Philosophy of Ministry

This last week I had several conversations with different individuals about what seemingly were disparate topics, and asked about a few different questions. But one of the things that ran through each of these conversations has to do with the distinctiveness of the kind of ministry that we have here at West Houston Bible Church. A number of times we have visitors or new folks who have been here for a month or two, or are just brand new this morning, and they wonder just what makes West Houston Bible Church different. Sometimes you may be asked that question by people, “What makes your church different from other churches in Houston?” We do have a couple of distinctives, but they all flow out of a philosophy of ministry.

A lot of people don’t understand what a philosophy of ministry really is, what that entails. I was talking earlier this week with my good friend Tommy Ice who is a professor at Liberty University and Seminary and we were reflecting on a lot of the changes that have taken place among conservative evangelical (broad term) churches in the last 20 years. He was talking about going out and looking for a church some ten years or so ago—I remember those conversations, how frustrated, how alarmed he was at the trends, the shifts that had taken place in most Bible churches and in many evangelical churches.

The question that he was asked most frequently was, “What is your philosophy of ministry?” He wasn’t probed about what do you believe on certain doctrines? Have you read our doctrinal statement? Do you agree with everything? Would you explain what you mean by substitutionary atonement? Would you explain your understanding of the spiritual life and the dynamics of the spiritual life? Would you explain your views on prophecy or the Rapture or things like this?

Whereas a decade or two decades earlier, and for time stretching all the way back to the founding of the church in AD 33, doctrine was the primary issue whenever a congregation would interview a pastor. But now there is this assumption: “Well you’ve been to seminary, it’s okay, it will be fine, we all basically agree on the same thing, we’re not going to get too technical on any doctrine because the more technical you become the more narrow you become, the more narrow you become the fewer people will come, and after all, it’s all about getting people.”

So what is your philosophy of ministry? Of course, as soon as you get into that you start hitting the application really of the doctrine that you do have. A lot of people just don’t understand that; that you can go to any number of churches in this city and they will have a doctrinal statement that is somewhat similar, but in some cases their practice really mitigates against what they claim to believe—especially if they believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. For others, they really don’t care about their doctrinal statement so much any more and nobody knows quite where it is, but we all generally agree on the same thing and that’s good enough. The issue is philosophy of ministry.

But your philosophy of ministry flows from your understanding of the nature of the spiritual life; it flows out of your understanding of the nature of the church. Let me give you a basic example. We believe, and I believe, that the basic model for the local church in the Scriptures is a model based on education and not on fellowship. It is based on passages like John chapter 21, when Jesus is talking to Peter and he says, “If you love me you will feed my sheep.” He doesn’t say, “If you love me you will do evangelism; if you love me you will go to the hospital and visit everybody.” He said: “If you love me you will feed the sheep.” He didn’t say, “If you love me you will sing praise choruses for 45 minutes and have a little sermonette for Christianettes.” He said, “If you love me you will feed my sheep.”

Ephesians 4:10-11 talks about the gifted men that God has given His church: apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers. Since apostles and prophets went off the scene in the first century all we have today are evangelists and pastor-teachers who were given to the church to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. The pastor is an equipper—a trainer. He is to train people how to think biblically so that they can deal with the issues of life in a biblical framework.

Romans 12:2 says: “Do not be conformed to this world.” The word there for “world” isn’t “kosmos,” or the cosmic system, it is “aionos,” meaning the spirit of the age, the thinking of the age, the trends, all of the different fads that come along that affect the unbelieving culture at large and that always seems to impact the church.

So when you combine these passages together, that we are not to be conformed to the world but are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is thinking that is the issue. Well nobody, today, wants to think. They all just want to emote, or feel good, or be stimulated in someway, because, after all, if there is no meaning in life—if we have all bought into some form of Darwinism, some form of post-Millennialism—if there is no meaning in life, the only way I can have any sense of fulfilment, any sense of significance, is to be stimulated in some way.

Just think how that has infected the media. You go to a movie today and it is all about special effects and music that stimulates. If you go back and look at a good Clark Gable movie, or a good Carry Grant movie back in the 30s, and all of a sudden you realize it is all about the character development and the plot, and there are very little special effects but there is great dialogue and content there. So this worldview shift to postmodernism affects the very way we respond to media. This very same thing happens in the church where there is this emphasis on stimulation and fun. Bring the kids, they’ll have lots of fun, and bring the parents too, they’ll have fun as well.

