How To Do Ministry: update

I might actually give some real advice at some point, just not yet.

This is my story about how hard it is to give advice I believe in.

       THE PROBLEM:

I’m increasingly convinced of Mike’s idea to simplify the meta-categories, while complexifying the subcategories. This will keep it simple and allow me to be as egghead-y as I want.

OTHER PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

When Christianity was outlawed in Rome, many pastors took jobs as grave diggers, carving out

catacombs, then sneaking Christians into them for prayer and the Lord’s Supper. The pastors would decorate the catacombs with Christian symbols. The Romans nicknamed them fossores, after ugly sand wasps.

Fossores dig holes in the ground, which they decorate, and in which they keep their children. I’m basing my model for how to do ministry on these Fossores, whose life, art, and work intersected seamlessly.

·         ART—Holy provocation, prophetic reorientation,

sacred imagination.

·         WORK—Change the church, heal the world,

translate the Gospel.  

·         LIFE—Shadow  God, spiritual formation, holy

vocation.

I want to use the Fossorian model in 4 ways:

·         a redesign of shadowinggod.com

·         a published compendium on visual leadership

·         ministerial development classes at a local

university and at Westwinds

·         an ongoing blog series exploring the catalog of

                 art, work, and life. 

How To Do Ministry: update

A.K.A. a repeated attempt not to quit my job and become a truck driver

THE PROBLEM:

I  want to make visual resources people can employ to become better pastors. I also want them to feel as though they own these resources, not like they are borrowing David’s stuff. But cataloging these resources is tricky, especially when they’re visual. 

OTHER PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

Mike Cole suggested I’m thinking about this project in the wrong way. He suggested I create a series of web offerings, since it’s easy to use multiple tags for projects online. Mike suggested I think of 3 simple categories. I was afraid that might over-simplify the components and thus render the model ineffective for quickly finding relevant information. But Mike reminded me I can use tags for as many subcategories as I need. He’s right. I’ve been thinking like a Gutenberg-er. I have over-complexified the model and under-appreciated the sorting capabilities of the web. 

How To Do Ministry: update

My ongoing quest to help people not suck at their jobs

     THE PROBLEM:

I want to create a repository of practical tools and biblical insights concerning the spiritual life of a congregation.

OTHER PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

I have to find a model that allows for the hybridization of what we do as pastors.

The purpose of a model is to help others make sense of a huge amount of information. In order to do this, you have to have a framework for them to see inside your head. I’m currently working with 4 major categories: leadership, spirituality, communication, and engagement. But each category has crossover points.

The orrery model for pastoral leadership was a total bust. Too complex. Only I could make sense of it. It was pretty, but dumb.

After an orrery, I tried a 4-way Venn diagram. This also proved to be far too complex for anyone to view and immediately understand. 

New Project: How To Do Ministry

A quest to help aspiring leaders become effective faster

DESCRIPTION: 

Pastors often employ business or athletic models for ministerial leadership. Both require heavy adaptation, and neither is terribly functional, so I’m searching for an alternative.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS:

Church leaders often request help doing holistic, innovative ministry like Westwinds, so I've begun searching for a suitable model to teach the varied components:

•       Liturgics—why we do the things we do.
•       Staffing—why we hire the people we hire.
•       Budgets—how we use the resources we have.
•       Relationships—How we work with our people.   
•       Mission—Staying focused on the right things.
•       Spiritual Formation—Teaching and growing.
•       Pastoral Interiority—What goes on in our hearts and minds.
•       Prophetic Artistry—cultural provocation and critique.
•       Post-Christian Orthodoxy—How we follow the Bible’s teachings when it doesn't         feel like anyone around us cares.

I don’t want to over-simplify, but I do want to categorize the material so it’s easily readable and usable. Thus far, I have compiled nearly 700 diagrams & illustrations. I’m going to employ the visual model of an orrery—a 3D model of the solar system—and see how far  that gets me.