02 08 13 A Gold Nugget to Share

 

Given Alaska’s gold-rush history, I hope you can forgive me for using gold nuggets as a metaphor.  The presbytery’s participation in the Acts 16:5 Initiative has surfaced several “gold nuggets” that are worth sharing across the presbytery. Today I want to tell you about one of them: The Three Dimensional Ministry Perspective.

The three dimensional ministry perspective observes that effective and enduring ministries require that churches balance their ministry efforts by caring equally for three specific dimensions of relationship.   Much could be said about each one, and it essential for each congregation’s leadership to give serious consideration on how to care for all three.  For this blog, though, I will just list them briefly as follows:

1. Our relationship with God  (worship, prayer, the practicing the presence of God, etc)
2. Our relationship with fellow believers (fellowship, Christian education, equipping the members for service in the community), and
3. Our relationship with the rest of the world (an intentional witness in our communities and, perhaps, beyond).

As I have followed this outward from the Acts 16:5 program, I have discovered that there is a lot of research behind this three dimensional ministry approach.  One of the most helpful descriptions comes from The Faith of Leap (by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch; Baker Books, 2011).  They point out that churches have traditionally started with worship and prayer as the beginning point of ministry, but this has not worked well for the church, especially in the past century.  It is this very approach that has led us to the current era where churches across the west are in decline and where, only this year, people who claim no religion at all emerged as the fastest growing segment of American society.  We have to do better.

Frost and Hirsch began to ask which of the three dimensions best serves as a catalyst for ministry.  If beginning with our relationship with God is not the best starting point, what is?

Starting with our relationship with God tends toward an divisive arguments on which point of view has the most pure doctrine, and leads to the kind of Christianity that is interested in empire and power.  Starting with our relationship with fellow believers can often degenerate into an in-grow “club”-type church that is not much motivated to service in the world.  But beginning with the world—that is, beginning by listening and observing where God is most active in healing the hurts and raising the hopes of the world—engages Christians in service, inspires a burning desire to build the kind of faith community that is being equipped to do the service to which they are called (indeed, the rigors of serving together in the world builds a special espris de corps that the Bible calls koinonia, and that Christians these days have begun to call communitas (spirit-empowered community), and turns people strongly to God for guidance, strength, and joy. 

Some people have suggested that too many of our churches were founded on the “worship first” principle, and that new churches need to be developed.  Acts 16:5 reminds us that the work of God is about transformation, and it begins by transforming our tired churches into vital ministries.  And a good place to start is by paying attention (listening and observing) to what God is doing in the world, and joining in.