The Local Church
Philosophy of Ministry
by Pastor Henry Stewart
What is success in Your eyes, O God? We long to do things Your way and minister for Your glory. Make our efforts conform to the perfectness of Your nature and the revelation of Your Word. We pray. Amen.
When speaking of a local church's "Philosophy of Ministry" what we are really asking is: "How do we know when we are doing ministry successfully?"
Implied in the question is the need to define a standard for identifying "success" in ministry. The very notion that we have a responsibility to define success in ministry may strike some of us as vaguely unspiritual. Is not success a worldly concept?
It may be of some comfort to examine Nehemiah's prayer in Nehemiah 1:11. Nehemiah asks the Lord, "Make thy servant successful," as he prepares to lay before King Artaxerxes his plan to begin a rebuilding work in Jerusalem.
Most of us, to one degree or another, find ourselves to be "repairers of broken walls" in our IFCA International churches. Most of us face "broken walls" of inertia and passivity that keep us simply maintaining time-honored (and often archaic) organizational structures rather than advancing in intentional ministry. It is therefore entirely appropriate that we ask what success in ministry might look like and our answer to that question is what we mean by a philosophy of ministry.
Obviously if success in doing ministry is a legitimate goal, we need our standard for success to be defined for us from God's Word. Without scriptural standards for success in ministry we easily fall prey to unworthy standards. The "Five F's" traditionally used to measure ministry success: Figures, Finances, Facilities, Feelings and Faithfulness. All of these, as we shall see, come short of a fully ...