The fourth threat to corporate witness is the most serious because, if it overpowers the culture of the ministry, it will leave you bereft of the most important way of communicating with your ministry’s owner. This biggest threat of all is the privatization of faith.

We are being conditioned by our society that faith does not belong in the public realm. People of faith are told to keep their faith in their places of worship and homes, to hide it away. Even Jesus said we should hide in our “prayer closets” when we pray, so as not to make a show of our prayers. But Jesus wasn’t saying that we should not have group prayer!! He was contrasting two ways of praying to make a point. Don’t take it too far.

The result is that a surprising number of Christians are not comfortable with group spirituality, sometimes even in church! We are especially not comfortable, it seems to me, with silence in a group situation, one of the central practices in group discernment. Sure we can pray at the start of a meeting that God will guide our minds and the discussion and be with us, but why not then take time together to listen together?

Paul talks about putting on the full armour of God. Yet when we do not engage in group discernment it is as though we take off our armour, lay down our weapons, and then walk into battle! We’ve needlessly neglected to make use of the greatest resource Christ gave us — his Spirit, our counselor and guide.

Negative Consequences

You know you have a problem with group spirituality when people treat the opening devotional and prayer time of a meeting as not the real meeting, but just an optional preliminary. Although the meeting starts at 7:00, some will arrive at 7:30 — in time for when the ‘real’ meeting starts.

The problem when people keep their faith private is that:

• Group prayer becomes a perfunctory exercise, consisting only of petitions and no listening.
• Discussion is limited to the ‘practical’ things and never ventures into a theological discussion to set context or to guide discussion.
• Without faith in the foreground, the work of the ministry is reduced to simply good deeds or need fulfillment.
• If people are embarrassed to share their spirituality with their teammates, how can they share it as a public witness?
• Something that God wants to tell us may not be heard, because it is often in the shared discernment process that a team discerns God’s leading.

The Truth

Privatization of faith can be overcome by the truth that we have the Holy Spirit among us, and that as a group we have divine guidance.

God wants us to know his mind. He wants us to have conversation with him! This truth does not just give corporate life a spiritual dimension, it fills it with a vibrant, living faith!

We need to become aware of the constant presence of God in our lives. We are the people through whom God works in this world! How can we possibly work together as a group unless we are listening to God as a group?

Building Group Spirituality

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:16 that we have the mind of Christ. We have his mind by learning to think like him and by listening to his Spirit. It’s a fact that God wants to communicate with us, but it is not always our experience that we hear him. Pastor Manoonsak at Jai Samarn church in Bangkok, said in a sermon that when people ask why God doesn’t speak to them they are asking the wrong question. The real question is, “Why am I not listening when God is speaking?”

I’ve learned that:

• If we do not expect God to speak to us, we will not likely hear him speak.
• If we do not expect the Spirit to be active today, we will not see what he is doing.

Therefore if you want to discern God’s leadership, either individually or corporately, you must expect to find him. God says he will be found, and if we ask for wisdom, he will give it to us.

I admit that it used to really bother me when someone said “God told me.” it always evoked the same, unspoken, response from me: “Oh really?” First, I was very, very skeptical of their claims, and second, I always was afraid of mistaking my voice for God’s voice, so of course I never heard from God.

But then about 1993 I asked God, “Please teach me to distinguish your voice from mine” and I started to have some pretty amazing experiences. Let me just say that over perhaps about five years, the Lord caused things to happen so that he could say, “That was me!” and I knew that anything else was me talking to myself. He was training me so that on May 25, 2001 when I asked God a direct question, I was equipped and ready to receive the most direct response from God that I have ever received!! That question changed my life.

