Freddy Davis - Radical Discipleship Training: Challenge, Teach, Encourage
Find Me / Follow Me here www.marketfaith.org
• WHAT? - What is the "1-Question" leaders must ask in order to #ReimagineFutureChurch?
What is the unifying factor that pulls the entirety of church ministry together in order to make sure a church is doing everything it needs to do as a church?
• SO WHAT? - What makes this an urgent need for leaders to contemplate/explore/discuss/pray into?
There are many different functions and activities that go into the ministry of a church. These activities include such things as (in no particular order) evangelism, discipleship training, administration, counseling, Bible teaching, preaching, fellowship activities, chaplain ministry, music, care ministries, and others. With so many things going on, it is rather difficult for most churches to make all the parts work together in a way that allows the church to comprehensively accomplish God's purpose for it. It is way too easy for each area of ministry to become a world unto itself.
There must be something that ties all of them together.
What must tie them together is a unifying philosophy that corresponds to the Bible's mandate. That philosophy is found in Ephesians 4:11-13. These verses teach that the work of ministry involves: 1) Building the body of Christ (bringing people to Christ), 2) Fostering a unified body, 3) training believers to do ministry in the world, and 4) working toward becoming like Christ.
In doing this, the work of the church leaders is the work of equipping. The work of actually doing the church's primary ministry belongs to the church's members. Reimagining church means setting aside models of church where the church leadership are primary in attempting to impact society and church members serve to support them. Instead, the leaders must become master equippers and the church members must buy into the notion that they need to be trained to take the gospel to the world, and actually go out and do it. This is what caused the explosion of growth in the early church, and is what is necessary to create that today. Sadly, church tradition in modern times does not follow that model.
• NOW WHAT? - What action do you recommend we initiate?
Creating a new mindset begins with the church leaders, but will also require the buy-in of the church membership. In most cases it will require massive effort to overcome the inertia of tradition. In the beginning, the pastor will have to catch the vision, and will have to create a way to impart that vision to the church in a way that will create buy in.
Following that, a system will need to be set up to provide the kind of equipping necessary for people to be trained. As every church is in a different place, there is not a simple formula to pull this off that can be generically imposed on every church. Each church will have to evaluate its own situation and develop a plan. But the vision for doing it is key. Without that, it will never happen.
One important key to pulling this off involves developing a mindset based on a worldview paradigm. In the pluralistic world we now live in, understanding the huge variety of beliefs that believers encounter, and must minister in, requires the skills traditionally used by missionaries -- which are worldview skills. We must be able to reach across the worldview barriers that exist in our day (barriers that did not exist in the day our current church traditions were formed). Worldview training is critical.
•PRAY THAT …
Lord, infuse in us a vision which will unify the entirety of our church ministry in order to accomplish the purpose for which you placed us here.
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