Philosophy of Ministry

Every church has a unique identity, a DNA if you will, which is formed by the interaction of theology, philosophy and practice. It all starts with theology as a church’s understanding of God and His Scriptures. This theology affects the philosophy of ministry, which each church operates by and within. Finally, this philosophy, founded upon the theological beliefs, affects the practical outworking of a local body.

In August 2009, we began an arduous journey of going back to the Scriptures to see what God says it means to be the church. The question we asked ourselves was, “Are we being who we say we are when we say we are the Church?” Throughout this process of rethinking everything we do as the church, we have come to realize there are some things we need to change in order to be the church God describes in the Bible.

To clearly explain the identity that we feel is becoming our own, it is easiest to describe contrasting approaches to ministry. Our desire is in no way to belittle or condemn those churches which minister differently from us, but rather to affirm our unique identity as our theology impacts our philosophy.  This contrast will be seen in the following methodologies:

                 • Attractional vs. Incarnational 

                 • Width vs. Depth

                 • Marketing vs. Mission

                 • Entitlement vs. Sacrifice

Attractional vs. Incarnational

Attractional approaches to ministry are those which basically take the “if we build it, they will come” direction. These churches are typically known for their varied resources often including rock walls, coffee shops, gyms, sports leagues, etc. The idea that drives this approach is that if you can just get the people in the doors, you can keep them there.

Welsh Baptist Church prefers to view things not from an attractional, but incarnational perspective. Instead of ministering on the basis of people coming to us, our approach is to take the ministry to the people. Like the Son of God condescending to leave His heavenly home and dwell among those whom He loved, we want to be known for our willingness to take the gospel from within the walls of our building to affect the lives of those we come into contact.

Width vs. Depth

In polling various churches, the vast majority cite numeric growth as their driving evidence of success. Success is measured by quantifiable numbers of weekly attendance, small group attendance, Sunday school attendance, etc. Achievement is determined by the number of people with whom the message is shared. Welsh Baptist Church understands a primary purpose of the local church is to make disciples. Not mere attendees or even converts, but disciples – mature followers of Jesus Christ. In the end, the “Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be [Christ’s] disciples.”

Marketing vs. Mission

Some churches exercise a marketing approach to ministry in which they hope to create a brand name to fit in a certain niche. Perhaps they are the church with good music, or a great drama team or a really excellent children’s ministry. Like the attractional approach, the hope is to market the church to bring people in. The problem that we see with this approach is that it is generally true that “what you win them with is what you keep them with.” If you win people with lights and smoke, then next year you need more lights and more smoke. You are always forced to better your resources and marketing of those resources to distinguish yourself. The challenge is that the culture is always changing and when you market a specific segment or ministry, then you inevitably teach that your church is not for everyone.

At Welsh Baptist Church we hope to win people by the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we can do this, then all we have to do to keep them is continue to preach the gospel -- what we should be doing anyway. We hope to accomplish this through challenging our people to have a missional perspective as they live a gospel-centered life. So, the church will experience growth because of mission rather than marketing.      

Entitlement vs. Sacrifice 

A deep and pervasive sense of entitlement exists in much of the evangelical community. Those who have such an attitude, though they might not articulate it, assume that the church exists merely to meet one’s own felt needs. Therefore, the church that caters to such an ideology is forced to create thousands of different programs to meet those ever-changing desires.

The Bible teaches not that the church exists to meet your needs, but rather that you exist to meet the needs of others. A heart of humility does not say “meet my needs,” but instead “do not cater to me. I am here to serve.” In the end, the greatest need, felt or not, is for the gospel. If we spend our time meeting peripheral issues, all we have done is dealt with symptoms without addressing the disease. Certainly we recognize the legitimacy of needs and are here to serve those in need, but an attitude of entitlement and true service are at odds.

Welsh Baptist Church believes that theology influences philosophy which in turn determines practice. Given that we believe in an incarnational, missional, sacrificial model, which seeks depth over width, we hope our practice lines up with those beliefs.

What does that mean for us? 

One of the immediate implications for our growing into our own skin is the need to reexamine each of our ministries to see if they correspond to our theology and consequent philosophy. As we have done so over the past few months, we have found that in a few instances our approach was inconsistent. We noticed in particular that a number of our ministries functioned in self-contained silos, which competed for the limited resources of staffing, time and finances while at the same time fighting for the attention and affection of our people.

A practical response to this realization is that we have started to eliminate some of our historic ministries. For example, Welsh Baptist Church no longer has singles, men’s, women’s or college ministries. That does not mean that we will cease to minister to singles, men, women and college students, but rather that we do not feel as though we must gear a ministry toward a particular demographic to reach that group.

A driving passion in our teaching and preaching is the idea that church consists not of a building and not merely of preaching and singing, but in being the body of Christ in sharing life together. In light of this theological understanding, our current thinking has driven us to funnel our entire adult ministry in and through our small groups.  Groups will therefore serve as a panacea in which men and women, single or married, young and not so young will gather together in recognition of our inability to do life alone. Our hope is to create unity in diversity as people interact with those who are perhaps a little unlike themselves.