Here’s what you can do to build your group discernment skills:

• There is a great little book called Practicing Discernment Together that you could read together. The CCCC board read and discussed this book earlier this year. It’s the best introduction to group discernment that I know of. Another book that I have ordered but not yet read is Pursuing God’s Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups by Ruth Haley Barton. If it is as good as her other books, it will be excellent.
• Have a professor from a seminary come and teach your staff some discernment practices. I had Dr. David Sherbino from Tyndale Seminary come and do a half day experiential spiritual retreat for all CCCC staff.
• Take your leadership team off-site to a more relaxed environment for a spiritual retreat. I did this with our leadership team and we made very good progress on some strategy work.
• Build extra time into your meetings for a spiritual exercise. When the leadership team began work on what became our strategy map, we set aside time to do lectio divina, and to leisurely debrief.
• Work through my blog series Hearing God Speak.
• Ask questions that will stimulate discernment, such as:
  • “Let’s think about this issue keeping God’s character in mind and see what insights we get.”
  • “Which doctrines pertain to this issue, and do they cast any light on what we should do?”

In Conclusion

In this series I have covered the four major threats to your corporate spiritual witness: individualism, careerism, self-centredness, and privatization of faith. Each of these is absolutely antithetical to our Christian faith and will severely impair our ability to be an authentic Christian witness through our corporate life.

By overcoming these threats with the four great truths: we are the body of Christ, we have a high calling, we belong to Christ, and we have the Holy Spirit, we will be a fully functioning Christian ministry that can, through our corporate life, be an authentic Christian witness that:

• points to God,
• manifests his character, and
• models his kingdom on earth.

May God bless you and your ministry as you seek to be true to his ways in all that you do.

The post Organizational Spirituality appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The third threat to our corporate witness is self-centredness. This is closely related individualism, but whereas individualism is about maximizing one’s personal rights, self-centredness is about attitude, specifically that “It’s all about me!” No one would ever admit to holding this attitude of course, but when people think:

• “I am irreplaceable and this place would fall apart without me,” or
• “The credit for that should have come to me,” or
• “I need to be in control of this,”

they are making it perfectly clear that, yes, it is all about them.

The main problem with self-centredness, from an organizational perspective, is that self-centred employees feel ownership of some aspect of the ministry. The employee who refuses to share knowledge, refuses to cross-train someone in their job, or who improperly acts like they have a veto, becomes a stumbling block to organizational faithfulness to Christ. How can an organization be faithful to Christ when an employee claims a trump card of ownership over some part of the organization?

Negative Consequences

When an employee thinks it’s all about them, they have a pretty tight grip on their part of the ministry that can cause problems:

• They suffer anxiety as they live in fear of losing control, which means losing their security. They fight desperately to hold on to what they have and become very controlling and manipulative, both harmful to team dynamics and a poor witness to Christ.
• They become prideful as they think of the ministry and its accomplishments as theirs. They puff themselves up and take credit all to themselves that should properly go to the team and to God, and, yes, some even to them too.
• They bear too much of a burden for the ministry and can easily burn themselves out. When they think everything depends on them, they have no one else to turn to because, after all, its their job to have all the answers!
• They engage in political behaviour, office politics, that encourages gossip and innuendo. They plant seeds of doubt about other staff, in order to protect themselves. They jockey for position, creating a competitive spirit on the team. They suck the joy out of the workplace. I remember one office I worked in that was intimidated by the behaviour of one particularly strong and opinionated individual, and the first day after the person left was the first day I ever heard laughter in that office! Sometimes you don’t realize what a chilling effect one person can have until they are gone!
• Perhaps worst of all, they stifle everyone else and shut down creativity, because they forcefully champion their own ideas.  Not much group discernment happens on a team of self-centred people! 

The Truth

The truth that overcomes self-centredness is that we belong to Christ, and so do our ministries. They are not ours! That means we are stewards working for an owner.

Jesus Christ is the greatest owner possible and, with his unlimited resources, he takes responsibility for his possessions.

Being a steward, you do not bear final responsibility for the ministry you lead. It is not all up to you! This liberating thought frees you to offer Christ

• your very best work,
• your highest commitment,
• every ounce of your strength,

and then allows you to stop struggling and rest, knowing that even with all that you have to offer, Jesus still has even more to offer back to you to help the ministry out. You have the most stupendous partner in ministry you could ever hope for!

