Today we were working thru our KFA MINISTRY MODEL with some of our staff. It's an exciting time to be part of the church -- our church, more specifically, but I am biased, I admit -- but developing your ministry model is just hard work.
We decided the last thing we want to do is just copy somebody else. The most celebrated and notoriously successful models of recent decades --- Bill Hybels, John Maxwell, Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, for example - became successful via bold innovation, not thru unthinking imitation. We can imitate their product, but if we do, we violate the very process that made them successful. So that's no good.
Those kinds of successful ministry models got that way by trying new ideas that were too radical to even be popular right off the bat. But if you wait until a model is popular enough to imitate, you're almost sure to be too late. By the time they are universally accepted, they're yesterday's news.
The truly successful models - what we hope to be - earned their success the old-fashioned way -- through pain, endurance, mistakes, and prayer. They were real people who stuck to their dreams - what we hope to do - with integrity and sweat and tears. Success was a risk for them - an untried dream - not somebody else's formula for success. If you imitate their success, whatever kind of success you get won't be the kind they got.
The writer to the Hebrews didn't say, "Consider your leaders and imitate their hair styles, speech patterns, gestures and ministry models." He said, "Imitate their faith." (Hebrews 13:7)
May God help us as we go forward.
And be blessed.
1 comment:
I believe that we go an excellent job of loving one another, and showing people the love of Christ. I am not sure about models or how to implement plans for models, however I am sure that our model is centered around Jesus Christ. Whatever the model is I am sure that our church leaders will be successful in implementing it, and I am proud to be apart of it. From the people who work behind the scenes, to the Pastors on the stage, thank you so much for caring for this family of believers, for teaching us, and working with us.
I read this today, I like Charles Spurgeon, and wanted to share it...
"It is true that Jesus saves his people from their sins—earth knows it, hell howls at it,
and heaven chants it; time has seen it, and eternity shall reveal it."
thanks,
Matthew
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