Jerry:

You had asked me for input on your sermon diagram.  What I wish to offer you is not intended in any way as a critique of your “Purpose-Driven” mission model, but I hope to offer an entirely different perspective on the purpose of the Church.  My perspective is no more valid than your perspective…it’s just different.  What I share with you is a glimpse into my own spiritual journey.  Take what I offer you to God and see what He says about it.

For many years I had been a proponent of the Saddleback Purpose-Driven model because it at least articulated a crude spiritual formation ministry model.  I define spiritual formation as “Intentionally Helping People Grow from Spiritual Seekers into Spiritual Leaders”.  However, over the years, I have begun to look at this process much less from a systematic programmed perspective as illustrated by Saddleback, and much more from the perspective of being the Holy Spirit’s “assistants” in the process that He initiated and promises to bring to completion (Hebrews 12:2).

I start at the same point that you have started, namely the “greatest commandment”.  But rather than define the greatest commandment as all-inclusive “Worship”, I have begun to wonder if God was describing for humanity a spiritual formation process.  I would modify your “Love God” graphic accordingly:

Theologically, it is the Holy Spirit who initiates a relationship with us…even giving us the faith to believe.  His work is initiated in our inner most spirit, and from that point begins to impact the rest of our being, typically moving from spirit to emotions, from emotions to mind, and from mind to our physical being and life application.  (NOTE: Although clearly God is at work in all areas of our lives at all times, we perceive the process to be sequential because of how human beings typically process spiritual matters).

It is interesting to me that Jesus referred to people as differing soils and that only the well tilled soil was prepared to receive the gospel message and was able to grow and bear fruit up to a hundred-fold harvest (Matthew 13:3-8; 18-23).  With this parable in mind, I then ask pastors to answer the following questions:

1)      What is your ministry doing to intentionally help people till and prepare their spirit to be receptive to God?

2)      What is your ministry doing to intentionally help people till and prepare their emotional-self so that they may form a healthy relationship with God and with one another?

3)      What is your ministry doing to intentionally help people till and prepare their minds, with the renewing of their minds, so that they can think and reason according to the Scriptures?

4)      What is your ministry doing to intentionally help people till and prepare for life application and ministry service?

Many pastors do not know how to answer these four questions because they tend to think and plan from an institution perspective rather than from a spiritual formation perspective.   The goal of the institutional perspective is “how can we get more people to serve more”.  The goal of the spiritual formation perspective is “how can we get more people to grow more?”  The institutional perspective tends to believe that people will grow through personal service so there is very little training or equipping that is necessary.  The spiritual formation perspective believes that healthy service is only possible as people are equipped, prepared, and tested for ministry.

Depending upon the perspective selected, the impact upon your programming structure will be significant. 

The institutional perspective typically places a heavy emphasis upon the Sunday worship event, small groups and a few simple classes.  This is a fast-paced model designed to process many people quickly.  Ministries applying this perspective tend to grow quickly but have shallow spiritual roots.

The spiritual formation perspective will place a much higher emphasis upon mentorship, modeling, and training.  This is a time-intensive model designed to nurture people through the seasons of life…much like a plant takes time to root, grow, mature and bear fruit (In the case of a vineyard, it may take years and requires pruning and care).  Ministries that apply this perspective tend to start more slowly, but if they have a clear and intentional spiritual formation plan, they can grow even greater in ministry impact because they ultimately have more equipped and mature “ministers” to go around. 

It is also interesting to me that the institutional perspective will typically compartmentalize Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Service and Fellowship…with references to Fellowship often directing people back to the institutional organization and its small groups.

The spiritual formation perspective tends to view ministry as less compartmentalized and more “relational”.  In fact, you can boil everything down to one concept: “Disciple-Making”.  Disciple-Making is evangelism, fellowship, equipping, and worship.  It is hard to separate out these elements in the spiritual formation/disciple-making process.  If we use Jesus and his disciples as our model, when was Jesus leading the disciples in worship?  In fellowship?  In Equipping?  In Evangelism?  For the most part it appears that it was all happening at the same time throughout the course of sharing life together.  We also observe that only after considerable investment did Jesus send his disciples out to do ministry, and then he sent them in teams of two with very specific faith-building instructions. 

You can observe within E-Church Essentials an application of the spiritual formation philosophy as our system is indeed designed to support Evangelism, Discipleship, Fellowship and Equipping for Ministry.  However, the various system tools are not clearly compartmentalized according to these Biblical mission objectives. Furthermore, the focus of the program is really intended to help develop people rather than build the structures of an institution.  Certainly the institutional model ministry can use our system, and they do, but my goal is to encourage a movement back to spiritual mentorship which was a prevailing ministry paradigm within the Jesus Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the preferred postmodern ministry philosophy, and the model Christ gave to the church within Gospels.

I would tend to apply the spiritual formation model within a church setting using the following chart:

Not only does the spiritual formation perspective impact the overall programming structure of a church, but to be consistent, corporate worship services would also model and reinforce spiritual.  The flow of a service might look like…

• Preparation for Worship
• Worship Through Song and Prayer
• Instruction
• Application (in the moment… see my article).

The programming structure of the church might involve the following demands upon its people:

• 1 ½  hours each week in corporate worship
• 1 ½ hours in one-on-one or small group mentoring each week
• 1 hour each week in an equipping program
• 1-2 hours in ministry service each week

These demands are no greater than typically asked by churches utilizing the institutional model, but I believe the results will be far greater spiritual maturity, deeper and more authentic relationships, and healthier ministry service.