Back in the 90s I was a deacon at my church. About ten years before, a pastoral moral failure devastated the leadership. I was just a young man in the congregation when that happened, but now that I was on the board with some of the deacons from that time, I saw the deep suspicion of all things pastoral that they still had. Each year, the board elections left the board divided 5-4 one way or the other between those who were suspicious of pastors and those who weren’t. The church was stymied into an impasse at the board level. It was an awful time for me as I anguished over this state of affairs.

One night at a prayer service I felt particularly burdened by the problem,

and then suddenly…

“And then suddenly…” I love that phrase when it relates to God showing up in our lives!!!!

…I spoke out words that I believe Jesus gave me to speak to myself on his behalf:

“This is NOT your church, this is MY church. I will look after MY church.”

What a release that was. Of course! This is Christ’s church, not mine. He is responsible for it and, as his possession, he will take care of it. I shouldn’t usurp Christ’s responsibilities! Let him look after his possession. Trust him to look after his possession. I just had to do my part as a deacon.

That is the beauty of this truth that we belong to Christ. If you and I care for the treasures we display on our mantels, how much more Jesus cares for your ministry, which after all is not your ministry but his!

Benefits of Being a Steward

Being a steward and not an owner has several benefits:

• As a steward, I can go to the Owner with a problem and get some help. There are resources beyond me that can be brought to bear on the ministry.
• I can focus on mission accomplishment instead of satisfying my own needs.
• I can let go of my grip on the ministry because someone else is already holding on to it.
• I can relax a bit and enjoy my work a whole lot more!

When a whole team thinks like stewards, you have the making of a great work environment because everyone has the primary role of serving.

 Building a Sense of Stewardship

As a leader, you should do everything you can to promote the idea that all employees are stewards.

•  Try to eliminate ‘my’ from your vocabulary with respect to the ministry you lead. I have a terrible time with this, but it is not my ministry, my board, or my staff. When I say it, I don’t mean it from an ownership perspective, just that I’m referring to the particular ministry, board, and staff that I’m associated with. However, now that I’m thinking about it I’ll do my best to refer to CCCC, the CCCC board, and the CCCC staff.
• Even if you founded the ministry you work for, recognize that you are not its owner. And if, like me, you were hired to lead an existing ministry, it was not given to you. In both cases we only have custody of ‘our’ ministries for a period of time to steward on behalf of their real Owner, and then we give them over to someone else who will do the same. So think about creating a succession plan to replace yourself. This shouldn’t be threatening to you. After all, if you are not the senior leader, you can’t be promoted if you don’t have a plan to replace yourself. If you are the senior leader, you don’t normally choose your successor (the board will do that) but you should always have at least have one credible candidate for interim leader. Thinking about replacing yourself helps you lessen your sense of ownership of the ministry. My post, Emergency Succession Planning, may help you think this through.
• Demonstrate that you, as the senior leader, are under higher authority.
  • Ask the board to give you a formal annual performance review. (It is surprising how many senior leaders do not get a performance review.)
  • Ask them to challenge you and ask probing questions. Put yourself under their scrutiny.
• If your board is stacked with your hand-picked favourite people, stop doing that. You really need an independent board, so let the board recruit directors. They should consult with the senior leader to ensure they are not recruiting people who would be damaging to the ministry (on the premise that the senior leader knows church members, donors, people in the community, better than the directors do).
• Finally, get serious about group discernment. How do you know what the Owner wants you to do unless you consult with him. When team members take part in discerning God’s will together, there will be a very strong sense of stewardship.

Please feel free to contribute any ideas you have for building within a ministry team the sense of belonging to Christ.

