Church. It’s complicated.
This is the title of the series I’m learning about at church. At the same time, ‘Ministry mind shifts’ is what I have just begun reading about from the book The Trellis And The Vine, by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne. These two lessons in parallel are very intriguing.
Church: The messages about church created a paradigm shift in my mind. When I belonged to a church, or was visiting a church my mindset was slightly wrong! For some reason, majority of the time I was self seeking. By that I mean I was asking the questions, “Am I growing here?”, “Is my pastor eager to have a relationship with me?”, “Are there people my age here?”, “Are there ministries that I like that I can plug in to?”. All of these questions are highly self seeking. The big kicker in the pants for me is “I am made to serve the church, the church is not made to serve me”. If a church doesn’t have a certain ministry that you need, ask yourself, what is church to you? Is church a place that is created to server you and help you? Or, is church a part of God’s huge plan for his Kingdom? Do you want to be a part of that plan? God calls you to, and he has given you gifts specifically for the church.
Ministry Mind Shifts: From running programs to building people. A beautiful thing about the above paragraph is that the leaders of the church are called away from growing and maintaining events and structures, and called towards growing people who are disciple-making disciples of Christ.
Both sides are to be selfless in their duties, they give to each other, and they put the other as priority. A giving spirit towards one another in the direction and glory of God’s kingdom. One side says “Where can I help?”, the other side says “What are your gifts?” and “How we build you into a disciple with your gifts?”.
