Re-Envisioning Vocational Christian Ministry in the Church in Malaysia in Light of Change (Part 3)

by Lim Soon Hock, Empowering Churches

This paper was written in November 2020 when the government of Malaysia imposed restrictive curbs, SOPs, and lockdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19). This significantly affected the activities of the church.

Click here for Part 2, and here for Part 1

A REVIEW OF THE ROLE OF THE VOCATIONAL MINISTER IN THE MALAYSIAN CHURCH IN LIGHT OF A CHALLENGING CHANGE

As we review the role of the vocational minister in the Malaysian church, the first point to note is that change in and around the church does not alter the minister’s ministry functions.  However, change may alter his emphasises from among his varied functions and how he carries out his functions.

An example is from the changing size of a church.  Gary L. McIntosh posits that churches have different needs depending on size.  A small church is not just a miniature version of a large church but an entirely different entity.1  Hence, as a church grows from small to medium-size to large the dynamics of the church also changes.  This does not only affect the church’s structure, orientation and strategies but also the pastor’s role.2

Change in or outside the church always demands a response if it is to be positively addressed.  On one hand it should be met with a response of consistency concerning the purpose and values of the church.  On the other hand, it should be met with a recalibration of the priorities and methodology of doing church and ministry.

The Minister’s Leadership Function

In a crisis brought about by change, among the three functions of leading, feeding and caring, the minister must prioritise his leadership function.  He needs to study the change, the effects of the change and how to address the change.  He doesn’t do this alone but with his leadership team.  Nonetheless, it is incumbent upon the minister to take the lead.  Leadership is a key function of the vocational minister. He cannot surrender that role to anyone.

The Use of Technology3 and Online Platform

The biggest visible change in the Malaysian church as a response to the effects of the  pandemic has been the adoption of the online platform as a substitute or as a complement to limited onsite meetings.  When the Movement Control Order was first enforced in Malaysia on 18 March 2020 churches all across the country were caught totally unprepared (except a few churches that already had an online presence).  Churches responded with varying degrees of rapidity, expansiveness and intensity in their adoption of the online platform.

 

Some churches immediately started to learn and use the available technology to livestream their worship services.  Most churches were slow to adopt the new technology.  Some were quick to make use of existing digital communication tools for small group meetings and to provide daily or weekly devotional content for their members.  Others felt challenged by the new technology or were stretched by their limited resources.  Some churches made significant financial investment to upgrade their equipment for quality virtual broadcast.  Many simply hoped and prayed that all this would quickly pass and the church would be able go back to do church and ministry like the time pre-Covid-19.

These varying degrees of responses from churches in Malaysia underscore the importance of the leadership function of the minister.  In other words, the minister’s leadership determines how his church responds to change.4  Moreover, a church’s response to external changes demands internal changes.  Managing congregational changes requires wise, Scripture-guided and clear leadership from the minister.

The Unchanging Purpose of God and His Church

More importantly, the minister’s leadership is needed to direct the church in a “long obedience in the same direction.”5  Priorities and methods may change, but the purpose and values of the church do not change.  The minister must constantly and continually lead the church towards the purpose of God as revealed in Scripture.  Foremost, in terms of the mission of the church, is to make disciples of the nations (the Great Commission, Mt 28:18-20).

Hirsch and Ferguson contend that,

“…Jesus gets the privilege of decisively defining the movement that claims his name; nonetheless, leaders in his church need to take this task of defining the parameters of how people think about the church with utmost seriousness.  Allowing Jesus to guide us, it is part of the leadership task to somehow manage how the rest of the organisation as a whole sees itself and its function in the world.  In other words, it’s the leaders’ job to define ecclesia for the people and organization they lead.

This puts a huge theological responsibility on leadership to ensure they have a vision of the church that is consistent with the church Jesus built.  We cannot shirk this, especially in moments of crisis that require accurate recalibration.”6

What is the recalibration that is needed to fulfil the Great Commission in this new season where mass gatherings are curtailed?  The answer must be in small groups.  The ministry of small groups is not new, but in this new season it needs to be emphasised and reconstructed.  The minister needs to lead the charge in reconstructing the small group ministry of the church.  For example, the small group needs to become even smaller.  12 may no longer work.  20 is certainly unworkable.  Six might be ideal.  Also, the general thrust of the small groups in coming together for Bible study and fellowship is not significantly focussed enough if the church is to fulfil the purpose of the Great Commission.  The thrust of the small groups has to be disciple-making and life-on-life discipling.7  In this regards the minister needs to provide the leadership model of discipling in small groups in his church.8

The Minister as Trainer

The minister obviously cannot carry out discipling by himself.  He needs to multiply himself.  In other words, he needs to empower others to do the same (2 Tim 2:2).  He has to see himself as one of God’s gifts to the church whose function is to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph 4:11-13).  And the area which he is to equip his church is naturally in the area of his giftedness or expertise, which is to shepherd or disciple others.9  Hence, the pastor reproduces according to his own kind.10

Colin Marshall and Tony Payne call for ministry mind-shifts.  Their list of 10 ministry mind-shift items includes: from running programmes to building people, from running events to training people, from relying on training institutions to establishing local training, from engaging in management to engaging in ministry and from seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth.11

