Matt Heerema

Is “Ministry” Killing Your Church?

Charles Specht asks a hard question: have you given any thought to why your men’s ministry, women’s ministry, children’s ministry, music ministry (ouch! hands off!), conferences, classes, and various meetings exist within your church lately?

Are the “ministries” in your church killing your actual effectiveness in The Great Commission that Jesus gave us: to go and make disciples from all the nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey His teachings? Are we becoming too focused on the internal operations and business and workings of our little church group, that we forget why we exist?

The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-Shift That Changes EverythingHe give five reasons why “Focused/Segregated (demographically) Ministries” are potentially hurting your church. Great reasons all, and I fear he is too tentative in the way he states them.

He also alludes to a wonderful book about ministry in the church called “The Trellis and the Vine“, which I recommend you read if you are charged with leading a ministry.

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Comments

One response to “Is “Ministry” Killing Your Church?”

  1. Daniel B Avatar
    Daniel B

    C.S. Lewis said, “The idea of churchmanship was to be wholly unattractive. I was not in the least anticlerical, but I was deeply antiecclesiastical. …But though I liked clergymen as I liked bears, I had as little wish to be in the Church as in the zoo.

    "It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome “get-together” affair. I couldn’t yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one’s spiritual life. To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters.

    “And then the fussy, time-wasting botheration of it all! The bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing. Hymns were (and are) extremely disagreeable to me. Of all musical instruments I liked (and like) the organ least. I have, too, a sort of spiritual gaucherie which makes me unapt to participate in any rite.”

    I tend to agree with Clive/Jack. I’ve read Trellis and Vine too and recommend it. I agree that perhaps our preoccupation with programs and a Sunday morning event actually gets in the way of being relational and making disciples and equipping others to do the same.

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