(Other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)
To implement the 5Ms, or almost any other ministry model, you need to start building an organisational structure to your ministry and you need to establish teams. If this structure is going to stay standing and these teams are going to stay functional, you are going to have to start managing/bishopping.
It is a big turning point in a ministry’s life when it breaks out of the single leader’s personal (dis)organisational system. When the ministry is no longer largely controlled by your desktop, your diary, your calendar, your control – it is free to spread and expand. Responsibility is more like information than money: it spreads and increases, rather than simply changing hands.
How can you make the change:
- From one central control (the pastor, the eldership, the steering committee) of all actions, projects, ideas and decisions to multiple centres of control, where the centre provides a high-level oversight?
- From managing every job by a roster (based on duty – everyone taking turns), to giving over areas of responsibility to teams (based on vision and belonging – everyone having a unique part to play)?
- From a cloud of random ministries, jobs and roles largely driven by tradition or by being reactive and largely organised based on who-knows-who to a clear overall ministry structure, that gets built and streamlined?
- From either micromanaging or abdicating to managing in ways that provides direction, accountability, alignment, urgency, coaching and support?
And in keeping with the rest of this series. If you can’t figure out how to administer and oversee teams and organisational structure, your 5Ms attempt will most likely be dead in the water.