They propose a mental image of the pastor as trainer who functions as a preacher and trainer, instead of a clergyman who is a preacher and service-provider or a CEO who is a preacher and manager.12  Their comparative chart of the three images of the pastor is helpful.13

The same sentiment is shared by William Willimon.  In A Reader for Ordained Ministry he discusses a number of images of the 21st Century pastor that includes the more far flung images of media mogul and political negotiator and the more commonly held images of preacher and servant.  He asserts that it is the nature of the Christian ministry to be multifaceted and multidimensional.  He insists that the “gospel does not change, but the context in which the gospel is preached and is enacted do change.  A predominate pastoral image might have been fruitful in one age may not be so in the next.”14  Nonetheless, because the Christian ministry is significantly countercultural, Willimon says he finds “much to be commended in the image of the pastor as a missionary, or more accurately, a lead missionary or equipper of the missionaries.”15  The last point is key to the minister’s function in the present and challenging season of change.  The minister’s function is not only to lead his church to fulfil the unchanging commission of disciple-making, but also to train and empower his church for this same purpose.

The church member, who has been thus trained, may not be called nor able to preach in a large meeting, but he can carry out a disciple-making ministry with a small group of people.  During this season where large gatherings are curtailed this makes for a significant ministry strategy.  A next step might be for the vocational minister to further train and release able men and women to start new churches in their neighbourhood and places of work; in fact anywhere, where they can engage non-believers and disciple believers.  It is time for a mental shift, to stop thinking of church in terms of church gatherings, but to be the church everywhere.  This is in total alignment with the NT concept of the church, which is simply a people gathered, centred around Christ and in mission for the Kingdom.16

CONCLUSION

The Malaysian church may not be aware, or may not want to admit, that its subservience to its institutionalised nature has made it quite impotent.  The needs of the members, the programmes of the church, and keeping the church establishment intact are more important than the mission of the church.  That being the case, in a season when the church is hit hard with an external and challenging change the prevailing mindset of the church cannot effectively respond to the change.  Neither can it keep its focus on its mission.

It is the role of the vocational minister to provide leadership for the church to respond to the change.  No doubt, the minister’s function is also to feed and care for the sheep whom the Lord has entrusted to him, but in a season of change he needs to step-up in his leadership function to lead the church to fulfil the unchanging purpose that God has for His church, namely, to make disciples of the nations.

The vocational minister can do this best by multiplying himself through training his members to be disciple-makers.  In the present challenge when the church gathered needs to go small, the move to disciple-making in small groups is ideal.  Perhaps, these empowered disciples can even start small churches where the Lord has put them.  It is not difficult to envision a movement of organic churches17 mushrooming all over a city, a nation and in the nations of the world.  This is perhaps the answer to lockdowns due to a pandemic or in times of persecution.  And it might very well lead to a movement that Keller, Hirsch and Ferguson speak about in their books.

Re-Envisioning Vocational Christian Ministry in the Church in Malaysia in Light of Change (Part 2)

by Lim Soon Hock, Empowering Churches

This paper was written in November 2020 when the government of Malaysia imposed restrictive curbs, SOPs, and lockdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19). This significantly affected the activities of the church.

Click here for Part 1

A DESCRIPTION OF THE VOCATIONAL MINISTER IN THE MALAYSIAN CHURCH

Hovorun’s point about self-awareness is also applicable for the vocational minister.  The vocational minister needs to be aware of his person, role and functions as a minister in the church.  Self-awareness allows for self-evaluation and self-correction.

In the Malaysian church the general perception is that the role of the vocational minister is to carry out pastoral functions and to meet the pastoral needs of the members of the church.  A simple example is the expectation of members for the main pastor to visit them in hospital and pray for them.  It is not enough that another pastor or a lay-leader visits and prays for them—it must be the main pastor.  The unfortunate result arising from the institutionalism of the church is the perception and expectation that the work of the pastor is to keep the church serviced.

The minister by nature of his role has many functions.  Seward Hiltner in Ferment in the Ministry lists at least nine important functions: preaching, administering, teaching, shepherding, evangelising, celebrating, reconciling, theologising and discipline.18  With so many and varied ministerial functions what should be the overarching function of the minister if he were to make sense and prioritise his varied functions?

The New Testament Image of the Vocational Minister

The NT word for the pastor is poimēn which means shepherd.19  The term is mostly applied to Jesus (Jn 10:11, 14, 16, Heb 13:20, 1 Pet 2:25, Rev 7:17) and once to describe one of the four kinds of men that the Lord gifts to the church (Eph 4:11).  Cognates of poimēn in the NT include poimainō,20 poimnē,21 and poimnion.22  They are used literally for vocational shepherds and their work of tending their sheep, and also figuratively of Jesus and church leaders and their work of ministry among the people under their care. The use of poimēn and its cognates makes the shepherd imagery an apt description for the minister.

