Too often, the pastor or ministry leader is excited to implement the successful program that he or she had conducted in his or her past pastorate or leadership.

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

Also, you might or might not agree to this, but most leaders have that unspoken (sometimes spoken) desire to surpass past leadership’s achievement, undertake changes on the church or ministry he or she has been newly assigned to.

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

This has been very customary or even stereotype thinking, really.

For example, a pastor having been called to lead a 60 or 100-year-old congregation would probably think, “Oh, I’ve been called to pastor a very old church and 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 pastor coming and we hope to see him lead us into something new and revolutionary so the church will be regenerated.”

Whoah! Hang on! Wait a minute.

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

It is my belief that even if the old congregation has been in a lethargic state for many decades now, the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent God is speaking, working, finishing the work He has started.

It is the pastor and the church, 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 pastor’s zealousness to achieve well for his and the congregation’s expectations, he or she would direct the church to focus more on what he or she wants for the church to do and not pay attention to discovering the indigenous faith-wisdom of the church.

Thus, this is another purpose of the MAP Toolkit.

The goal of the toolkit is 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 vision, mission, and goals of the church.

When a church engages in discovering her indigenous faith-wisdom, there would be much appreciation and participation in the ministry.

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