As noted in my last post, for my next few posts (5 to be exact) I want to unpack — that is, elaborate on — each of the words in the subtitle of my book, Tell Me A Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories. By the time we’re done, I will have explained what the book is all about, why I wrote it, and synopsized its approach to the topic. To accomplish this, it seems better that I take the words of the subtitle out of order, so I will begin with the subject of the book, that is, ministries. That’s what it’s all about.
Definition. At its core a ministry is an activity one person or group of people does for another person or group of people. In the U.S. the term ministry is usually applied to the activities of a religious organization. In other English-speaking countries, such as the U.K., it also applied to the activities (or categories of activities) of governmental organizations. Elsewhere, the same kind of activity is usually called a program or a process or something similar. The book focuses on the usual U.S. use of the term ministry and specifically on its use by Christian organizations. And, while the book inevitably needs to mention those who carry out a ministry, its real focus is on what the ministry does.
Nature. Ministries are altruistic. They are done for what we have just termed “others.” Specifically, these others include God Himself, those who are part of His Kingdom — that is, the Kingdom of Christ-followers, and individuals of all kinds. For God, what is done is some kind of act of worship, devotion, or obedience. What is done for the other “others” is intended in some way or another to help them grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s about it: to do something for God, for His Kingdom, or for someone else with Christian purpose is a Christian ministry.
Structure. Ministry is a noun. Actions are verbs; they are things people do. Ministries are nouns because they are titles, the names a collection of activities. Tell Me A Story makes significant use of the fact that a ministry is a noun. Perhaps the most important of these is to note that, almost by their definition, ministries satisfy an important truism. This truism, or axiom, is best stated by two assertions:
- All ministries are made up of other, smaller ministries
- All ministries are a part of one (or more) larger, more comprehensive ministry
Why is this important? Well, from a spiritual point of view, it points out that even the smallest action of a Christian for someone else is a ministry. From a ministry design point of view, it lets us simplify the way we look at a ministry by clustering simpler ministries and recognizing that this cluster is also a ministry. Likewise, we could subdivide a ministry – break it into smaller parts – in order to understand it better.
The book’s focus. And why is this structure important to the book? The answer is that the focus of the book is not primarily on smaller ministries, but on how to design ministries that become complex because their structure needs to be complex. They need lots of parts.
Next Post: “Creating”
Ministry Design 