The post Ministries as Christ’s Possessions appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The second threat to our corporate witness is careerism, in which career advancement is a person’s chief aim in life. Making the most of your gifts and talents for service to God is good stewardship, but it becomes a problem when people are consumed with personal advancement. The more that ministry staff obsess over advancing themselves, the less authentic our corporate witness will be, because God often wants us to do something for someone else’s benefit, not ours. In fact, he wants us to love sacrificially and unconditionally, and this may impact our careers.

Have you ever felt a sales person had no interest in your welfare, just their commission? You can tell when they genuinely want to help you and when they see dollar signs instead of you.

“Oh, that looks so beautiful on you!”

“You deserve the best!”

If that degree of self-interest comes out in a ministry employee, it disheartens everyone else who wants and expects ministry staff to be passionate about their mission more than themselves.

I talked with a church secretary a few weeks ago and she couldn’t stop singing the praises for her church, her board, and her pastor. She was so exuberantly enthusiastic as she told me how she just loves coming to work as a church secretary because it is so fulfilling to be doing important work every day for God. I loved her passion for her job and her commitment to it. Does she make her church attractive to me? You bet! And if I didn’t already know Christ and she told me about him, I would pay serious attention because of her passion.

In fact, if you feel the same way about your ministry workplace as this secretary does about hers, please make a comment as an encouragement to others.

Ministries don’t have careers, but they do have a corporate existence that they’d like to maximize and sustain into the future. This makes it possible that ministries could behave in similar ways as careerist individuals, and have similar negative effects on their own corporate witness and on the welfare of the community of Christian ministries.

Negatives of Careerism

When most employees are working for a cause, careerist employees can have some negative effects on the ministry and its team:

• They tend to focus on themselves rather than on mission, which for them is a means to an end, not something they are passionately engaged in as an end worthy in itself. Their dampened enthusiasm for the mission could be a drag on everyone else’s motivation.
• Their loyalty is to themselves, so their employment relationship is transactional. They are invested in the ministry they work for only to the extent that it helps their career.
• A person who is in it for themselves can’t help but give out signals to teammates that they are not all in it together. Team spirit will suffer when someone is more concerned with their own welfare rather than the team’s welfare. They are unlikely to sacrifice for the benefit of the team.

The Truth

This threat can be overcome with the truth that your ministry is called by Christ to do something great for him. And that means we have a high calling worthy of our greatest aspirations! Replace careerism with response to a call. It makes a big difference whether you focus on what you do as a means of furthering your career or as a means of accomplishing a mission you passionately believe in.

At CCCC, for example, we are not called to provide information and services, we are called to equip Christian ministries as organizations so they can do what God has called them to do. We do that by providing information and services, but we are working for something much more important — the accomplishment of our members’ missions. Your mission! The church’s mission! I want people working at CCCC who are jazzed by that! I want people who are passionate about the mission, who are sold out on making it happen! I know you want the same for your ministry too.

Whether someone feels called to vocational ministry or to secular work, when they know they are serving God in the place he wants them to be, they don’t have a career, they have a calling. And that makes all the difference because, as Paul says, we are working for the One who called us, Jesus Christ.

All Christians share a general call to serve Christ. In the absence of a personal call to a specific ministry or task, they have the freedom to discern for themselves where and how to fulfill their general call. What’s important is that they know they are fulfilling God’s call to service in what they are doing. They are pursuing God first and career second. They engage with mission because it is how they serve God.

Some Christians also have a strong personal call. This is my experience. As I wrote in Discerning Your Call, I knew from my preteen years that someday God wanted me to serve the church, something I didn’t know how to do, so I did not pursue it.

But on May 25th 2001, I asked God a question while driving home from an early morning prayer meeting, “Why have you given me so much vision for my church, for my clients, for everyone around me and nothing for me?” The answer was so clear that I pulled over to the side of the road in shock. I knew instantly that God had given me a call and that the call was still valid this many years later! I didn’t know what ministry God wanted me to do, but I did know I’d have to prepare for it, so I went home and told my wife I was going to go to seminary. She instantly agreed without reservation (now that’s confirmation!).