The shepherd imagery, with cues from Psalm 23:1-4, sums up the primary role of the minister as leading, feeding and caring for the people in the church.  Leading includes leading the people to the Lord, to grow in their relationship with Jesus and to learn faith and dependence on Him (Gal 4:19).  It also means leading the church collectively towards the purpose of God (Acts 13:1-3, 15:1-35).  Feeding includes teaching the people the Word of God; its truth and application in their lives.  It also involves training them to be effective disciples and workers in the Kingdom of God (Eph 4:11-13, 2 Tim 2:2).  Caring includes spiritual nurturing, binding up the wounds of the soul through counselling and prayer (Js 5:13-16) and protecting the flock from false teaching (Acts 20:28-35).

The Role of the Vocational Minister in the Malaysian Church

As we return to the description of the vocational minister in the Malaysian church, it is clear that among the three functions of leading, feeding and caring, the caring function is the one most expected of the minister.  The least expected is the leading function, and especially in relation to directing the church towards God’s purpose for the church.  I will pick up on this point in the subsequent section of the paper.  The feeding function lies  between the above two functions in terms of what is expected of the minister.

The church in general may recognise the importance of the minister’s role in feeding the flock with the Word of God but in reality they do not place the minister’s teaching function as important as caring for their needs.  I have observed that many churches do not adequately provide the minister with time and resources to empower him to be an apt teacher of the Word.  Neither do they make the minister’s teaching function his primary role in the church.

Chow Lien Hwa’s article in the SEA Journal of Theology calls for a minister to be a theologian in his church.  It is important because, as Chow says, the minister-theologian has the ability to contextualise theology for his area.23  Sunny Tan Boon Sang echoes the sentiment in a review of Chow’s article, “A resident pastor-theologian would be one who could devote himself/herself to the ongoing task of facilitating and supervising the work of theology in a local church.”24  This reminder is even more critical in the context of change because the ability of the minister to determine and lead a right response to the challenge of change requires sound understanding and teaching from Scripture (2 Tim 2:15).

Go to Part 3

Re-Envisioning Vocational Christian Ministry in the Church in Malaysia in Light of Change (Part 1)

by Lim Soon Hock, Empowering Churches

INTRODUCTION

The Covid-19 pandemic and the SOP set in place in Malaysia to control it have affected the church and its ministries.25  One of which is the curb on large group meetings.  The traditional church thrives on large meetings.  This is true of ministries within the church like the worship service and also those outside the church like its community services.  This global pandemic has caused, or rather, forced, the church to rethink about how it should do ministry.  In fact, in view of the changes that are taking place in and around the church, it also needs to rethink its ecclesiology,26 and the vocational minister needs to rethink his27 role.

The primary purpose of this paper is a re-envisioning of the role of the vocational minister in light of the aforementioned mega change that is affecting the church and its ministries.  The vocational minister refers to the main pastor of the church.  Nonetheless, in most instances, the discussion is applicable to other pastors in a multi-staff church, as well as to bi-vocational and church leaders who see Christian ministry as their primary vocation.  The minister’s role, however, cannot be separated from the church and its ministry.  Inevitably we have to also discuss issues pertaining to the nature of the church and notions of its ministry.

This paper is an engagement in practical theology, in that it is about the theology of ministry.  Hence, the discussion uses and interfaces with the four commonly accepted ways of doing theology: Scripture, reason, tradition and experience.28  A final point to note about the paper is that while the discussion may be applicable to churches world-wide because of the global effects of Covid-19, the context of this paper is limited to the church in Malaysia.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE MALAYSIAN CHURCH

The best way to describe the Malaysian church regardless of its denomination, language group and size is to tag it with the label “institutionalised.”  At first glance this may appear appropriate since religion is one of the five major institutions of society.29

For our purpose an institution is defined as an establishment with a firmly set purpose, structures and code of practice.30  Timothy Keller in Center Church argues that organisations should have both institutional characteristics and movement dynamics.31  He quotes Hugh Helco, “To live in a culture that turns its back on institutions is equivalent to trying to live in a physical body without a skeleton or hoping to use a language but not its grammar.”32  In other words, as Keller observes, institutions bring order to life.33

Institutions are important and necessary, but they also have several negative characteristics.  They include, the process of decision making that is procedural and slow, innovation is from top down and implementation is done in departmental silos.  An institution may be stable but they are slow to change, their emphasis is on traditions, the past and customs, and future trends are dreaded and denied.34

Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson concur when they say,

“…their [institutional structures] intent is almost always good.  Even so, concretized institutionalization does tend to block some of the most powerful aspects of ecclesia as Jesus intended it: a potent social force and gospel phenomenon that sweeps through populations.  Any reading of history, Christian or otherwise, shows that institutional religion can become repressive, stifling creative expressions.

One of the most fundamental reboots we need to do in our day is to rediscover ourselves as the same potent, transforming people movement that started with Jesus and went on to change the world.  The institutional forms have gotten us where we are now and can’t take us farther.  We need to become a people-movement again.”35

Very often with institutionalisation comes institutionalism, and very soon the church is beset with traditionalism and conservatism.  As a result it is not be able to respond quickly and innovatively when confronted with change.  In fact, it may not want to for fear of betraying its long-held beliefs, values and practices.

