The title and subtitle of my book, Tell Me A Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories, are the product of a joint venture between my friends, Mathew and Jim, and me. Mathew came up with the title all on his own. I started the subtitle and we all worked it over until we settled on the current version, but without Life-Changing. My editor, Dr. Larry Kefauver, liked it, and we were all set. Then one day Jim cornered me and said (and I paraphrase), “Bill, your subtitle is lacking something. Ministries are conducted to impact people, to change lives. That’s why someone would want to buy and read your book. There’s nothing in your title to indicate that.” After several iterations, we settled on adding Life-Changing.
And changing lives, of course, is what ministries are all about. As I said in my previous blog post about the word Ministries, “a ministry is an activity one person or group of people does for [others] … for God Himself, [for] those who are part of the Kingdom of Christ-followers, and [for] individuals of all kinds.” Now, it’s unlikely that our ministries change God’s life, but that’s not their intent. They are intended to acknowledge our allegiance to Him and to please Him. But for the rest, the idea is to help them to grow toward “completeness in Christ” (Col. 1:28-29). And, again of course, every ministry we do, for any of the persons we have named, changes our life, too. Serving our Lord is part of our path to completeness.
So, my book, and this blog too, are ultimately intended, not to create great ministries, but rather to create ministries that have great impact on the lives of those they lovingly serve. I know that you, my reader, want to have impact on lives as well. So, sure, please read my book, but then join me by engaging in this blog, this forum, so that we can be “iron that sharpens iron” for each other as we strive to serve God as co-laboring ministry designers.
Ministry Design 