Most people prefer to skip the why questions and jump right into the how-to’s. But a ministry philosophy is the key to working smart. Before we can form a workable strategy, we need to ask two questions: What do we know about the target group? What do we know about doing this ministry effectively?
—Don Cousins
Most ministers work hard. The question is: Do we also work smart?
In the marketplace, leaders are forced to work smart because the bottom line tells them if their strategies are working. But in ministry, the bottom line is less tangible. It’s difficult to evaluate how well we’re doing, so we tend to work hard, pray hard, and then just trust that the “bottom line” will turn out to God’s liking.
Certainly we should work hard, pray diligently, and trust God. But we don’t want to spin our wheels using unproductive strategies. The key is to be more specific about what we’re trying to accomplish.
I was once part of a fine church youth group. The Bible was taught every week. The group served at a state hospital and a children’s home. We sponsored activities on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. There were Wednesday night Bible studies and Sunday morning classes. But the students were unenthused, and the group failed to grow. We had no end of activity, but it was unfocused and unproductive.
We began to wonder. What would happen if we designed the program specifically to draw newcomers?
So we built a program around outreach. Once a week we invited students to an evening of sports competition, contemporary Christian music, drama, multimedia, and a simple message from the Bible. The first night 150 students showed up; the Christians all had brought friends whom they’d been afraid to invite to our earlier activities designed just for believers. I brought three myself, and they came back the following week because they’d had such a positive experience. Many such friends became Christians, and the ministry continued to grow.
What happened? Did we work harder than other youth ministries? Not necessarily. We simply employed a strategy.
Since that time I’ve helped develop and refine various ministries at Willow Creek Community Church. The following steps, we’ve found, are central to launching a ministry well.
Build on Leadership, Not Need
Ask most leaders on what basis they start a ministry, and they’ll say, “We see a need, and we try to meet it.”
While need is undoubtedly the seed that plants a ministry idea, we’ve found need alone is an insufficient foundation upon which to build a ministry. We need to start with leadership. Any endeavor that works seems to require a strong leader.
It’s easy to cite examples in industry: Where would Chrysler be without Lee lacocca? Or IBM without Tom Watson? And in athletics: Peter Ueberroth and the Los Angeles Olympics. Or, better yet, religion: When God decided to start a nation, he went to Abraham. When he wanted to reach out to the Gentile world, he knocked Saul off a horse. Every successful undertaking starts with a leader.
Yet what do we often do in our churches? Well, we have a need, so we round up a committee and.…
Most pastors consider three options when confronted with a need. Let’s say there’s rumbling about the lack of a junior high program. What can be done?
First, the pastor can run a program personally. In most cases, that adds an eleventh hat to a person already struggling under the weight of ten. And perhaps the pastor has few qualifications and little passion for junior high ministry.
Second, the pastor can ask a staff member to take on the ministry. But often the CE director ends up doing children’s ministry, junior high, high school, college, and singles, and none of them well. Why? Because it’s humanly impossible to do a great job in five different ministries at once.
A third option is to turn to well-intentioned parents. That creates problems of capability and continuity. Are the parents trained? Do they know how to direct a program that will build kids’ spiritual maturity? Will they be motivated to serve after their kids graduate?
When Willow Creek faced the need for a junior high ministry, we decided to take a different approach. We made the difficult decision to put the need on hold until we found a qualified leader who could make that ministry his or her speciality.
We went four years without a junior high ministry—no youth meetings, no Sunday school, nothing. Parents asked us what we were doing for junior high kids, and we had to gulp and say, “We’re looking for a leader, but right now we can’t meet your needs.”
We took a lot of heat from parents when there was nothing for their kids, but we knew a first-rate ministry would require a specialized leader. Only if we had the right person, with the right gifts, doing what he or she did best—and only then—could we expect great results.
We looked high and low for qualified junior high leaders—volunteer or paid. The man who eventually became our key leader had proven himself as a lay leader in our high school ministry. Because he worked full-time in the marketplace, he had limited time to devote to ministry, but he agreed to organize a few special events for junior highers. Eventually he developed such a zeal for that age group that he quit his job and joined our staff. He has since built a tremendous junior high ministry.
We could have begun with three or four untried volunteers. But we’re convinced it was worth the wait to find the right person and build the ministry properly. It’s a lot harder to undo and redo a weak program than to build a quality program from scratch.
Settle on One Purpose
Once we’ve found the key leader, we assemble five or six individuals to brainstorm about the ministry. This “think tank” typically consists of the ministry leader, several other people with a passion and corresponding giftedness for that ministry, and one or two staff members or elders. We aim for a mix of people, though each must be good at analyzing and strategizing.