If this description of the Malaysian church is correct, then the church needs to do some self-evaluation.  However, self-evaluation can only take place if there is self-awareness.  The concept of the church’s self-awareness is discussed at length in Cyril Hovorun’s Meta-Ecclesiology.  He argues that at different epochs of history the Church encountered challenging situations.  They may be spiritual, intellectual, social or political in nature or the result of other historical circumstances.  The challenges of these situations necessitated a response from the Church concerning its self-perception.36

Hovorun’s thesis is helpful for the Malaysian church.  The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a huge challenge to the church—which might even be termed a crisis.  How is the church responding?  Will its response enable the church to thrive and advance the cause of the Kingdom of God?  This is dependent on the level of the church’s self-awareness.  The fundamental question that needs to be asked is: Can the Malaysian church see itself beyond its institutionalised nature?

The New Testament Concept of the Church

The New Testament (NT) concept of the church was not that of an institutionalised church.  The institutionalised church is a product of the evolving concept of the church over time as it became more organised, more structured, more rigid, and hence more institutionalised.

The writers of the NT used ekklēsia to term the Christian community.  In antiquity the term was used for an assembly, as in a regularly summoned political body.37  The people who make up the church then, are those who have been called out to gather as the people of God who hold in common a confession of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour (Mt 16:16, 18, Acts 2:47, 1 Tim 3:15-16).

The foremost characteristic of the church would be the centrality of Christ.  Secondly, it’s about a people coming together for the same cause.38  The church may come together for many Christ-centred purposes (Acts 2:42-4), but its ultimate cause is to be empowered and sent out by the Holy Spirit on a mission (Acts 1:8; 13:2-3) centred around Christ’s work of redemption (1 Cor 11:23-26) leading to God being glorified (Eph 3:21).  This cause, or the primary work of the church and of every individual Christian, is most succinctly captured in Matthew 28:18-20, otherwise known as the Great Commission.

This NT concept of the church has direct implications on how the Malaysian church ought to perceive itself and its primary mission, and also how the vocational minister ought to perceive himself and his primary function.

Go to Part 2

Church Health Literature Review (Part 1)

by Lim Soon Hock, Empowering Churches

INTRODUCTION

The subject of church health is less precise than the subject of church growth.  Unlike the latter the former does not have the coherence of the Church Growth Movement (CGM) nor does it have formidable spokesmen that Donald McGavran and Peter Wagner had been for the latter.  As a result, each advocate of church health has his own definition and set of characteristics for what constitutes church health.

The purpose of this review of church health literature is to scope from among the significant authors on this subject for their understanding and criteria of church health.  These views of church health may be classified under three broad categories: The Principle, the Biblical, and the Organic-Missional approaches.39 This is not to say that the principle approach is unbiblical or non-missional.  It is.  However, its emphasis is on the principles of church health.  The same can be said of the other two approaches that make much of their own emphasis.

In this article I will review two significant publications that represent each of these approaches.  Due to the limitation on the length of the article, the second book in each approach is given less treatment than the first book.  I conclude this review of church health literature with a discussion on how all three approaches together may help toward a greater understanding of church health.

 

THE PRINCIPLE APPROACH TO CHURCH HEALTH

The principle approach looks at what constitutes church health characteristics from both Scripture and practice of church life and ministry.  Then it looks at how a church is to improve along the quality scale of these characteristics so that it becomes a healthier church.

Christian A. Schwarz is one of the most quoted proponents for this approach on church health.40  His teaching on church health is found in his basic text titled Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches41 and a later publication called Color Your World with Natural Church Development: Experiencing all that God has designed you to be which was written for Christians to apply NCD principles at the personal level.42  Arising from his extensive research that covered churches around the globe,43 he determined that there are eight quality characteristics that all churches must have.  They are: (1) empowering leadership, (2) gift-oriented ministry, (3) passionate spirituality, (4) functional structures, (5) inspiring worship service, (6) holistic small groups, (7) need-oriented evangelism, and (8) loving relationships.

The health of a church is reflected in the overall quality of these characteristics found in the church.  The health is determined through a quantitative survey done among selected members of the church.44  Furthermore, NCD research reveals that if every quality characteristic scores 65 and above on their rating scale then the church is inevitably a growing church.  This is known as the “65 hypothesis.”45  The point of this approach to church health is for a church to keep improving on the quality of all eight characteristics.  The greatest attention, though, is to be given to the lowest quality characteristic because the growth of the church cannot rise beyond the level of that characteristic.  This is termed the “minimum factor.”46

The strategy also calls for the incorporation of NCD’s six biotic principles: (1) interdependence, (2) multiplication, (3) energy transformation, (4) multi-usage, (5) symbiosis, and (6) functionality. These principles are biotic in nature because a church is an organism and not a machine.47  When these principles are applied they “create an environment that will allow God’s growth automatisms—with which He Himself builds the church.”48  NCD stresses the development of an environment in a church where the church can grow.  In other words, church health naturally49 or automatically50 leads to church growth.  Schwarz terms it “The ‘all-by-itself’ principle”51 found in the parable of the growing seed (Mark 4:26-29).

