ministry philosophy
Posted by Drew | Filed under General
While we haven’t made plans as a team yet, Sarah and I have been preparing for time together as a team, dreaming and praying about what vision God has given us, and we’ve come up with a very general ministry philosophy that we want to adopt this year. I’ll try to put it into words here.
This semester our focus in ministry will be highly centered on relationships. We’ve always had this emphasis, because the Italian culture is so highly relational, but this semester/year we’re going to explore things that can be more helpful to Italian believers as they (1) engage in ministry where they are currently (2) begin to participate in what we are doing in the cities where we have staff. I talk about the believers in this way because most of the believers in whom we want to invest are not in places where our teams are. We only met most of them in August at the campeggio in Calabria where we helped serve. And we want our ministries to function in a way that when Italians take over leading the ministry the transition will be as smooth as possible. Activities like English Club and Random Initiation are far more awkward within this culture and wouldn’t likely be embraced by Italians. Instead we want to train Italians how to initiate Gospel conversations WITHIN the context of relationships that already exist, and develop methods for continually building new relationships with people God puts into our lives. I think if this nation is to be reached for Christ it will happen from Italians to their friends, not by means of a tract or an outreach.
One approach will likely involve engaging in humanitarian efforts throughout the city. This has been a strong desire of mine, though I’ve never really taken action here in Italy. But there are needs all around us, and I believe that if God has given us resources to meet needs around us (even if meeting those needs requires sacrifice on our part) then we are responsible to meet those needs. (theologically I should explain that God is not demanding this of us, but if He has called us to serve in this way it is as much for our own benefit and growth as for the person we serve, and certainly more for our benefit than for His, but definitely a way to bring Him glory). I think we often neglect needs around us because our focus is on reaching lost Italian college students. But there are tremendous opportunities to serve, to give of ourselves and of our resources that God has given us, and I believe we should. It also fits strategically what we want to do because we want to put ourselves in positions to build relationships and to connect more deeply within the community. Italians are far more likely to engage us in friendship if we have just fed the poor together than if we have approached them randomly and asked them to fill out a spiritual interest survey. So our hope is that each of us will be able to invest in a different group around the city, first with the purpose of serving, and second with the strategic purpose of building relationships with the people we serve, and with the people with whom we serve, and finally with the purpose of sharing Christ within the context of these relationships. We want to learn how to be intentional in those relationships as we share as well, so that we are better prepared to train Italian believers throughout Italy in how to initiate in the context of the relationships in their own lives.
That’s the gist of what we hope to do. It’s still a vision under construction, but it’s one that inspires me, and one that gives me great hope for what might happen through this team this year. We definitely covet your prayers.
