Starting Organic Ministries in the Church

An article by Matt    No Comments

The New York Times posted a short article from Richard Florida last night about saving cities.

I am a fan of Richard Florida, and while I may not always agree with him I do have a great deal of respect for him and the insights that he brings to urban planning.  Those that know me also know that I am a fan of cities, and seeing them be renewed.  The church that I helped to plant works to renew the city of Baltimore spiritually, and is doing so in some pretty cool ways.  For me to see Florida speaking about saving cities, I was hooked pretty quick.

The article basically says that urban planners who want to forcibly shrink cities in order to “save them” have the wrong idea… cities need to back off from the massive top down initiatives but to come from a more grassroots, organic effort created by the people who live there.  He points to several neighborhoods where this has happened (most of them have a significant hipster population).  I see a great deal of wisdom in this, and parallels for church leaders.

Many times we think of Pastors and Church Leaders as the ones responsible for giving a church its’ ministry assignment.  There are times when this can be the case, but more often than not church leadership needs to be creating a more organic culture of ministry that encourages members to minister in the context of their neighborhoods.  This type of culture development requires a church staff to be comfortable playing the role of encourager, resourcer, and coach as opposed to field marshal, director, and CEO.

By encouraging our congregation to minister outside the walls of the church building we are not released from our responsibility to cast vision and lead the church, our role just changes slightly as we cast vision to care well for our neighborhoods and we lead the body to embrace our communities.  We still need to be putting in place the systems that will enable our people to better minister, and know what they are passionate about.  We will also need to be able to help people find the best fit for them, rather than reinventing the wheel over and over again.

This grassroots ministry style is far messier, far scarier, but in the long run, I see it being far more successful in reaching our communities for Christ.

How do YOU encourage your congregation to minister in their communities?