De- or Re- Constructing? A “Start-Here!” Template
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DON'T Start There ... Start HERE
#Deconstructing? and/or #Reconstructing?
Are you ...
- Always #Rethinking?
- Eager to #Reset traditions?
- Seeking to #Reformat Ministry?
- Passionate for #Renewal - #Revival?
- Challenged to #Revise - #Reengage?
...then begin with an honest inventory of your status
Where are we stuck?
Where are we stale?
Where are we simply repeating what we inherited?
Where are we maintaining forms that no longer serve their purpose?
Where are we confusing activity with fruitfulness?
>After you reflect personally, invite your staff, leadership team, ministry leaders, and perhaps even your congregation into the conversation.
But first, be careful where you begin.
Don’t Start THERE
Do not begin with Ideas:
- What is a new way of doing ministry?
What new program should we try?
What better resources do we need?
What strategy will make us more effective?
Do not begin with Issues:
- What is our problem?
Why are we floundering rather than flourishing?
What is broken?
Who or what is to blame?
Do not begin with Insights:
- What is their solution?
What are the experts concluding?
What suggestions should we adopt?
What model should we copy?
Ideas, issues, and insights matter.
But they are not the best starting point.
>Take time asking-seeking knocking with the questions
>...then write or type your responses. Let your first answers reveal your assumptions. Then involve your ministry leaders, and eventually your congregation, through discussion, prayer, teaching, a seminar, or a sermon series.
But do not rush to solutions.
Start HERE
Start with Inquiry:
What is the question?
Ask. Seek. Knock.
Pray for the Spirit to give you a radical starting-point question — radical in the original sense: a question that goes to the root.
Not merely:
What should we do next?
But:
- What are we not seeing?
What have we assumed?
What have we inherited but never examined?
What question are we avoiding?
What root issue must be named before we can move forward?
Continue with Investigation
What is at the root of our problem?
Ask. Seek. Knock. - Pray through this question:
What must I first unlearn in order for new insights and ideas to have freedom to produce new wineskins?
Investigation asks us to look beneath symptoms.
- A declining program may not be the real issue.
A tired team may not be the real issue.
Low participation may not be the real issue.
Resistance to change may not be the real issue.
The deeper question may be:
- What need-prompted-imagination formed this ministry?
What assumptions are holding it in place?
What traditions have become untouchable?
What inherited patterns are shaping our decisions?
What needs to be recovered, repaired, released, or rebuilt?
Then Interrogate
Who are the thought-leaders who can help us unlearn?
Ask. Seek. Knock. - Pray through this question:
Where can we find authentic-faith commentary that helps us discern biblical truth from culturally or traditionally infected dogma?
Interrogation does not mean suspicion for suspicion’s sake.
It means learning to ask better questions of our sources, systems, assumptions, and conclusions.
- Who is helping us think more faithfully?
Who is helping us distinguish conviction from custom?
Who is helping us recognize where culture has shaped our theology?
Who is helping us recover what is biblical, not merely familiar?
Who is helping us reconstruct without losing the foundation?
A Better Beginning
Don’t start with a new program.
Start with a better question.
Don’t start with blame.
Start with prayerful investigation.
Don’t start by copying someone else’s solution.
Start by discerning the root issue in your own context.
Don’t start with conclusions.
Start with inquiry.
Then contemplate.
Then invite your learning leaders into the conversation.
Then begin the deeper work of deconstructing what must be taken apart and reconstructing what must be rebuilt.
√Then continue with "The Parable of the Town Hall Meeting"
√...followed by "Why? What? Who? How?
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