The purpose of the church isn’t to have fun. The purpose of the local church is to teach people, to train people in the Word of God, so that they can think biblically. If you are not thinking biblically you can’t impact the culture as salt and light, which is what Jesus said. So the focus is learning how to think, which means you have to be involved in study, and they can’t be superficial studies. People will never grow beyond the level of the teaching they are exposed to. If all that you are exposed to is extremely shallow, basic, superficial study of the Word then you won’t ever get beyond nursery school. Yet the assumption in most churches is that that is what needs to take place on Sunday morning in order to attract more people, that you keep it as basic and as simple as you possibly can and somehow let the untrained non-theologically educated Sunday school teacher carry the burden of really teaching people how to understand the Scriptures and how to grow spiritually. The pastor’s job is just to be a promoter, he leads a pep rally for Jesus on Sunday mornings and gets everybody all encouraged, and that is the focus. It is exhortational, you might say; that the philosophy of preaching is exhortational. Let’s encourage everybody.

If you listen to standard approaches to preaching in most preaching classes you will hear ideas like teach for about 15-20 minutes and focus on application. People need to know: How does this affect my life?

I was asked that question this last week: How do you structure your messages so that people understand application? I said that I don’t really do this artificial 15 minutes of exposition and 10 minutes of application kind of format which is so typical, or give a point, exegete that, exposit that, or explain it and show the application. I believe that if you teach the Word of God in detail, then God the Holy Spirit is going to make it clear how to apply it, because there are folks over here who are very much advanced in their spiritual life compared to folks over here. There are some folks over here who are involved in all kinds of life situations who have had nothing to do with the kind of life situations that these folks have. If I have a church where there are 300-400 people listening to me it gets even more complex. There are so many different areas, so how can I think that I can possibly structure things with enough illustrations so that everybody gets it.

I believe that if you teach the Word in detail and explain the contrast between what the divine viewpoint principles in Scripture are in contrast to the kinds of thinking that are going on in the world today, and that we have all absorbed from the spirit of the age, then it becomes clear to us what the Scripture is saying. And sometimes it takes time to develop any kind of substantive thought. You don’t have in depth thought transformation on the basis of 15- or 20-minute homilies, which is what you get in many kinds of situations.

If you are going to develop any kind of significant thinking where you are going some place where you have been before and logically develop an understanding that takes you some place new and begins to challenge your thinking a little bit, it take more than 15-20 minutes. You can’t just assume people know the story of Joshua, or Jephthah, or Mahershalalhashbaz ,or anybody else in the Old Testament just because they have been sitting in church for 10-15 years. And you can’t assume that people read their Bible on a regular basis.

So we have a philosophy of ministry that focuses on studying, focusing on exposing what the Word of God says in all of its detail. I believe that it is only when we study a subject, a doctrine, a topic in detail that we really begin to see what God has said and what God has done so that it begins to change our thinking.

Another aspect involves a certain amount of repetition, and that is how we learn anything—it’s that ongoing training. If you played piano, how many times did you practice, over and over again playing until you master it? In any field of endeavour you have to practice over and over again. It is not practice that makes perfect, it is perfect practice that makes perfect. So we have to have that ongoing repetition, hearing things that are somewhat familiar because we never know just when we might get challenged with something a little different.

So that is our philosophy of ministry that makes us distinct.

On top of that we are distinct because when it comes to the singing of the body of Christ, that gathers together in the local church in praise to God we have not been caught up with the contemporary fads of Christian music because most of the contemporary music comes out of a philosophy of the church and a philosophy of music that has been influenced by modern existentialism and modern trends in music that are somewhat non-biblical; they come out of a worldview that is not grounded in a biblical view of creation and worship. So that makes us distinctive.

We go to the Bible to see our precedent for everything in life, and music is one of those things. And, what we see in revelation in conjunction with passages such as Job 38:4-7 which talked about the angels singing together for joy when God laid the foundations of the earth, is that we discovered that music and its forms began in heaven and are only shared with mankind as a creation which comes after the angels. So we get a glimpse of the kinds of singing and the kinds of lyrics that go on in heavenly singing. Music has its origin in heaven and not on, earth.

So that is our philosophy of ministry—that makes us distinct.