Another principle approach to church health is found in Stephen A. Macchia’s Becoming a Healthy Church: 10 Characteristics.52  The ten characteristics were determined from a survey done among the Vision New England churches53 where Macchia served as its president from 1989 to 2003.  The study did not only help Macchia and his team to determine the ten characteristics, it also helped them rank the characteristics.  They are: Level 1 – How I relate with God: (1) God’s empowering presence, (2) God-exalting worship, (3) spiritual disciplines.  Level 2 – How I relate with my church family: (4) learning and growing in community, (5) a commitment to loving and caring relationships, (6) servant-leadership development.  Level 3 – How my church ministers and manages: (7) an outward focus, (8) wise administration and accountability, (9) networking with the body of Christ, and (10) stewardship and generosity.54

One of the key concepts for church health advocates is “balance”—a balanced pursuit and presence of all the essential elements or characteristics of a church.  Macchia stresses it.55  Schwarz speaks of the “harmonious interplay of all eight elements.”56  Rick Warren posits that “the five New Testament purpose of the church must be in equilibrium with the others for health to occur.”57  Nelson Searcy who takes a systems-approach to church health states that “The eight systems of every church are interconnected.  While some may be more developed than others, none of these systems can stand alone.”58  Hence, there is a need to ensure that all the systems in the church are functioning properly at a high level and in balance with one another.

Church health proponents have varying opinions as to what constitutes the essential characteristics of church health.  Sometimes it is simply the use of different terminologies or different ways of classification.  Barring this, the principle approach rightly recognises that the quality level of these characteristics in a church determine the overall health of the church.  Since they are all important, a high quality level for every characteristic and balance among them are key to the health of the church.

One of the features of the principle approach is that it is not simply theoretical and descriptive about what a healthy church should look like.  Many of them have developed tools to evaluate the health of the church based on their criteria of church health characteristics.  NCD has its 91-question Natural Church Development Survey.44  Macchia, who went to found Leadership Transformation Inc., developed the Church Health Assessment Tool (CHAT) with 72 questions covering the ten characteristics.59  These objective instruments are necessary to produce quantifiable data and measurable results to accurately assess the health of a church.

(Click to go to Part 2)

Seeking God (Part 1): First Thing

It was my first Sunday at the new church; my first message to the congregation. What would I say? I think most pastors struggle. I did. Not that I don’t have anything to say. If you are a fairly seasoned pastor, you have, in fact, too many things to say; so many issues to address; so many things to do. But what should be the first thing on the agenda?

As I spoke, I said to the church, “I don’t know what your expectations are. But, then again, maybe I do. In a crowd like this the expectations are many and varied. You may have gone along on the same journey, but perceptions are different, interpretation of events are different, internalisation of the experiences are different. And depending on what you feel is important you will also expect those things to be addressed as quickly as possible. They are all valid and good. We are all good Christians who want no less than the good of the church. But good must give way to…?”

I stopped for a dramatic pause.  Not expecting any kind of verbal response from this fairly conservative middle class medium-size congregation. But an extrovert shot out, “Better!” I hesitated. Seeing that was not quite what I was looking for, she shouted out again, “Best! Good must give way to best!

I said, “That’s good, but it’s not good enough. Good must give way to?… God! And it’s more than just dropping an “o”. There is a huge gap between good and God. It is God we want, not just good. It is God that we want to glorify, not to showcase how good our church is. That means, we must want to do the God-thing, not just good things.”

In order for us to do the God-thing, we need to hear from the Lord—to hear what His agenda is for the church or our ministry, our life and our vocation. Sometimes we run ahead of God, doing things He never meant for us to do. More often than not, we lag way behind, failing to do what He says we are to do. However, I think, the reality is that we haven’t a clue what God is up to, because we have not been listening to what He’s been saying. To do the God-thing, it is imperative that we hear from the Lord. And in order to hear from the Lord, we need to seek Him. That’s the first thing on our agenda—to seek God for His agenda, whether it’s for our life or for the church.

Lim Soon Hock Empowering Churches

(For Part 2 click here)

Rooting for the Small Church!

What is the place of the small church? Should we hypothesise that all churches are meant to grow, and therefore, we must do all we can to breakthrough the barriers that keep a small church from growing?

Or, should we say that the small church has its place and accept that, “My church is, and shall remain, a small church”?

Or, after having evaluated our church we come to the conclusion, “Although we may be a small church, we are nonetheless effective.” Now, (and please do not think that I am being insensitive or negative) if we are effective why then are we not growing? Are there valid and happy reasons?

I don’t have the statistics, but from my observation most of the churches in Malaysia are small. (I wish our national and denominational bodies will do more statistical studies so that we can have a better picture of the state of the Church in Malaysia). By definition a small church is numerically under 200 people; from babies to senior citizens (or as someone once said to me, “We count everything that moves!”). Using this metric, depending on who you quote, 80-90% of the churches in the US are small churches. My guess is that, it is probably the same in Malaysia. If we were to add all the churches in the small towns and villages in both Peninsula and East Malaysia they will certainly make up a very large  percentage of churches in the country. Even in the urban centres most of the churches are small.

There is no shame in being small.

