Monday, 12 April 2010

The Trellis and the Vine chapter 2

Chapter two of Marshall and Payne's book provides an overview of where the rest of the book is going and how to shift towards 'growing people who are disciple-making disciples' which is the big theme of the book.

There are 11 sub headings:
1. from running programs to building people
2, from running events to training people
3. from using people to growing people
4. from filling gaps to training new workers
5. from solving problems to helping people make progress
6. from clinging to ordained ministry to developing team leadership
7. from focusing on church polity to forging ministry partnerships
8. from relying on training institutions to establishing local training
9. from focusing on immediate pressures to aiming for long-term expansion
10. from engaging in management to engaging in ministry
11. from seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth.

This chapter provides a summary of all the challenges the book poses for us in terms of how we think of church, of how we 'do' church, and of how as Pastors we spend our time, or expect our pastor to spend his time. It's biggest challenge I think is in terms of how we use people - too often we slot people in to fill gaps in existing ministry programs, the question it poses is why not direct people to people who need ministry - a 1-2-1 or couples bible study, rather than the transport rota or teaching Sunday school.

As an introductory summary it is a good start and provokes questions which I am hoping the book answers as I get deeper into it; how can we do this in small churches? how do we change the churches attitude? how do we inspire people to want to be disciple-making disciples? How do we not leave people short of pastoral care as we focus on discipling disciple makers?

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