My personal call is to serve the church, and CCCC lets me do that. Does that affect how I see my job? Absolutely it does!

Benefits

The benefits of having a sense of call, whether a general call or a particular call, are significant.

• We will have great passion for our work because it is more than a job, it is a calling. My self-identity includes my call, so my job is part of my self-identity.
• Our work has great meaning and is very fulfilling because it is a call.
• Our sense of team will be heightened as we work with people who have an equal call to the ministry and together we become part of something bigger than ourselves, a ministry serving God’s mission.
• We will work with excellence because that is what our high calling demands of us.

Special Warning to Employers

It is all too easy to abuse someone’s sense of call. We can pay too little because we know they believe God wants them doing this, and after all, aren’t we as Christians called to a sacrificial lifestyle? Not quite! As an employer, you are caring for God’s sheep and you will be held to account for the level of care you gave. Pay the worker the wages that are due. Be fair. Christian workplaces should be the best workplaces. You are a workplace, not a workhouse!

I don’t want someone working at CCCC because they can make more money here than anywhere else. I want them here because they believe in our mission. But I do want to be able to stand before God and the public and say that we paid fair wages to everyone. Not too low, and not too high.

So don’t abuse your staff’s sense of call.

Building a Shared Call

Here’s what you can do to prevent careerism from hampering your ministry:

• When interviewing people, ask:
  • Why do you want to work with us?
  • What has God been doing in your life in the last three months?
  • How does this particular job fit with your career aspirations?
• Constantly talk with staff about how the work you do ties into the church’s mission
  • Keep the vision in sight, not the activity. For example, you might
    • Provide meals (activity) to relieve hunger (immediate outcome) so that everyone experiences God’s provision (long term outcome) and ultimately is able to be the whole person God made them to be (vision).
    • Provide church services (activity) so people can praise God and learn from the Word (immediate outcomes) so that they become mature believers (long term outcome) and become the image of Christ (vision).
• Bring theological discernment into your decision process, and encourage theological reflection at leadership and staff meetings.
• Encourage people to talk about how they feel about what they do. What makes them feel significant? Fulfilled? In a mission-driven organization, this should bring out stories that are a springboard to talk about God’s call on the organization.
• Talk with staff about how God is leading them now. God may be laying something on their heart that relates to your corporate call.
• For an organization, you could think of your vision, End statement, or Social Value Proposition, as a call. What is the end good you are working to achieve? Keep that in mind as your call and it will lift you up to the greater purpose you are serving.

The post Organizational Calling appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

People are important and valuable just because they are people whom God has made. Individuals matter. However, when too much emphasis is placed on the individual over and above the group (society), and the interests of others are not allowed to interfere with the interests of the individual, then we have a problem.

The first threat to our corporate witness is individualism, an ideology that is prominent in our society.

The Problem with Individualism

Our emphasis on personal salvation almost invites individualism into our midst. While we welcome new believers into the church, not much is said about what it means to be part of the church. New believers are left with the idea that “Me and God, we’re tight!”

This “Me and God” way of thinking can quickly work its way into your ministry’s corporate life, so that you focus only on what your ministry is doing and its interests. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that your organization is part of a community of ministries in which there are community interests in addition to individual organizational interests.

It wasn’t always this way. Canada was founded on the principles of peace, order, and good government; which are all communal values designed to achieve the greatest collective good so that all people could have a good life. However, the goal of a great community has been replaced over time, both in the general population and in the courts, with the mythic of the independent heroic individual who is free to do whatever can be dreamed. This is what has made our southern neighbours such a dynamic country. But think about what this way of thinking believes:

• You rise or fall on your own efforts
• You are what you are today because of your previous choices
• You are responsible for yourself
• You can’t blame society for your problems
• Nor should you expect help from me

There is some truth in each of these except the last one. Individual effort, wise choices, and personal responsibility are all important factors in how well a person does in life. But it is not the whole truth. This way of thinking ignores systemic injustice, the nature of the human family, and the virtues of compassion and caring.

