This book by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne is quite popular among Christian pastoral circles right now. It has been heavily endorsed by some pretty well known pastors.
And I had high hopes for it when I started it. It had some good moments throughout. However, it left me unsatisfied. Possibly my expectations were too high. Possibly the endorsements were too strong..."The ministry mind shift that changes everything" is the subtitle. Everything? Needless to say, I am not changing everything about the way I approach or think about ministry.
Nevertheless, there was much good in the book. The premise is rather straightforward (to me) - Christian ministry is making disciples. It is Gospel ministry. It is evangelism. It is teaching. It is discipling. It is the vine. The trellis is the program that helps the vine grow better. We don't want to spend our time making beautiful trellises and neglecting the vine. And this vine work is the work of every Christian, not just the pastors and/or elders. The first several chapters expound on this.
It's a great metaphor, but would anyone really disagree with this? I would hope that every Bible believing Christian would support making disciples over running church programs. I would hope that every pastor and elder would support growing disciples rather than growing programs. The key to me is how? How do we do that? And more specifically, how do we do that in a church context with multiple ministries sharing multiple people?
I understand this mindset in one context of ministry, say a youth ministry or a small group Bible study. Teaching, discipleship, counseling, training all can take place in that one context very easily and fulfill the mission of making disciples. But what do we do when one person is in a small group Bible study, serves in the youth ministry and children's ministry, and goes to another pastor for counseling? You could have 4 separate leaders or elders or pastors, discipling / counseling / teaching that person with 4 different perspectives, sometimes seeing 4 different aspects of that person's life. How does that work? How should that work? How can that work better?
The authors did concede that ministry can be messy and that their various paradigms of training and disciple making were fairly simple and needed to be adjusted to specific ministry contexts. Granted every church situation is slightly different and it would be nearly impossible for any book to give specific paradigms that fit. But I was hoping that they would at least give a model or several examples of how macro ministry in a multiple elder/pastor church situation would work. I think this is a fairly common situation in Bible teaching churches in America.
I guess I have a passion for the structure of disciple making ministry and for developing a trellis that will foster the vine. What does it look like? How does it expand? How do you adapt it to an already existing vine that is growing in many directions? Unfortunately, my questions went unanswered. The answers that were given were good and biblical - be an example, be relational, develop others to work the vine, etc. But the glaring question for everything seemed to be - how?
Nevertheless, this was a good book. I just wish it would have been better.
We decided to celebrate their first full day here with a Korean feast for dinner. It was fabulous!
The signature dish was some Korean bbq also known as kalbi. It's a short rib that is marinated in a soy sauce, sesame oil and brown sugar sauce (I can't tell you the other ingredients - it's a national secret). And grilled to perfection. Man, was it good!
I just finished Worldliness. It is written by several men from Sovereign Grace Ministries and edited by C.J. Mahaney. The book only has 6 chapters - the first defines and explains the concept of worldliness, the others deal with specific topics such as media, music, clothes and "stuff."
We put the shutters up and here's the house!
The first time we saw it Emery was picking up a pair of her jeans off the floor yesterday and it ran out from under it towards the furnace. I instinctively let out a loud scream and startled Emery so badly that she started crying and then screaming at the spider as well. Poor Emery! Peter asked me why I didn't just kill it. Well, first off, it ran away so quickly that I didn't have time to get a paper towel to squash it with and secondly, there was NO WAY I was even going to attempt to catch that creature. He said, "Just use the fly swatter." My response was, "That bug was so big that it would've grabbed the swatter out of my hand, eaten it and then continued to run off!" He was sure I was exaggerating.
It takes you pretty far out into the country.
I run by lots of fields.
And a few goats. Thankfully, my sponsor (Sandy) not only gives me water but also takes pictures!
Matt played a couple more soccer games today.
It's fun playing soccer with your bud.
Plus you get to do all sorts of crazy pre-game rituals!
Did you know that asparagus looks like this growing out of the ground? Yup, if I wanted to, I could cut that right now, roast it and eat it. Asparagus spears are actually just the stem of the asparagus plant! We planted 10 of these not too long ago and they weren't supposed to come up until next spring but I guess they didn't know that. We're supposed to get more and more stems as the years go on and this plant can live up to twenty years. Hopefully we get a lot of asparagus for years to come!
Sorry this is hard to see, but this is the asparagus grown slightly bigger. The broccoli is making it hard to see the asparagus.
This is the largest one we have right now. Eventually this grows quite tall and has lots of feathery leaves. So interesting!
Yes, that is tape over his eyes! Mental note, never leave scotch tape out any more. Matt's trying to be Snake Eyes from GI Joe.
The resemblance is uncanny, no?
He has gone to 2 practices so far. After the second one, I asked him how it went. He said, "It was boring - just a lot of running and kicking." Get used to it. That's all soccer is!
Today, he had his first game. Here is the first minute of his soccer career...
And I had high hopes for it when I started it. It had some good moments throughout. However, it left me unsatisfied. Possibly my expectations were too high. Possibly the endorsements were too strong..."The ministry mind shift that changes everything" is the subtitle. Everything? Needless to say, I am not changing everything about the way I approach or think about ministry.
It's hard to describe 51,000 K-state fans who were REALLY into the game. Nearly everyone was wearing purple. This picture does not adequately convey the energy in the stadium.
But not everyone was a K-state fan. There were about 100 or so UCLA fans. I know, 51,000 to 100 doesn't quite seem fair. Can you see the smattering of powder blue in the sea of purple?
The most important UCLA fans were right here - 2 faithful alumni. Unfortunately, all their cheering could not overcome the 51,000 and the mighty Bruins fell 31 to 22. Congrats to K-state and all their fans.
Thanks again to the Wernli family for their generosity and treating us to quite the Kansas experience. We had a great time!
If only Emery had been there! She's so loud I think her voice might have overcome at least 10,000 people. :)
This is the better half of the house.
Our plants and shrubs are doing pretty well too. We really love our "Julia Child" rose bush which has really thrived this summer.
We have just started to get some decent sized bell peppers from our plant. So what do we do with fresh veggies? Hmmmmm...grill them of course.
We feasted after a hard day's work.
It's good to be dad.
