After being in ministry for over 10 years now, I can honestly say that ministry can eerily mimic business strategies that compete with one another. In my earlier ministry years as a youth pastor, I can remember comparing my speaking abilities to other speakers and feeling miserably defeated. While in college, I measured the quality of worship experiences among collegiate gatherings in Oxford, Ms.
Should certain standards of excellence measure up? What should programming measure up to? Who sets the standard of excellence? Or maybe the better question is, who should set the standard? Hillsong Church, church camp, Northpoint Community Church, 12 Stone, Fellowship Church, or Breakaway Ministries? You fill in the blank according to what ministry fits your standard of excellence. But is this the biblical mentality? Surly excellence and creativity are biblical.
From videos, skits, music, sound, preaching, and even lighting, worship gatherings are obviously compared. My hunch is that "qualitative" comparisons may dangerously encourage ministry shopping; this is fundamentally dangerous. As all ministers know, ministry shoppers never really find contentment, but always have an appetite to fill a felt need and oftentimes become ministry leaches. In other words, these people treat ministries like a fast food restaurant soon to drive by another ministry and never experience the community of "dining" in and leveraging their own gifts to serve. Those who are ministry leaches often drain the ministry's passion which will soon change the trajectory of its vision; namely, the Great Commission becomes antiquated and substituted with a management of programming.
The most effective way to reach people is to feverishly pursue the unchurched who have no real standard of church or ministry to compare to; alongside with believers who are bought into the vision of ministry to serve, lead, and help according to their giftedness. People need a quality relational experience more than a quality programming experience. Put differently, if the experiential element doesn’t facilitate relationships, it may be the wrong median to use experientially.
Therefore, there should be no competition with ministries because the programming should NOT be the attractive element, but rather, Biblical community. If Biblical community were ministry's goals, then ministry's would be compatible not competitive.
I'm NOT convinced our goal should be to create a "better" experiential "product" than our Christian ministry next door, but rather, create an experiential product that fosters relationships while exalting the gospel.
in Summary, are we attracting people merely to what we are doing or are we attracting people to the gospel itself?
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