This group may gather for a one-day planning retreat, or meet regularly for several months. To plan Willow Creek’s missions ministry, eight or nine of us met several hours a month for a year and between meetings did individual research.
Our evangelism think tank, on the other hand, met only twice before we began to implement some of the ideas. It all depends on the complexity of the proposed ministry.
Our first task is to determine the primary purpose of the ministry. Just as we like our leaders to shoulder only one major responsibility, so we want every program or meeting to have only one declared purpose. If we’re able to accomplish more than that, we consider it whipped cream.
Think of a typical Sunday morning service. Many churches attempt to equip believers, bring nonbelievers to Christ, encourage fellowship, foster communication, and worship faithfully—all in one hour! Can teachers edify believers and evangelize the lost at the same time?
At Willow Creek, we concluded that we couldn’t; the two audiences are too different. So we decided our single purpose for our Sunday morning service was to reach the nonchurched. We make no apology for not doing anything else as long as we accomplish our primary objective. Christians visit our Sunday service and say, “It’s not a worship service. I couldn’t live on this.”
We say, “You’re right; worship isn’t our purpose on Sunday. You should visit our Wednesday night believers’ service.”
So the think tank’s job is to identify one objective for the ministry. We want each ministry to do one thing well, to meet one need initially through the leadership of one key person.
We’ve noticed that when we meet one need thoroughly, we attract people and resources that enable us to move on and meet another need. If we do a great job of evangelism, people come to know Christ, they’re thankful for what’s happening in their lives, and they start giving financially. That allows us to start other ministries. But if we never did the first step right, we wouldn’t accumulate the people or resources necessary to go to step two.
Having a single focus also benefits workers by helping them gauge their effectiveness. Our food pantry has one purpose: to get food and clothing to people in need. If it does nothing else but provide those necessities, it’s a success. So, every time a pantry volunteer receives a thank-you note saying, “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” we know the pantry is reaching its goal.
But suppose the workers sensed the unspoken goal of leading every pantry walk-in to the Lord. Frustration would run high unless many people were coming to Christ. We wouldn’t attach that purpose to the pantry without making it clearly the primary purpose and then training the workers so they could be effective witnesses.
It happens that as a result of distributing food, people have heard the gospel and become Christians. We’ve also discovered financial needs and marriages falling apart, and sent people to appropriate counseling. But these are side benefits. They don’t have to happen for the ministry to be considered a success.
Determine a Philosophy of Ministry
The think tank’s second task is tougher: to establish a philosophy of ministry.
Most people prefer to skip the why questions and jump right into the how-to’s. But a ministry philosophy is the key to working smart. Before we can form a workable strategy for accomplishing our single task, we need to ask two questions: What do we know about the target group? What do we know about doing this ministry effectively?
In thinking through evangelism for Willow Creek, we began by asking, “What do we know about the average unbeliever?” We agreed that he probably will not change his life and world-view in one hour. He doesn’t know who God is: he thinks God’s outdated, a rule maker, a killjoy, no fun. He’s busy enough without church, and soon.
Then we asked, “What do we know about effective evangelism?” We decided it doesn’t pressure people to change quickly, because that’s unrealistic. It usually isn’t as effective in a single event as through a continuing process. It helps people process truth systematically, so they can make a rational decision that will lead to long-term commitment.
This helped us circle in on the evangelistic approach that would be most effective at Willow Creek. We dedded that our overall thrust in evangelism would be gradually to change unbelievers’ concepts of God.
Suppose I said to you: “I want you to meet a friend of mine. But I have to warn you: he’s hard to get along with. He’s selfish; he talks a lot about himself; he’s moody; and, oh yes, he probably won’t have any money and will expect you to cover his expenses, so bring your wallet!” Would you want to meet him? Probably not.
But suppose I said, “You’ve got to meet my friend! He’s been a true friend for more than ten years and would give me the shirt off his back. If I were in a jam, he’d drop everything to come to my side. He’s the most gracious, giving, thoughtful person I’ve ever met. I could trust this guy with anything.” Would you like to meet that person? Of course.
Unfortunately, most unbelievers see God more like my first friend than my second. That’s why they’ve chosen to refuse or ignore him. Our job is to introduce them to the true God. If we can change their understanding of God, chances are we can change their response to God.
So, in everything we do as a church, every statement we make—whether through a clean, well-designed building, or through the music we use on Sunday, or the written material we make available—we make it clear that God and his followers are not backward or second-rate or dull. And each week we design a Sunday morning service that creatively presents the true identity of God and shatters unbelievers’ misconceptions.
It takes time to formulate a philosophy of ministry, and it will never happen unless leaders sit down and talk through the right questions: What’s true about the people we want to reach? What motivates them? What turns them off? What works? What doesn’t work? Are we arranging ministry to be most effective?
