Video Transcript: Kinds of Ministries

Welcome to lecture 25 of the practical ministry skills course we're talking today  about kinds of ministries, and this title here doesn't mean 25 kinds of ministries.  Number 25 let's look at our key verse. We are God's masterpiece. He has  created us anew in Christ, Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for  us long ago. Ephesians, 2:10, the good things that he planned for us is the  same as the God's work in Ephesians. 4:12, God has given us the church, the  apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, to equip God's people to do  God's work. That's the same thing as the good things, and that's the same thing  as ministry. Ministry is the good things God has planned for us, the good work,  God's work that He has for us to do. That means there are Ministries for  everyone. Every Christian has a kind of ministry. I think I said this in the very first lecture, but pastor is not the only kind of ministry. Worship leader is not the only  other kind of ministry. There are all different kinds of ministries in the context of  what I'm talking about today. We're looking at the context of a local church, and  there are basically three kinds of ministries in a local church. There are the tasks to perform, there are the some ministries are based around something that  needs to be done. There are groups to serve. Some ministries are based around different kinds of people, different groups of people, they need to be ministered  to. And then there are the ministries that support the first two kinds of ministry  and resource them and provide for them and make sure that they have what  they need. In some churches, these groups are called committees. In some  they're called teams, and some they might be called boards or councils or just  groups. In one way, it doesn't matter what you call them, but in another way,  each of those terms come conjures up different images in people's minds. They  have connotations. So for instance, a committee implies a group of people  mainly that sit around and make a decision. A team implies a group of people  that work together to do something. A board implies a group of people who  oversee what everybody else is doing. So think about what in your setting, these different terms might bring to the minds of your people. And you may want to  you may find that you might want to consider changing what you call from the  evangelism Committee to the evangelism team, something like that. That  particular one, I would not recommend calling a team, because anything that  you want everybody to be doing, if you say team that implies this is the group  that does it. Now, one thing that you as the minister, and in this case, I mean the pastor, the lead person, church leader in the church, you're going to find that  every one of these ministry groups is going to want you to be involved, first  because they may be a little hesitant and not quite so confident that they can do  it without you, and second, perhaps because it implies that this is really  important the pastor's involved In it. The fact is, you can't be involved in all of  them if you're going to grow beyond a fairly small size, or if you're going to be  doing other things. I think we talked previously about the fact that a leader  should be growing to the point where. The leaders. The only things a leader is 

doing are the things that only the leader can do. This is not just a principle from  business world today. This is something you find in the Bible. You remember in  Acts 6, there arose a dispute in the church. Imagine that a dispute in the church, even in the Bible days, a dispute in the church between two groups that one felt  

that their their group was being short changed in the food ministry, and they  came to the apostles, and they said, What are we going to do? This isn't fair.  Get it straightened out. The other group said, no, they're accusing us of stuff  

we're not doing. So here's the apostles answer. We apostles should spend our  time teaching the Word of God, not running a food program. And so brothers  select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom.  We will give them this responsibility. Then we apostles can spend our time in  prayer and teaching the word Acts 6:2-. Now in this case, it was just men  because of that culture, just men who came with the complaint and men who  were chosen. It doesn't have to be even later in the Bible, and the New  Testament and other places we find women taking on great responsibilities, but  the point is, the apostles recognized that they had limited time and limited  energy, and they needed to focus it into the things that only they could do. And  it's the same with you as the pastor, as the lead minister, ask God, which one it's probably good if you drop in occasionally on the meetings and make yourself  available for special requests if your presence is needed, but don't get roped  into feeling like you have to be in every meeting that ever happens. Okay, what  are the ministries? Different churches will have different kinds of ministries.  These are the ones that I see as going along with the seven functions of a  church, a church should be doing seven different kinds of things. A church  should be engaging in worship, a church should be taking care of the members.  A church should be helping the members grow like Jesus, discipleship. A church should be involved in evangelism. A church should be involved in helping those  who are in need. A church should be involved in making the world more like  heaven. Social influence. For instance, the Christian church was extremely  involved in the abolition of slavery around the world, and the church should be  involved in prayer. So seven functions that I see that every church should be  involved in to be a fully operational, well rounded church, worship, member,  care, discipleship, evangelism, aid, social influence and prayer. And so if you're  going to have each of these things needing to be done, it makes sense that you  could pull together a group to be in charge of those so you can have a worship  ministry and a worship committee, a member Care Committee, a discipleship  committee, an evangelism committee, an aid committee, a social influence  committee, A prayer committee, or team or board or group or council or  whatever you want to call them. The important thing to recognize here is that  and this, churches often get this wrong, but the people get it wrong, and the  people in the in the groups get it wrong. You can't get it wrong, and you need to  make sure that to correct it when they are getting it wrong, because the job of 