Individualism is about maintaining or expanding individual rights. Your right to decide. Your right to do or be anything you want. Your right to be free of obligation to anyone else. Employees who espouse these rights can make them part of your organizational thinking too.

Individualism is the very antithesis of Christian faith. Christianity is all about redeemed relationships, caring for others with the same compassion that God cares for us. There is a big difference between caring for individuals and helping them be the person God made them to be, and the philosophy of individualism.

Negative Consequences

Individualism hurts your ministry’s corporate life in several ways. All of these negatives can apply to both your staff and your organization:

• Instead of having an identity that includes both self and group, individualists have identities that include only self. The low value placed on the group makes it
  • less likely they will develop meaningful relationships within the group, and
  • less likely to contribute or volunteer for the group’s benefit.
• Individualists will be quick to leave when they don’t like the way things are because they don’t value the group enough to do the hard work of making it better. They never really learn how to get along with others, so their growth to Christ-likeness is stunted. (These are the same people who hop churches at a whim.)
• Individualism creates separation and distance between people. They don’t want anyone to get too close to them because then they may have to be accountable to them or accommodate them, at the cost of fulfilling their own desires.
• Division and strife between group members may increase because individualists are not inclined to seek the greater good or to see the benefits of alternative perspectives. Collaboration and cooperation are less effective among individualists.
• They have a utilitarian view of people. If you are useful to them, they have a place for you. If not, they pass you by. People are simply tools to be used for their benefit.
• Individualism fosters a “What’s in it for me” attitude that sabotages the common good.

The Truth

The truth that will overcome individualism is that we are the body of Christ and our ministry workplaces are the body of Christ at work, which means we are a community!

I discovered the richness of the body of Christ on my sabbatical trip. I visited sixty-six ministries in 13 countries and saw not only an indication of the breadth of our work, but most of these ministries are in partnership with ministries in other countries and in their own. A number of them had two or three partner ministries in Canada, such as the Urwego Bank in Rwanda which partners with Opportunity International Canada and World Relief Canada.

I worshipped in churches in Australia, Thailand, India, Kenya, Rwanda, England and Scotland. There were some cultural differences, but they paled in comparison to the multitude of similarities. I really felt like I was with brothers and sisters in Christ. We are truly a community, one family, one body.

It is because we are one body, a real living community, that we can demonstrate how God wants humanity to live. God intends that, through our church and ministry communities, we will testify to the power of Christ to transform lives and redeem relationships.

Benefits of Being a Community

Because we work in a community with shared mission, shared values, and shared core identity, our community should be a mutually supportive environment. It should be marked by collegiality and friendship between people and between ministries.

We should be able to celebrate one another’s successes and encourage each other with no sense of competition or fear of diminishing ourselves, because we are all on the same team. Last week I was with a group of 14 executive directors of ministries across Canada that are all doing the same thing. They were freely sharing all their success tips. I don’t know if this happens all the time, but I was told that it is not unusual that when one ministry has a surplus and another has a need, the one who has shares with the one who lacks. They believe God will direct people (beneficiaries and donors) to the ministry he wants them to be involved with, and he will provide for all, so they can generously share with each other rather than fearfully compete against each other.

Being parts of one body, communication between ministries should be excellent, and cooperation should be superb. Creativity will flourish as ideas are shared and we spur each other on to do good deeds.

Above all, our workplaces should be highly relational and relationships with other ministries should be great. When this is the case:

• People will resolve the issues in troubled relationships.
• Leaders will consider the effect their decisions might have on people and other ministries.
• Employees will consider the impact that the quality and quantity of their work has on their workmates and the good of the organization.

Because we are a community it should be true that:

• We expect the best of each other.
• We listen to each other.
• We respect each other.

