17 chapter13

Chapter 13: Strategic and

Ministry Issues

Chapter Outline

• Introduction• Peoples or Places?• It’s Not Your Church• Money as a Burden• Leadership as a Bad Word• Women in Mission

Peoples or Places?

• While agencies have adjusted their own strategies to focus on peoples, there is still ambiguity on how to work out this commitment.

• Decisions or commitments already made to focus on a particular people, or people group, can sometimes be challenged by the circumstances one faces on site in a particular location.

• Many of the least-reached peoples remain that way because when choices need to made, other avenues of service appear much more fruitful and attractive.

It’s Not Your Church

• A key point to remember is that the church (or churches) with which you are working, even as the primary church planter, is not yours to possess in any fashion.

• Learn to appreciate the local church.• With rare exceptions, the missionary should not be

the pastor, but the coach of the pastor and/or elders.

• From the very beginning, local leaders should take the lead publicly, with the missionary at most functioning as part of a leadership team.

Number of People Groups Who Have Not Heard the Gospel

Money as a Burden

• Money is no substitute for passion, but it can be an effective expression of it.

• Money ought to only be used where clear and justifiable ends and means are plainly in view, and when even in a worst-case scenario the money will not hinder the ultimate ends of developing healthy indigenous churches and ministries.

• Money ought never to be used as a power wedge for one part of God’s family to enforce its will on other members of the family.

• Stewardship of financial resources is for everybody. • Those who will not work should not eat.

Leadership as a Bad Word

• Reputation of leadership: You can exercise and sustain personal leadership only to the extent of your capacity to bear pain.

• Types of leadership pain:• Being fatigued• Being overwhelmed by an avalanche of conflicting

duties• Being the bad guy• Babysitting the self-centered• Bearing the burden of decision-making in times of

crisis• Bearing the pain of others

Leadership as a Bad Word (cont.)

While there are many important things to be learned about effective leadership, the most important thing comes only by spending significant time at the feet of Jesus, becoming mesmerized by his heartbeat and captured by his love. If the present crisis in leadership is to be solved, if adequate numbers of quality leaders are to step forward, many important efforts will have to be made. But it will all be for naught unless the battle of the heart is won first. Only a heart like that of Jesus can bear the pain.

Women in Mission

• Steps toward Healing• The Look of Resolution• The Importance of the Culture of the Target

Audience

Steps toward Healing

• A repentant spirit should permeate the overwhelmingly male institutional leadership of the mission enterprise.

• People should recognize that the real issue is the fulfillment of each one’s calling as God, in mercy and grace, has established it.

• Given both the biblical and the historical records of women’s ministry, people should forthrightly acknowledge that women have been effective and fruitful in spiritual endeavors traditionally reserved for men.

Steps toward Healing (cont.)

• We should better understand the importance and parameters of lay ministry in juxtaposition to ordained office.

• Commitment to the integrity of the biblical text as given must be maintained as both starting and ending points.

The Look of Resolution

• Consensus, if found, will be characterized by the following: • It will be faithful to the teaching of Scripture without

recourse to translation tampering or “escape hatch” cultural hermeneutics.

• It will recognize and celebrate the essential and varied ministry gifts of women, as seen both in the Scriptures and in history.

• It will include a renewed sense of the dignity, uniqueness, and irreplaceability of all God-ordained roles.

The Importance of the Culture of the Target Audience

“Gender role colonialism” should be avoided. We rather should live lives faithful to the message of the gospel and walk humbly in the knowledge that God extends salvation to and values equally all categories of humanity (Gal. 3:28).