the ministry groups is not to do the ministry. The job of the evangelism  committee is not to be the only people in the church that do evangelism. The job of the ministry groups is not to do the ministries, it's to organize and promote the ministries so everyone can do them. The evangelism committee should be  encouraging everyone to do evangelism and giving opportunities and training  about how to do that. The discipleship committee doesn't mean that every  Sunday school teacher and Bible Study leader is in the committee, and nobody  who is not on the committee is allowed to ever do any discipleship. That's not  the case at all. The discipleship committee is to make sure that the church has  the resources and the teaching and is devoting the time and equipping and  training people who can equip and train other people in the ever spreading drop  a pebble in a pond and watch the ripple spread out. Kind of I dropped him in the  water bottle. Kind of expansion of discipleship. The prayer committee certainly  should not be the only people in the church to pray. They should be encouraging people and training people and providing prayer resources. So the job of  ministry groups is not to do the ministries, it's to organize and promote the  ministries so everyone can do them. Those are the task defined ministries. Then there are the group defined ministries, the ministries that exist not to accomplish a task but to serve a group. So the most common is probably the age group  ministries. In almost any church, you'll have something special for the children,  for instance. And I just love this one. The disciples are there. Jesus is there with  the children up at the top. And one of the, probably Peter, or somebody, is  saying to the others, I know he said to let the little kids come to him, but I really  think he'd want Andrew or somebody to handle the junior highs. That's ages 12  to 14. But somebody, somebody else, take care of them. So there are age  groups, there's children, but then you may have a youth group for teens. You  may have a special group for your seniors, your older people that have different  needs or interests or abilities than your adults who get out and who are actively  in the workplace and taking care of families and so on, and they may need a  special Ministry of their own. There are men's groups and women's groups.  There are life situation groups. Maybe you have a group for widows, or you  maybe have a group for somebody else that's in a certain kind of a life situation.  There are support groups for people who are in a place where they need the  support of others, people that are addicted, alcoholics or drug addicts who are  recovering, who are getting out of that. It's very helpful to be around others who  have gone through that, who can walk them through that, and support them  through those different kinds of difficult times in their life or situations. And there  are interest groups just you got people that delight to watch birds, and so have a bird watching group, and they can gather to go and have bird watching walks  and open it with prayer and talk about how the beauty of this bird reflects God's  creativity, and the way this other bird protects its Nest Protect reflects how God  takes care of us, all kinds of things like that, all kinds of interest groups. So 