What a great witness this would be to the power of God’s reconciling love! This is an achievable ideal for a Christian workplace that promotes itself as part of the body of Christ, as long as the people working in the ministry allow it to be achieved! 

Building Community

As a leader, you should do everything you can to help your team see themselves as the body of Christ at work.

• Use your staff devotionals to help the team learn about the body of Christ and God’s plan for it. I can think of no better resource for developing devotionals on this topic than Being the Body by Chuck Colson and Ellen Vaughn. It’s been many years since I read it, but it really shaped how I see the church today.
• Depending on whether you have the DVD or the book, use the module or chapter in Serving as a Board Member titled “Board Deliberation” to teach your team how to debate a topic in a way that encourages creativity and a willingness to consider all options. Although the title says “Board,”  this module or chapter applies to any meeting that makes decisions.
• If your ministry has a streak of individualism, then I highly recommend my own book for study and inspiration, The Church at Work. The first half is about how Christians organize themselves to get work done. The second half is based on research I did on Canadian church-agency relationships and what makes it work really well for both parties. The lessons can be used for all types of ministry relationships, including agencies working with each other.
• Pray about what your own role might be in modeling the ideal workplace I described above.
• There are lots of books (secular and Christian) with good ideas for creating the kind of workplace that attracts and retains great people.

The post Organizational Life in the Body of Christ appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

• Is an organization Christian because it works on the Christian mission?
• Is it Christian because it employs Christians?
• Is an organization Christian because its corporate life¹ models the way of Christ?
• Is it even possible to speak of an organization as being Christian, or can only people be identified as Christian?

I believe a ministry is authentically Christian when its corporate life models the way of Christ, which means that it

• points to God,
• manifests his character, and
• models his kingdom on earth.

This has really important implications for how we lead our ministries, and that is what this series of posts explores.

God’s Purpose for Corporate Life

I don’t know about you, but when I think about a Christian ministry, I think of what it does. It’s as if the ministry has no purpose other than to advance the Christian mission. But while God does have a mission for each ministry, I believe God has an even greater purpose for it — to be a light to the nations through its corporate life.

Corporate Life as Christian Witness

The Bible tells how God created a corporate body, Israel, to be a light to the other nations. Its governance and corporate life were not just part of its witness, but the main witness. This is why, in Deuteronomy 17:18, God required the kings to write out a copy of the Law in front of the priests, to ensure they knew his laws, with the expectation that they would rule by them.

In the New Testament, much is said about the corporate life of churches. In Acts 15 we see one case where church leadership is a good witness by modeling how to work through issues, and in 1 Corinthians 5:1-2 we see another case where church leadership is a poor witness by failing to deal with issues in the church.

Our life together in a corporate body is one of the best witnesses we have as to what life in the kingdom of God looks like. And in this regard, the staff and volunteers of a Christian ministry can be either its greatest asset or its greatest threat, because people give an organization its corporate life, for better or worse.

A ministry can be alive to the fullness of God’s daily presence and a credit to our community. Or it can be so spiritually dull that it is no different from a secular charity and possibly even a blemish to our community. Which it will be depends very much on the attitudes and beliefs that guide the behaviour of its people.

Behaviour Preaches Beliefs

Both Christians and non-Christians see Christian ministries as representing the Christian faith in action, so many people will form their opinions about our faith based on the behaviour of our ministries. How you do things is as important as what you do.

And that brings us to the crux of the issue: your directors and staff are responsible for the public witness of your ministry. I’m not talking about your programs, but about how the directors govern, about how decisions are made at every level, about how issues are dealt with. What happens when things get tough? How do you respond to people, even within the ministry, who don’t act Christ-like?

Faith and Ministry Practice

So what if we paid attention to the witness given by our corporate life?

• What if we fully exemplified the Sermon on the Mount in our workplaces?
• What if we exhibited all of the fruit of the Spirit at work, all of the time?
• What if we perfectly exemplified God’s character?

