What is God saying?
Salt & Light Ministries - a family of leaders and churches on mission!
equipping the church | extending the kingdom | blessing the nations
A discussion paper produced as a proposal for our European Team meeting in January 2004, summarising where we feel we have got to, as a team, in the light of previous prophetic and the consultation process.
Several years ago, a group of leaders from across Salt and Light Ministries met to fast and pray, in order to seek God about what our God-given call and mission should be. The mission statement became very clear through this couple of days: Equipping the church, Extending the Kingdom, Blessing the nations.
At its heart, this mission statement encapsulates what is still true: that the church is the key to God's purposes in the earth, because through the church:
- God will demonstrate his glorious plan to make a people united for his glory, under Christ's headship
- God will extend his kingdom into the earth
- God will fill the earth with his glory
Our connections with the Salt and Light family are, we believe, brought about by God in order to help us accomplish his own goals. They are connections for purpose. He wants to raise up strong, united expressions of the Body of Christ everywhere, in order to show his love and grace to people everywhere. The nature of the Body of Christ is that it is united, diverse, and mobilised, in order to engage in Christ's mission.
As an apostolic team, called to give leadership to the expression of the Salt and Light family in Europe, we need to be clear-sighted in our leadership. In the light of recent evaluations, we want to redefine our call and goals, in order to lead intentionally and purposefully.
1. Setting the right atmosphere
Leadership sets atmosphere. It does not micro-manage. It raises vision, inspires faith, and ministers encouragement that everyone who is part of Christ's church can engage in Christ's ministry. It also leads by example.
True leadership is not interested in its own ministry, but in the ministry of the whole body of Christ. It is therefore always looking to train and release, to mobilise and develop new leaders and ministries. Apostolic ministry is essentially ground-breaking, pioneering, expansionist (in the sense of wanting to see Christ's kingdom expand), and constantly encouraging the church to have that heart. It is not protective, except in the sense that it wants to guard the quality of the life of churches so that they become everything Christ destines them to be.
This is the sort of atmosphere we in the EAT want to set across our family of churches, by example, teaching, preaching and encouragement.
2. Setting appropriate goals
Our goals should be defined by our mission: equipping the church, extending the Kingdom, blessing the nations. They are inter-related, and therefore one cannot be prioritised over another. They include:
a. Church-planting
If the church is a key to demonstrating Christ's glory, and incarnating the gospel, the planting of churches, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and a strong sense of God's care, must be a top priority. Training church-planters and encouraging mobility is essential.
b. Developing apostolic bases, teams, people
The key to a mobile people is to produce apostolic bases or teams who are 100% committed to mobilising people for Christ's mission, whether at home or abroad. This will involve discipling people generally in character, training people in the sharing of the gospel, responding to situations with creativity and sending people to pioneer.
c. Growing fruitful, healthy churches
Probably not all churches will become apostolic bases, but all churches should be fruitful and growing if the life of Christ is in them. Strong and healthy local churches will demonstrate the life of Christ wherever they are. These churches will see that the strength of the church is dependent on each member of the Body of Christ fulfilling their calling; wherever in the world God has placed them.
Links to apostolic bases or teams will provide healthy exposure to wider apostolic and five-fold ministry in the Body of Christ.
d. Producing people equipped to serve God
If the keys to Jesus producing apostles were first to train them in discipleship, and second to see them filled with the Holy Spirit, our call will be to do them same. We cannot assume that local pastors alone will be able to produce such people. They will need provocation to do the task, and help in accomplishing it. We may need to supplement their training. However, we should only do corporately what the local church is unable to do.
e. Developing pioneering leadership
Settlers are unlikely to produce pioneers: like produces like! We need to influence, input and supplement local leadership in such a way that pioneers are recognised and developed. This is a key to our whole mission. (It is helpful to identify different types of pioneering: same culture, cross-culture same country, cross cultural near neighbours, cross-cultural where there is no church.)
The European Apostolic Team aims to fulfil these goals in the United Kingdom, and Europe as a whole. We must use these goals as a plumb line for all activity and strategy.
3. Values we need to carry in all we do
These we have also defined, but repeat:
- Relationship. This allows the whole body to be nurtured, strengthened and co-ordinated for the release of Christ's love and life in the world. Relationships in the Body of Christ release community, inter-dependence, mutual care and togetherness, but also allow leadership and spiritual authority to be exercised.
- Common vision. This is primarily Christ's vision for the nations. But under that umbrella vision, there may be specifics that God has highlighted for us to pursue, such as a focus on Europe!
- Communication, co-ordination and inter-dependence. In order for us to accomplish common vision, there must be a degree of co-ordination of ministries and resources, without centralised structures or control. We recognise that we need one another's gifts and ministries.
- Obvious Biblical standards of integrity, servanthood, honesty, openness and teachability. And a desire to be Christ-centred, word-based and spirit-led in everything.
4. Some clear challenges
a. Developing and defining the apostolic
Apostolic ministry is a breakthrough building ministry. It is about taking fresh ground and seeing something built and established for the glory of Christ there.
David Holden (NFI) suggests four major functions for the apostolic. This gives us a helpful summary:
- To ensure that the church is moving on to "regions beyond". Without the context of "looking beyond", apostolic ministry will fall short of its major call.
- To care for all the churches they serve. This may include laying foundations, or fathering a church through different kinds of challenges.
- To define doctrine that will help shape churches in what they believe, and will result in practices that glorify God.
- To impart the Holy Spirit - this may be introducing people to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or to fresh visitations of the Spirit, or a release of signs and wonders.
The process of reviewing our own roles and function is a vital part of evaluating whether this is what we are engaged in! We need to ensure that we are doing this ourselves, then we need to ask how we can develop further apostolic ministries, teams and bases.
b. Developing the prophetic
If apostolic ministry is a breakthrough building ministry, then the prophetic is equally a breakthrough ministry. It is rarely comfortable with the status quo or a church that is static.
The prophetic is too often demoted to the merely inspirational, rather than being right alongside the apostolic in the development of mobile, breakthrough ministry.
We believe that we need to ask God's help in the development and further equipping of this ministry.
c. Developing the evangelistic
Across many of our churches we have been working on evangelistic strategies and projects of one sort or another. Most of this has been focused around personal relational evangelism, and things like parenting courses, marriage courses, Alpha Courses or Y-courses, Guest services etc. Kids' clubs have also been developed, very profitably. This has all been good and healthy. It has encouraged everyone in our churches to see their role in befriending and winning others. We need to keep encouraging this, and many other creative ways of touching the lost with the love of God.
We still lack good models of evangelistic ministry where faith and the power of God are displayed, the gospel clearly proclaimed, and the net drawn in. We need to pray that God would raise and anoint evangelists like this!
d. Developing pastor/teachers
Since we are looking at fivefold ministry as a key to the maturity of the Body of Christ, it is perhaps worth redefining our understanding of the pastor/teacher! In the context of raising churches and people with apostolic heart and motivation, the pastor/teacher is equipping people to go, not to stay. The pastor sees himself and his ministry as providing resources for the wider mission of the church, and is happy to train up and release men and women to that task!
e. Joined up thinking
We perhaps need to help churches and church leaders review what they are doing not in the context of what isn't working at the moment, but where they want to go in the future. Is their thinking and strategy "joined up" or piecemeal? How does personal pastoring, for example, (where it is functioning at all) relate to mission? How are individuals being trained for mission, or is that an optional extra for the keen? How is leadership development looking to where the church wants to go in the future? Some of the 'jars that need to be smashed' are the maintenance ones, so that the plumb line becomes: "What has this activity/ministry got to do with mission?