various different kinds of group defined ministries. And these, all of these kinds  of ministries are for the group defined ministries especially are helpful in helping  people gather outside of the Sunday morning church, time for a smaller  relationship, building time. If you have more than about 12 people in your  church, then neuroscience has shown that the brain chemistry changes and the  way that we relate to people changes as you get to different sizes of groups.  And so if you can have a group that is smaller than the group that meets on  Sunday morning, and they're not so structured, not the same time, not all the  same expectations about how long it'll be and where it'll be and what you'll do,  then you can develop better relationships among each other and really help  each other out, not only in the support groups, but in the life situation groups,  the the interest groups, various other kinds of things, and those can be very  easy to invite non church people into if you have a neighbor who's interested in  watching birds but doesn't come to church, invite them along to your church bird  watching group, and they'll get to see what great, wonderful people you have in  your church, and maybe They'll start coming to the church, and you can talk  about Jesus to them and so on. Alright, you have your task groups, task defined  groups in your ministries and your group defined ministries. You also have  support ministries that provide the resources for the other two, if you're almost  anything that you're going to want to do in any of these task groups, task  ministries, or group ministries, is going to require some money. It might require  some the use of some kind of property or resources, it may need some  administrative kind of stuff, scheduling or whatever. And so money and property  and personnel and administration. Those are all support ministries, your finance  committee, your in many cases, a property committee is called the trustees, or  something like that. You might have a Personnel Committee that helps try and  find the best suited person to fill a particular position that needs to be filled in the church, you've got people who just take care of all the administrative details.  We'll be talking about those in future lectures. But as a pastor. Ephesians 4:12  says Your job is to equip the people to carry out the ministries, and that makes  you the minister, the pastor in a church, the lead minister in a ministry. That  makes you the main resource and support person. The pastor is the main  support minister. In other words, a big part of your job is to make sure that your  leaders and your workers in all kinds of ministries are trained and equipped and  encouraged. The pastor is the church's main support minister. You help make  sure that everybody else is able and ready to do their job. How do all of these  things fit together? Well, there is something that I read someplace. I'm not sure  where I saw it. It was years ago, called the ministry matrix. And what you do with this is you take your task ministries on the left, worship, member, care,  discipleship, evangelism, aid, social influence, prayer. You take your group  ministries across the top, and here I have just put in, off the top of my head,  children, youth, women and addiction support. You could have different ones. 

Yours may extend off farther to the right, with five or six more different groups.  And you may have different tasks, depending on how you define things for you.  But the idea of the ministry is, or the matrix is to see how the task ministries and  the group ministries work together. You want them to work together, to cross  each other, and it's a way of making sure that nobody is left out, and everybody  is able to help and support everybody else. It keeps your church from getting  divided up into little cliques. So. For instance, if worship committee is planning  something, we're going to have a special Easter celebration, then the children's  ministry, people should say, okay, great. How do the children fit in that? The  youth, people should say, okay, great. How do the youth fit into that the women's ministry can say, well, how can the women's ministry support that and the  addiction support might say, is there a way that we can use this to to help the  people that are having those kinds of issues, the same with all of your other  activities, discipleship, you're having Bible studies, and so you're starting a  whole new series. You're going to have a big discipleship program where people are going to meet in homes and and all study together this particular Bible study. And so again, the children's ministry says, Great. What are you going to do with  the kids? See, the discipleship folks could be. None of them have any kids. They don't even think about that question. Children's Ministry thinks about that  question, and so on. You go on through the other things, and it works as well in  different ways, as well to the the youth ministers should be looking and saying to each of the task ministries, how can we be involved? How can the youth be  involved in worship? How can the youth be involved in helping take care of our  members? Maybe we've got some old people that can't mow their grass, and so  the youth will go and volunteer to mow their grass for them. How can the youth  be involved in this or that or the other? How can the women? How can these  support groups? It's a way of crossing and making sure that everybody is  involved and nobody is left out in all the different things, and they support and  encourage each other instead of working at cross purposes. The last thing to  mention about the ministries is that you need to have some policies to lay things out so that everybody understands what's happening and you're not getting into  confusion, not getting people upset because of misunderstanding, so having  clearly laid out what each group does, especially if there are boundaries, if there are overlaps, Which group is responsible for, what kinds of things? How do  groups relate to each other? If there is, that's the ministry basic matrix, but there  also may be, you know, what's, what's the border between the children and the  youth, and what's the border between evangelism and discipleship, and how do  they relate to each other? How do we transition people from the that the  evangelism committee has brought in who are brand new Christians, brand new  to the church? How do we transition them in and hand them over to the  discipleship committee, those kinds of things, and how people become a part of  the group, if somebody wants to be on your worship committee. Do you just 

automatically allow them because they volunteer? Or do you allow them bring  them on because somebody appointed them? Or do you ask for volunteers?  We'll be talking a little bit about some of those things in future sessions, but it's  good to have ideas and have these things figured out as much as you can. And  you're probably as your church grows and develops, or you move to different  churches, or different situations arise, you'll need to adjust these things, and it's  good to have a policy set ahead of time of how you go about adjusting these  things, but ministry is what the church is all about. Don't let it get to where it's all  about a personality. It's all about a building. It's all about anything like that, the  good works that God created us to do. Ahead of time, that's what it's all about.  I'll see you next time.