All churches started small! Unless a large church decided to send out more than 200 people to start a new church plant; which has been done before, but it is not the norm. Hence, we are not to despise humble beginnings. However, note that it was never the intention of the parent church or the new church plant for it to remain small. It was planted to win more people to the Lord and to add them to the church. Churches that have lost its passion need to recapture the spirit and vision of those early pioneering days.

There is a huge difference between a small dynamic church that is making impact in its community and even beyond, and a small inward-looking church whose main focus are the needs of the members and trying to survive till Jesus returns.

There are good reasons why a church should remain small, and there are wrong reasons for a church to remain small. Below are some valid reasons:

  1. The community where the church is located, serves and is trying to reach with the Gospel is small; such as a small town or village. Even if the church is located in a large urban centre, the particular ethnic group that it is attempting to reach may be small; such as a migrant community.
  1. The church leaders believe that a small church is stronger relationally, can attain a higher level of member-participation, and achieve greater effectiveness in outreach. In other words, remaining small is a philosophy of ministry where growth is an objective. An outcome of such a philosophy would be church planting. Instead of growing into a large church, the parent church keeps on training and sending its members out to plant new churches. This is called extension growth. Or, the main church starts new ethnic-language congregations. This has been termed bridging growth. An example is when a Malaysian English-speaking church spawns a Tamil- or a Myanmarese-speaking congregation.
  1. Most pastors (and church leaders) are not large church leaders. Fewer still are megachurch pastors. If that is the case then, it is better to have many small churches that have pastors who are able to lead with vision and passion for growth and multiplication, than to load them with guilt that they are not growing their church into a large church.
  1. Small churches are easier to manage and lead. And if most pastors don’t have the capacity to lead large churches, it is best to accept our God-given abilities and work with small churches. Some people think that pastoring a mega church has built-in advantages because it has mega resources. But as I once heard Daniel Ho (former Senior Pastor of DUMC) say, “…we also have mega problems!” And not every (read, “most”) pastors (or lay leaders) are able to handle mega challenges.
  1. Some people don’t want to go to a large church. They prefer the I-know-everyone-in-the-church kind of atmosphere and where the pastor is everyone’s personal shepherd. Should the church grow too big for them, they move out to a smaller church.

Small churches are here to stay—and for good reasons. The thing is, we need to ensure that our church is small for the right reasons, and never at the expense of fulfilling the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.

The Organised Church (Part 2): Critical Components of Church Organisation

In Part 1 I wrote about the need for pastors and church leaders to seriously look into the organisational aspect of the church. It is my observation that churches that fail to organise themselves well, despite the fact that they may be solidly founded on sound theology and/or pray a lot, disadvantage themselves,

The New Testament-mention of the spiritual gift of administration (1 Cor 12:28) underscores the importance for good organisation in the church. What’s the point of the gift if the Lord did not think that effective administration (organisation) of the church is necessary and important? The meaning of the root word in Greek for the gift of administration is connected to the work of a shipmaster or captain. The job then, of the person with this gift is to help steer or lead the church (or a ministry). If he is not the leader of the church, then his job is to assist the leader to develop strategies, organise the people and implement the process.

Broadly speaking, there are three critical components in the organisation of a church: structures, systems and processes.

  1. Structures

These refer to the organisational structures of the church, such as the leadership, departments, ministries, small groups and communications. (This list is not meant to be exhaustive. Similarly for the lists in “Systems” and “Processes” below.)

Let me flesh out a couple of examples to help you understand what I mean.

The leadership structure concerns matters like the lines of authority and communication; which is often presented in the form of an organisational chart. It also asks questions like: Who leads the leadership team? What is the role of the pastor and the chairman respectively? How is the pastor accountable to the church board? Is the church effectively led by one person or by a team?

In the broader context of the church it asks: What is the role of the congregation in making decisions? What kind of decisions does the congregation make?

With regards to the small groups structure: How is the ministry structured? Are the group leaders accountable to the pastor or to a small group ministry head? If there are a large number of small groups does the church divide them into areas (or zones)? Within each small group, are mature Christians assigned to care for younger believers?

  1. Systems

These refer to the working systems of the church, such as the financial, leadership, small group, worship service and assimilation of new people .

The first thing you probably noticed is that I have included leadership and small group here, even though I had already mentioned them under “structures”. That is because they (and others) are systems in the body of the church that must be properly structured.

Under “systems”, however, we ask a different set of questions. For the small group ministry the focus here is on the workings of the system. We want to know: What level of importance does the church place on the small group ministry? (Is everyone expected to be part of a small group? Is participation in a small group a pre-requisite for membership in the church?) Is the nature, purpose and programme of the small groups standardised or does each group have autonomy? Is attendance monitored? Are small group leaders expected to send in monthly or quarterly reports? Are small groups expected to multiply within a certain period? What is the church’s philosophy of small group ministry?

With regards to finances we are concerned about the efficient and effective collection of the members’ tithes and offering, proper recording of the collection, accounting of income and expenditure, and not just the proper use of church funds but their purposeful use to advance the Kingdom.

We ask the questions: How is the money apportioned? Does the church have a budget? What’s the financial and accounting policy of the church? How is the money collected (physically at worship services and/or bank transfers and/or credit card payments)? What is the procedure to count and record the collection?  Who can authorise a payment and what is the quantum? What policies are in place to ensure the purposeful use of church funds?

