The pastor or ministry leader is often excited to implement the successful program he or she had conducted in his or her past pastorate or leadership.
Newbie leaders would get excited reading about other churches’ successful ministry experience, 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 and undertake changes on the church or ministry they have 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 an ancient church, and I think they expect me to bring new things to revive their dated congregational practices.”
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 he will regenerate our church.”
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 local church’s life, 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.
The pastor and the church work 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, they would direct the church to focus more on what they want 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 toolkit’s goal 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.
MAP Toolkit Goal No. 1 – To Generate Information Sets
One of the goals of the MAP Toolkit is to generate information sets necessary for consistent church growth planning and ministry implementation.
MAP Toolkit Goal No. 3 – To Develop Ministry Appreciation and Participation
The participatory nature of the MAP Tools will change the atmosphere of the church. The more participative the members become, the more empowered they will be.
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