But the time and energy this requires is an invaluable investment. It gives us a clear picture of our target audience and an understanding of how best to minister to them.
Establish a Strategy
Determining the philosophy of ministry often results in a long list of ideas and concepts. The next step is to synthesize them into a strategic plan and then set priorities.
On the basis of the information we’d gathered in our evangelism think tank, we defined four groups of people, two groups of unbelievers and two of believers:
Nonchurched Harrys. Nonchurched Harry doesn’t attend Willow Creek or any other church. On Sunday morning he pops open a beer in anticipation of the Bears game. He has no interest in God.
Seekers. These spiritually sensitive people are looking for something, and sometimes they come to church. But they’ve not yet become Christians.
Average believers. The word evangelism scares this group to death. They know they ought to evangelize, but they have neither the will nor the training to attempt it.
Zealots. These folks have the gift of evangelism. They want to do evangelism. Their challenge is to use their gift effectively, without unnecessarily turning people off.
How can we involve all these people in evangelism? Obviously it requires four different approaches. So we formulated a goal for each group:
— To get Nonchurched Harry seeking.
— To help the seeker become a believer.
— To take the fear out of evangelism for the average believer and to make witnessing a natural part of life.
— To organize the zealots so they aren’t randomly alienating people but are wisely deployed for concerted evangelism.
Then we detailed our philosophy for each group. What’s true about Nonchurched Harry? What’s true about seekers? And on down the list. Once we knew what each group needed, we could develop a strategy just for them.
We couldn’t however, attack on all four fronts simultaneously; we had to establish priorities. So we asked this question: Where can we make the greatest impact with our initial investment? We realized our zealots were vastly outnumbered by our average believers. If we could turn loose these average masses, we’d make a major impact. So we decided the average believers would be our first target group.
Our strategy to move them into active evangelism was to remove their fears, build their confidence, and give them the needed tools. We scheduled a four-week evangelism seminar on consecutive Monday nights. We taught people how to give their testimony, answer the ten toughest questions, and present the gospel in a dear, concise way. In the last year, one fourth of our committed believers have taken the seminars.
The response has been varied. If zero is complete fear and ten is ease in sharing one’s faith, some people have inched from zero to one, while others have zoomed up to ten. I know one man who had the joy of leading two people to Christ in the two months following the seminar.
Now that we have the seminars in place, we’re moving on to the zealots. Our strategy is to equip them and put them into organized evangelistic groups. For example, we’ve started a class called Foundations that meets each week to handle the tough issues that come up when we confront our culture with the gospel.
“Does God Cause Earthquakes?” was the subject of a Foundations class two weeks after the devastating quake in San Frandsco. Previously, we’d handled biblical authority, damnation, suffering, reincarnation, and others. We probably won’t address issues like these in depth on Sunday mornings, but a number of our people come early on Wednesday evenings to tackle them.
We’ve already begun to reach seekers through our Sunday morning services designed especially for them. We feel weakest in our response to Nonchurched Harry. But we chose to focus on the other three groups first, because they are the keys to reaching Harry.
We do, however, aim one aspect of our ministry—our newspaper advertising—directly at the nonchurched. We ask ourselves, What section of the paper do they read? And what kind of ad grabs their attention? A picture of a steeple? No. They prefer something more like a movie ad that looks interesting and addresses their needs. So we put enticing, need-oriented ads in among the movie notices. Some visitors tell us they first came to Willow Creek because of these ads.
We’re also building a sports ministry. If we can intermingle evangelist/athletes with Nonchurched Harrys in our softball or basketball leagues, build relationships, and expose outsiders to the church, we’re on our way toward evangelism. When they say, This isn’t so bad. I wonder what their church service is like?, they’re on the verge of becoming a seeker.
Direct the Resources
Identifying a leader, determining a purpose, and formulating a philosophy and strategy are the tough parts of ministry. The run part is actually making the ministry happen—allocating the finances, setting the times, and deploying the people.
Over the past fourteen years, I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in meetings, pounding out ministry plans. The reward comes when I see the ministry take shape and change lives.
One group we’re just beginning to unleash is called Defenders. This group is made up of hard-core apologists, men and women who have a heart for the intellectual issues and tough questions of faith. They like nothing better than researching thorny issues such as the problem of pain or creation versus evolution.
Now when anyone gets stuck on a difficult question, there is someone to turn to. Our staff directs both questions and questioners to them. People witnessing to their friends have someone to help them with challenging arguments.
What a resource God has allowed us to activate—a group of Defenders dedicated to leading skeptics to Christ! It’s their passion.
And it’s my passion, too. That’s why I’m committed to the five steps outlined above. I want to launch ministries that work, that fulfill the purposes of the church, that reach the lost and lead them toward maturity in Christ.
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