriate set of worship: 1) worship emphases, 2) worship elements and 3) worship models for your church.

1.  Worship Emphases

Certain style emphases (on a cultural continuum) are more effective in reaching some Ministry Focus Groups. And these emphases often change as the culture changes. For instance, worship emphases that at one time were considered contemporary can become traditional. Terminology used to describe such continuums include: 

• Formal/Informal

• Traditional/Contemporary

• Ancient/Future

• High liturgy/Low liturgy

• Immanence/Transcendence

• Blended Styles

• Other:

But you need to not only consider these emphases, you need to consider what I call

2.  Worship Elements

• Time of worship: are you theologically committed to Sunday morning worship? Or would another time or even another day be faithful and appropriate?

• Place of worship: Do you have access to a building? Or would it be more powerful to meet in homes?

• Length of worship: How long is it going to be?

• Length of the sermon: How long should the preaching section be? Should there be one primary sermon or a number of different, smaller sermons. Or something else?

• Leaders of worship

• Number of hymns, songs, prayers

• Words of sermons, hymns, songs, prayers

• Use or types of musical instruments

• Calls to worship

• Dialogue

• Confessions

• Preaching

• Baptisms

• Offerings

• Oaths, vows, covenants

• Salutations and benedictions, assurance of pardon

• Solos, ensembles, choirs, drama

• Audio, video media

• Body postures: Lifting hands, kneeling, clapping, dancing, etc.

• Aesthetics: lighting, air conditioning, fragrance (incense), seating, music, etc.
  

There are a number of different factors to consider. And the question isn’t whether you’ll answer these questions—everyone answers these questions whether they realize it or not. The question is whether you will thoughtfully consider these questions in a way that fulfills the biblical purposes and speaks powerfully to your Ministry Focus Group.
So, Worship Emphases and Worship Styles. But you should also consider what I call:

3. Worship Models 

What Worship Model best fits your Ministry Focus Group culture?  It could be one of the following models, or a blended model.

The Lectionary Model, which in some way follows a Church Calendar.
The model starts with the Lectionary for Sundays, beginning with the First Sunday of Advent and following through the Christian year.  This is the most structured and “fixed form” method of worship. The thrust of this approach is to retell the story of redemption both at the micro-level of the liturgy, as well as at the macro-level of the Christian Year.

The Dialogical Model
The concept that God speaks in the call to worship, the people respond, and they worship, and God calls us to confess our sin, we confess our sin. God responds with the assurance of pardon. And then that's where the sermon fits in the dialogue. then God speaks through his word, we respond by feeding on him by faith in the sacrament. Or we respond in prayer. and then God speaks and then the final is, God speaks and the benediction. And He sends us out to be worshipers in all things.

The Seeker Model
This worship model has a greater sensitivity to seekers and unbelievers in the worship service. Though not as fixed as the Lectionary or Dialogic model in terms of Scripture readings and prayer, this model does follow a definite order and structure.  The thrust behind this model is to capture the topical theme of the message through the creative use of the arts.

The Charismatic Model
This model thrives on spontaneity, flow, and a sense of being “led by the Spirit.”  The thrust of this model is to have an intimate encounter with God through music and in preaching, culminating in a time of ministry, often involving the laying on of hands and prayer.

And so these are these are the questions. “who are we, pastor? who are we? how seriously are we taking the lectionary, the Christian calendar? how seriously are we taking the concept of dialogue in worship? How does our our worship seek to be winsome to the outsider? 

What will the biblical purpose of worship look like in your people group?

Determining Your Learning Styles (Styles Series 4 of 6)

In this article we’ll take a look at Learning Styles.

The whole concept of a disciple is a learner so the topic of Learning Styles is really one of discipleship.

In Acts 2:42 we learn that the early church was “devoted to the Apostle’s teaching.” They were devoted learners.

The vision here is that you are intentionally developing a church into a devoted learning community.

Now in a future lesson we’ll go into depth in this whole area of personal discipleship. But in this lesson our focus is primarily on the bigger picture of community or corporate discipleship. Understanding learning principles that can be applied to the culture and best practices.

You as a church leader are entrusted with the task, not merely of teaching, but as Jesus said in the great commission: teaching people to obey. And there’s a big difference. This means you are given the task of helping people learn.