  1. Processes

These refer to the steps taken to accomplish an objective, such as the assimilation of new people, discipleship, and ministry and leadership development.

For example, pastors tell me that they want to make disciples, but when I ask them how they are making disciples, they cannot articulate it—either they don’t have a process in place or it’s so vague they cannot tell you. Every church needs to have a discipleship process. If you don’t have one you may start with Rick Warren’s “baseball diamond” found in his book, The Purpose Driven Church.

Disciple making, leadership development (read, raising up next generation leaders for succession planning) cannot be left ad hoc! Neither can we leave the assimilation of new people to chance. That’s the reason many would-be-additions to the church fall through the cracks. Every church needs well thought-out and workable processes for things like these.

Every church needs to be well organised. This will happen when pastors and church leaders do what is necessary to ensure that their church’s structures, systems and processes are efficient and effective. There is no one size-fits all because of the differences in the make-up of our churches. Start with the Bible. Study your own church. Learn from other churches. Get the leadership team to read and discuss one or more relevant books on the matter, and implement what is helpful. This is the road to the administrative health of your church.

The Organised Church (Part 1)

There are three major areas that need attention for any church to be healthy: Doctrine, Spirituality and Organisation. The first two have traditionally been the focus. The New Testament letters deal primarily with these areas, for obvious reasons:

  1. At that time, the church was in its infancy and it was imperative that it got its doctrinal foundation right.
  2. Jesus’ teaching passed on by the apostles was being attacked and undermined by false teachings such as legalism and Gnosticism. The apostles had to correct them and defend the Gospel.
  3. The churches in the first century were generally small, and there were not many organisational issues to deal with (I will qualify this later).

Bible schools, since their inception, have also traditionally focussed on Bible knowledge. The main goal was to ensure that the students graduate with sound theology. That is perfectly valid, as they will be the primary teachers of the Word to their congregations. Hence, they should be empowered to espouse Scriptural truths accurately. But the intense focus on this has left training in spirituality and organisational skills on the back burner. I am happy to observe that training in spirituality has made a comeback in many seminaries. However, the same cannot be said for their training in understanding the church organisationally; its structure, values, culture, vision casting, and so on. This has to be corrected so that Bible seminaries don’t produce pastors who only know theology but do not know how to lead a corporate body.

It is incorrect to say that the New Testament letters do not deal with organisational issues at all. Among the first problems that the early church encountered concerned the care of widows (Acts 6). The Grecian-Jews complained against the Hebraic-Jews that their widows were being overlooked in the food distribution. Besides being a spirituality-social issue it was also a community-organisational issue.  And the solution was to appoint six Grecian-Jews to oversee the ministry so that no one was missed out, especially the widows among this group.

In some of his letters, Paul wrote about the leadership of the church. He instructed Titus to appoint elders for the church in Crete (Tit 1:5). He gave Timothy a list of criteria for those who may qualify as elders and deacons (1 Tim 3:1-13). This was necessary for two reasons. One, to provide pastoral care for the members, and two, to provide a leadership structure for the corporate body organisationally.

In the Old Testament, the often-quoted event that saw a paradigm shift in organisational structure concerned Moses’ leadership (Exo 18). Fortunately it happened in the early days of the Exodus, rather than later; or else, Moses would have died from overwork. He was personally handling every problem of this massive group of people until, Jethro, his father-in-law, gave wise counsel. He told Moses to appoint leaders over groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens; in a pyramidal-like structure. In that way Moses was able to delegate his work to these sub-section leaders. He only needed to handle those cases that they could not manage.

Likewise, pastors and church leaders need to learn how to organise their church so that it is healthy and effective. It is not about copying the world or trying to be a sleek organisation. It’s about enhancing the life, ministry and missions of the Church of Jesus Christ.

The present-day church is much more complex than the church in the days of the apostles, or even just 60 years ago. The churches then were generally small and there were not a great deal of organisational issues to be concerned about. But not so today. And the truth is that it will get increasingly more complex. Because of this reality there is a serious need to look into the organisational health of the church, without neglecting the doctrinal and spirituality concerns.

What are the critical needs in your church to bring it to health or better health? How will you address them? Who do you have to walk with you as you think, pray, study your church, find solutions, implement them and evaluate their effectiveness?

(Taken from my booklet, Before ER: A Call for Church Health.)

Go to Part 2: Critical Components of Church Organisation

Staff Retreat (Part 3): Envisioning

In Parts 1 & 2 I wrote about two of the three priorities for a Staff Retreat; namely, Prayer and Team Building. (If you have not read them yet, go to links here for Part 1 and Part 2). This final part focuses on the primary purpose of the retreat where the pastoral staff huddle down together to look at what needs to be done to strengthen the church to be healthier and to do better.

This may include planning, but the retreat is more than just about planning programmes for the coming year. It is more about the big-picture; where the church is at, where it is going and what needs to be done to get there. It involves looking at everything and anything that will help the pastoral team accomplish that. I will simply call it Envisioning.

