(Other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6)
Not only to the 5Ms give a portfolio structure (see Part 1 in this series) and a purpose-driven structure (see Part 4 in this series) but it builds its structure around a discipleship pathway – helping people make progress.
Those readers familiar with Peter Bolt’s old book Mission Minded, or the MTS movement (see page 5-7 of this document) know something about discipleship pathways. They are the specific steps people take towards some goal.
So also the 5Ms can be structured somewhat chronologically:
- From outside the church to attending a public gathering (Magnification)* -> which will hopefully lead to conversion OR
- From outside the church to engaging with the gospel in an evangelistic course, public gathering or informal conversation (Mission)**
- From conversion to involvement in the church community (Membership)
- From involvement to increasingly Christian maturity (Maturity)
- From Christian maturity to using your gifts to build the church (Ministry)
- From using your gifts to build the church to being mobilised to serve Christ’s mission in the world (Mission)**
- And over the whole thing: the grounding motivation and ultimate goal of bringing glory to God (Magnification)*
*Phrasing the step this way is Rick Warren’s verison, rightly abandoned by many Reformed evangelical Australians. The gathered church is not primarily a place for non-Christians to make first contact with the church, even though that may be a wonderful, secondary thing. The
**From memory, I don’t think Rick Warren has a central place to evangelistic courses like Introducing God or Life or Christianity Explored. And the focus of his ‘mission’ team is not on the outcome of non-Christians being saved, but on Christians being mobilised.
And then structures, staff, events, programs and publications are then set up to help people at each step: the evangelistic course, the membership course, the Growth Group, the spiritual gifts course.
Have you figured out the next steps?
A basic forms of this kind of pathway next action thinking is found in Romans 10:14-15:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
There are a series of steps that need to happen for someone to be saved: someone needs to be sent. That someone needs to preach. The audience needs to hear. The hearers need to believe.
Want to help members of your church be more engaged and active in evangelism? Have you thought through the baby steps that a Christian needs to take to get there? Simple as ‘come out of the closet about my faith’ or ‘learn how to give my testimony’ or ‘be confident in bringing someone to the event’.
Want to help more newcomers stick at your church? What are the steps that a newcomer needs to go through to feel welcomed and become involved? Simple as ‘greeted on first visit’, ‘sent a welcome letter’, ‘told about basic ministries of church’, ‘attend newcomers’ night’.
The churches that work the Ministry Training Strategy (MTS) best also are working a pathway. They’re not just waiting for someone to stick up their hand to do an apprenticeship nor expecting Challenge Conference to do all the work: they have a year-round focus on raising up the next generation of leaders.
I have found the Church Community Builder software and its Process Queue feature helpful in forcing my team to think through this stuff, and put it concretely enough that a step could be assigned to someone else in our ministry.
Now there will always be variations. People don’t easily get shoved through a sausage machine. Some people will skip steps, or need to go back a few steps, or need a custom-step for their unique circumstances. But a general process is very helpful in making sure people don’t fall through the cracks, and making sure people are cared for holistically.
5Ms without the pathway
You don’t need to structure your ministry teams and staff around these pathways. You don’t need to call anything with an ‘M’ to start thinking about deliberate discipleship processes.
And likewise you could adopt the 5M names and I suppose you could even begin focusing on outcomes, without really getting sharp on the helping people take the next steps forward in their faith.
You could run the risk of not really implementing your strategy without this step: you would have all the pieces in place, without a clear idea how to actual make it work dynamically.
Or you could run the risk of treating people as a herd, rather than as individuals: to get crowds at your various events and programs, hoping that these will be enough to achieve the outcomes you are praying for. But the most effective strategy will think about each individual. It will not begin by forcing people into structures, but by moulding structures to serve people.