Because “The purpose of teaching is to make learning possible”, we call these “learning styles” and not “teaching styles.”

That’s because if you have just taught that doesn't mean that anyone has necessarily learned.

And a lot of times church leaders are teaching and no one’s really truly learning.
This means that you, as a church leader, need to understand well the dominant learning styles of your ministry focus group in your cultural context.

When developing a church among an illiterate, rural poor community, you must communicate with those people in a way that is very different from how you would communicate when developing a church among highly-educated, urban wealthy people. 

Everyone (including you, your core group and your ministry focus group!) has their own personal Learning Style—a way they can be communicated with most effectively.  Social Scientists propose one way of thinking about it—presenting us with three modes of learning that define common ways that people remember or learn.

Each of us uses all three of these modes in varying degrees, but we tend to place greater emphasis on one of these over the others. It’s this emphasis that defines a unique Learning Style in this context.

These 3 styles are called an auditory learner, a visual learner, and a kinesthetic learner.

An Auditory Learner – remembers best by listening to the spoken word and by forming the sounds of words.  They will tell you things like …

I need to hear myself say it in order to remember it.

I often talk through a problem out loud in order to solve it.

These people will sometimes say:

I memorize best by repeating information out loud or to myself over and over.

I would rather listen to a recording of a book than sit and read it.

Then there is a… A Visual Learner – who remembers best by looking at images, demonstrations, and body language.  They will tell you …

I like to see an illustration of what I’m being taught.

I prefer books that include pictures and illustrations.

I like flashy, colorful, and visually stimulating objects.

I remember better when I can actually see the person who is talking.

These 2 are in contrast with the… Kinesthetic Learner – remembers best by becoming physically involved and actually doing something whatever they are learning.  They will tell you …

I have a tough time sitting still for more than a few minutes at a time.

I learn best by participating and doing something.

I remember whatever I did more than what I heard or read.

I prefer to read books or hear stories with lots of action.

You will normally discover clusters of Learning Styles among various age groups in your Ministry Focus Group - depending on education, family upbringing, interests, vocations, and all kinds of other factors that shape their culture…

But the Challenge here: is learning to identify those particular learning styles that can maximize the learning experience of the people you are serving. In the process you learn how to adjust your teaching and discipleship learning styles so that…

The individual’s or group’s dominant mode of learning is emphasized to be most effective in transformational teaching AND YET all the while we want to be…

• Stretching individuals and groups to use and strengthen their less dominant modes of learning too.
  

Effective learning methods must be based on sound educational principles. In the field of education today, great advances have been made in the principles and practices of effective education of adults.

In fact, a new word has been popularized for adult learning during the end of the 20th century called Andragogy. Andragogy is the theory and practice of the education of adults as opposed to pedagogy the education of children.

Andragogy is intentionally less “Content/teaching-centered” and more “Learner/learning-centered” with a strong focus on engaging adults within the context of their learning experience. 

These principles will be studied more in depth later in this course but let me just highlight a few of the more important ones.

One is the principle of Motivation: Adults must want to learn

Adults learn most effectively when they are motivated to acquire a particular type of knowledge or develop a new skill.

The other would be the principle of Relevance: Adults often need to see connections to learn

They learn most effectively when they see links between new information they’re learning and their previous knowledge and experience they’ve had, especially how the topic they’re learning relates to their life and work.

And then there’s the principle of Participation: Adults normally must interact to learn

Adults learn most effectively by an extensive use of interactive exercises that are critical for student engagement and learning, as opposed to passive listening or reading.

Then there is Peer Learning:

Adults learn most effectively when they receive input and feedback on the subject they’re learning from both the teacher and their peers.

And then the concept of Problem-Solving:

Adults learn most effectively when focusing on solving relevant, realistic problems as opposed to acquiring knowledge sequentially.

Then there’s the concept of Mastery-Learning:

Adults learn most effectively when they receive immediate feedback from testing methods resulting in self-discovery. Unlike most testing methods in traditional education.

Then finally the concept of Hybrid Methods.

Adults learn most effectively when they are using integrated learning methods that are adapted to their unique context and learning styles. Unlike most traditional education that focuses mostly on formal learning methods, adult students learn best through integrating formal, non-formal, and informal methods.

When you begin to learn, and apply these kinds of principles to your teaching and learning ministries, you not only have people with renewed minds, but renewed hearts and lives.