Our December Leadership Team meeting was a follow up discussion where we discussed both the contents of David Platt’s book Radical Together and how some of its concepts may apply to our church as we pursue the vision. The November meeting was mostly a discussion of the book and its themes, so December was our chance to ask the question “How Does this Apply to our congregation?” We spent time reaffirming our vision statements (and testing them against the observed values of our church) and thinking through some questions expressed in the handout document I provided to the team, which you can download by clicking here.
Unfortunately, we ran short on time and were unable to complete our discussion on this document. I will be providing an executive summary of the group’s answers once I receive them during our next meeting on 1/25/22. Briefly, we discussed the question at the heart of Platt’s book, which is “What good things in our church get in the way of our Gospel ministry?” We started a slow process of evaluating each of our ministries and asking the question “Is this ministry making the best use of its resources for the Gospel?”
This is an intentionally critical process. Platt supposes that many “staples” of American Evangelical church culture are extra-biblical additions to Church ministry. For example, you will not read about the early church hosting a Vacation Bible School or enforcing monthly meetings of a flower committee. Platt doesn’t argue that such extra-biblical ministries are not good. On the contrary, it seems like he applauds many of these ministries as an appropriate application of the Bible to a modern ministry context.
The question, though is about whether or not the many “good things” in our church are actually the “best thing” for the ministry of our church. With the church’s steadily declining attendance, it is likely that there is something better we could be doing.
Further discussion in leadership team will revolve around analyzing our current ministries and considering where improvements could be made. Remember: this is not for the purpose of actually changing anything. The leadership team is not an executive board or committee and cannot change anything. Rather, it is the place where discussions about our church structure and planning can take place in anticipation of future growth and development.
Additionally, we will likely be discussing other books with the team in the coming months. I’m still deliberating which ones, but we will discuss this after our next meeting when we finish our discussion of the Church Vision.
As always, feel free to contact me with any questions!
–
Pastor Ethan
FBC Mannington 