I am using the term rather loosely here. It is not limited to crafting a vision statement. Of course, if a church does not have one, then this is among the very first things the pastoral team should pray and work on. If it already has a vision but requires a serious relook or just a bit tweaking, then an appropriate amount of time should be given to do what is needed at the Retreat.

Areas of Focus

The area of focus at each retreat will understandably be different. It depends on what the Senior Pastor discerns to be the need of the church during this season of its journey. Below are examples of what some of these needs might be:

  1. Drafting Vision and/or Mission Statements
  2. Determining Core Values
  3. Setting 5-year Goals
  4. Establishing Discipleship and Leadership Development Processes
  5. How to Retain Visitors and Close the Back Door
  6. Removing Growth Obstacles and Establishing Growth Strategies
  7. Developing Church Health
  8. Developing Church Culture
  9. Carrying Out Change

From my experience there is time for the team to deal with only one or two areas at any one retreat. This is because we want to be thorough, and secondly, because of the method employed for this kind of an exercise.

Methodology

The SP is expected to lead in the sessions, but the outcome should be a team effort. That means, the sessions are to be conducted in a way that allows for every team member to participate. A lot of time is to be given to collective brainstorming, discussion and sharing of opinions.

Putting up the ideas and insights coming from the different members with the use of “post it”, white board, flip chart and/or LCD projection is indispensable to aid clarity and to avoid misunderstanding.

In order to maximise the time at the retreat the SP should clue-in the team with the agenda. Some of the staff may be assigned to do some pre-retreat research and questions may be given to the team to guide their personal pre-retreat reflection. This will give everyone time to think, be better prepared and have more useful contributions to make at the Retreat.

Action Steps

The last thing any pastoral team would want is to go away from a retreat not really knowing what they have done or accomplished.

The Staff Retreat must end with clear conclusions, deliberate action steps for those areas where there is agreement, and outstanding matters noted for further discussion back in the office (perhaps, at the weekly pastoral staff meeting).

Summary Report

Within a week, preferably before the next pastoral staff meeting, the SP should have sent out a summary report of the Staff Retreat encapsulating the conclusions, action steps and outstanding matters. This document is to be the basis for further deliberations at both the pastoral and church leadership (eg. Church Board) levels until agreement is achieved. Following this the decisions and strategies are then cascaded to the members of the church for united action.

(If your church does not a team of pastoral staff, my recommendations for a Staff Retreat may be applied for a Church Leaders Retreat such as the Eldership team or Church Board.)

Staff Retreat (Part 2): Team Building

In Part 1 I wrote about the need of having an annual pastoral staff retreat, with envisioning, prayer and team building as priority on the agenda. If you missed this and my pointers on prayer you can read my post here.  

The second objective of a staff retreat is Team Building.

All pastoral staff are usually given a specific ministry for which he (or she) is personally responsible. While he may be the man in-charge of that ministry he is not, however, to function in a silo. It is very unfortunate that the latter is a common problem in many churches. This is true of both paid staff and unpaid volunteers. Too many church workers are focussed only on their ministry, they fight for the church’s resources for their ministry, they even pray just for their ministry—oblivious of the bigger picture.

It is critical that everyone works as a team, including the leaders across the various ministries of the church (and, leaders need to lead the way and show the way). The greater the unity the greater the effectiveness. The greater the bond between the workers the greater the unity. The better the understanding of one another’s ministry and how each adds to the health of the church the stronger the shared vision to advance the church.

The pastoral staff retreat is a wonderful opportunity to foster this very much needed team spirit. They set the tone and the example for the rest of the church.

How is this done?

Informal Chats

At a staff retreat bonding between staff can happen informally over meals or over a cup of tea during the “free hours”. In such an atmosphere it is natural to catch up on family, share about personal aspirations or even air personal ministry struggles. At a right moment with the right person, colleagues often easily open up to one another on deeper personal issues, which might otherwise be hidden away.

Programmed Exercises

While connections between staff members may happen spontaneously in the conducive atmosphere of a retreat, still, it is extremely helpful to schedule into the programme exercises for team building. The lead pastor or someone in the group may facilitate the exercises, but that may mean that that person will not be able to participate. At one retreat we invited a professional team builder to join us, and it proved to be very useful as all the staff could participate in the exercises.

In some of the staff retreats I had led, I had some time carved out in the programme to evaluate how we had done as a team. We asked questions like, What have we accomplished as a team? How would we rate the support we received from each other? How much do we know of each other’s personal and ministry challenges? What are some things we can do to strengthen our team spirit? The sharing helped us to understand and appreciate one another more.

Forging Together

The ultimate purpose of building team spirit among a group of colleagues is to enable them to work together effectively. Hence, it isn’t enough just to have social camaraderie over a cup of coffee or to bond during team building exercises. As the saying goes, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,”—so, the test of the team is during those times when the team members work together.

The Staff Retreat is one such platform when this happens. This “planning” time calls for as much team work as when the team is carrying out a project for the church. Regardless of what’s up for discussion, each is to bring his (or her) contribution to the table, and together the team forge a united way forward for the common good of the church. This is part of the envisioning process which I hope to write about in Part 3 next week.