If we attain this lofty vision, how would we answer these two statements about how we run our ministries?

• We would…, and
• We wouldn’t…

And the real question is, What’s holding us back from achieving this vision except our willingness to honestly examine our corporate behaviour?

Where We’re Going

Over the next four weeks, we will be discussing four threats to our corporate witness and four great truths that will overcome them and allow us to present an authentic Christian witness. If we live and work by these four great truths, we will be empowered to achieve far greater mission success.

My goal is that your ministry will truly operate in the power of the Holy Spirit as we not only work on the Christian mission, but honour Christ by how we do it!

I have an older post, How Christian Is My Ministry?, that is now Part 2 of this series. It describes how you can reverse engineer your theology by examining your ministry’s practices. In other words, it will help you see what your ministry’s corporate witness actually is through the fresh eyes of an outsider who is watching what you do to figure out what you really believe. I suggest you read it before moving on to next week’s post, which is Part 3 of this series.

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1. I am using the term corporate not in the sense of a business, but in the sense of people coming together in one body to do something together.

The post What Makes a Christian Ministry Christian? appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

If you believe that action speaks louder than words, and that we should preach the gospel at all times (using words if necessary), then what are you preaching through your ministry’s actions? This is a really important issue because Jesus said in Mat 5:16, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” If that’s what happens when they see our good deeds, what will happen when they see our bad deeds?

In my next post I’ll discuss how this idea applies to how you engage people outside of your ministry, but in this post I am focused on how you work with your own staff.

Casting off Secular Restraints

In Ontario, holders of religious office are entirely exempt from the Employment Standards Act (which provides minimum standards for notice of termination). Some churches think that because the legislation doesn’t apply to pastors, they can treat them any way they want! But they forget that Common Law still applies and the result in court will be what is fair and reasonable, not the minimum set by the Act.

In another province I was told the church counted on the pastor not going to the courts to sue fellow believers. But the bigger issue is, churches that terminate pastors without notice are showing that when secular restraints are cast off, this is how Christians choose to treat fellow Christians!!! What a terrible witness.

HR Practices Are Our Christian Witness

If you say you are a Christian ministry, then the way you work together as a team better be an excellent witness to what life is like in the kingdom of God. This is not only your responsibility before God, but it is also your responsibility to every other ministry that works in the name of Christ. Everything we do should reflect the righteous ways that God wants us to have with him and with each other.

How can we transform society if we can’t get our own Christian societies right? People should look at our churches and agencies and say, “I want a society that looks like that!”  All of our communities, whether a family, a church, a social network, or a work team, should bear witness to the kingdom that is coming and that has already broken in to our world. After all, this is the Good News and I don’t want anybody to look at us and say, “Thanks, but no thanks!” Job 31:13-14 says it all:

If I have denied justice to my menservants and maidservants when they had a grievance against me, what will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account?

Tough Decisions Do Have to Be Made

There are times when employees need correction and development, and these should be done in the spirit of helping them better use their gifts and pursue their call, rather than punishing them. After all, what employer doesn’t want all of their employees to be highly successful?

There are times when ending the employment relationship is the right thing to do, but this should be done in the spirit of helping them find a place that better fits what they have to offer. I don’t know, but I expect that the cases that justify immediate dismissal for cause are far fewer than what many employers think.

My approach to difficult situations (of any kind) is to try to understand how God could redeem the situation for all parties. As hard as it may be, especially when people are emotional, I have found that in difficult situations there has always been a way that leaves all parties feeling better about the situation. I wish I could give examples, but for obvious reasons, I can’t. All I can say is, it is worth the time praying about and reflecting on what would be a good outcome for the other party.

In A Passion for Your Mission, I said you need passion for the work of your ministry. Well folks, this is my passion for CCCC’s mission: that all ministries should operate in a manner that is worthy of Jesus Christ, in whose name we serve. May what I do in leadership never, ever bring reproach to the name of Christ! Amen.

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