Here’s the fifth of ten propositions about church life and ministry (taken from the forthcoming Matthias Media title, The Trellis and the Vine). The others have been:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful speaking of God’s word.
4. All ministry has the goal of nurturing disciples, not just one-to-one discipling or mentoring.
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker:

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Here’s the fourth of ten propositions about church life and ministry (taken from the forthcoming Matthias Media title, The Trellis and the Vine). Remember, the others have been:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful speaking of God’s word.
4. All ministry has the goal of nurturing disciples, not just one-to-one discipling or mentoring:

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The story so far: Col Marshall and I are just about to publish a book called The Trellis and the Vine. The final chapter contains ten propositions about church life and ministry that summarize the general argument of the book. I’m running a version of these ten propositions up the flagpole to see what the Sola Panel community makes of them.

So far, we’ve had:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.

Proposition 3 is about the heart of disciple-making.

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The story so far: Col Marshall and I are just about to publish a book called The Trellis and the Vine. The final chapter contains ten propositions about church life and ministry that summarize the general argument of the book. I’m running a version of these ten propositions up the flagpole to see what the Sola Panel community makes of them.

Proposition 1 was: Our goal is to make disciples not church members.

Proposition 2 is about the inevitable drift of churches towards institutionalism.

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Over the past six months or so, I’ve been co-authoring a book about ministry with Colin Marshall. It’s been, by turns, exhilarating and infuriating, clarifying and frustrating. This is not, I should hasten to add, because Col is difficult to work with. He is in fact one of the wisest, kindest and most godly coots you could ever meet. But all big writing projects have their good days and bad days, and this one has had its share of both. Perhaps it’s because the book really goes to the heart of what Christian ministry is all about, what church life is about, and (for that matter) what Matthias Media is for and why we bother to do what we do. It’s a project that is close to the heart and close to the bone all at the same time.

The book is called The Trellis and the Vine: The ministry mind shift that changes everything, and it’s due to be published in a few months’ time. In the final chapter, we sum up the main argument of the book with ten propositions. By way of a taster, and to promote some discussion, I thought I’d run a slightly adapted version of these ten propositions up the flagpole and see what our SP readers make of them.

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Try this mental experiment. Imagine that a swine flu pandemic swept through your part of the world, and that all public assemblies of more than three people were banned. And let’s say that, due to some catastrophic combination of local circumstances, this ban had to remain in place for 12 months.

How would your congregation of 120 members continue to function—with no regular church gatherings of any kind, and no small home groups (except for groups the size of three)?

If you were the pastor what would you do?

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