MAP Toolkit Goal No. 2 – To Discover Faith-Wisdom

Too often, the pastor or ministry leader is excited to implement the successful program they had conducted in their past pastorate or leadership.

Newbie leaders would get excited reading about the successful ministry experience of other churches, locally or internationally, and decide to prescribe and appropriate it for the local church.

Also, you might or might not agree to this. Still, most leaders have that unspoken (sometimes spoken) desire to surpass past leadership’s achievement, undertake changes on the new church or ministry assignment.

We cannot blame the pastor’s tendency to see himself as the ‘messiah’ because the congregation has this unspoken and spoken ‘messianic’ expectation for the pastor to bring about revival and unprecedented growth in the church.

For example, a young pastor whom a 60 or 100-year-old congregation had called would probably think, “Oh, this old church called a young pastor like me. I think they expect me to bring new things to revive their dated congregation.”

On the other side, the 60 or 100-year-old congregation would say, “Hey, we’ve got a new young pastor coming, and we hope to see him lead us into something new and revolutionary to regenerate the church.”

Wait a minute!

If this is the church’s customary outlook, then are we saying that the Sovereign God has not done anything for His faithful community in the last 60 or 100 years in the church’s life?

I believe that even if the old congregation has been in an idle state for many decades now, the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent God is speaking, working, finishing the work He has started.

The pastor and the church are working together to search and re-discover the wonderful, amazing things that the Almighty God has done throughout the church’s faith journey.

There is a trove of faith lessons deeply embedded and has become indigenous to the local congregation.

Sadly, in some pastors’ zealousness to achieve well for his and the congregation’s expectations, they would direct the church to focus more on what they want the church to do and not pay attention to discovering the indigenous faith-wisdom the church.

Thus, this is another purpose of the MAP Toolkit to enable the church to see faith lessons learned in the church’s life. Most of all, discover how the Sovereign God has loved, provided and protected the faithful people of the local church.

These faith-wisdom lessons are vital in creating the church’s vision, mission, and goals.

When a church discovers its indigenous faith-wisdom, much appreciation and participation in the ministry would be appreciated.

Furthermore, imagine discovering the faith-wisdom of every believer coming from all nations.