Modern Team Ministry by Dan Reeves
Dan Reeves has assisted us over the past few months by writing a series of articles on Paul's Missionary Band as image for modern team ministry. Dan is a consultant based in California and has been privileged to work with some great churches over the years. Here is his latest installment.
Repositioning Paul's Missionary Band in a Postmodern World: A Case for Culture-bridging, Missional Teams as the Heart and Soul of the 21st Century Church.
Part three (of a four part series)
In the first two parts of this series I provided a sketch of Paul's original missionary band, and traced its ebb and flow throughout the past 2000 years of church history. I believe that the radical themes provided in this PMB metaphor are highly appropriate for postmodern, multicultural ministry. In this third section I will describe how Paul's missionary team approach can be adapted to effectively reach the emerging neo-barbarian tribes of the 21st century.
What does the dynamic equivalent of Paul's missionary band look like in our postmodern, multicultural reality? In my article "Mega-shifting to a Team Ministry Approach," I describe the characteristics of teams, how to shift to a team mentality and ways in which teams function within the church. The principle underlying the article is that there is a difference between the institutional, programmatic use of groups and committees and the focus on teams that lead to decentralized leadership, task orientation around a compelling, owned vision. I define team ministry this way, "... team ministry is ownership and self-initiated vision in which members carry out plans they themselves have conceived or have had a part in conceptualizing."
- The vision is grassroots initiated and owned. - Staff roles (both professional and lay) are different. - Team members are connected to a compelling, owned vision. - The teams are often fluid and focused on a task. - Team members acquire a deep-seated belief in the power and synergy of teams.
- Team members experience a climate of trust. - Team members practice open and honest communication. - Conflict is viewed as a normal means of creatively exploring new ideas.
These characteristics are sodalic rather than modalic and are similar to the characteristics of the missionary bands in the early church. Just as we have seen in our brief historic overview, they were characteristics of missional, people movements, and they are emerging again as some of the strategies and skill sets to reach postmoderns. Eddie Gibbs, in his most recent book, ChurchNext, confirms that in a culture of chaos teams are better able to take risks, experiment and move churches through the stormy waters of change.
One of the greatest needs in the church today is to discover how to integrate sodalities into a complex variety of church structures. Fortunately, there is at least one laboratory in America which helps us to picture how Paul and Barnabas might have contextualized their strategy for reaching neo-barbarians in a world that increasingly resembles their own.
New Hope Community Church in Honolulu, HI, has discerned an approach of reproducing missionary teams that resembles Paul's missionary band more than any I have personally investigated. Under the leadership of Wayne Cordeiro and his Barnabas-like partner, Dan Shima, New Hope has grown faster, has planted more churches, and has produced more radiant, reproducing missionary teams in their first six years than any other American church in recent memory.
To put it simply, New Hope has discovered how to reposition sodalities at the very heart of the church. The two redemptive structures have been fused into catalytic missional teams that are penetrating numerous neo-barbarian tribes with a transforming, indigenous Gospel in Oahu and throughout the Pacific Rim.
Strategies for Radically Repositioning
What is New Hope doing differently from the last generation of healthy, growing congregational laboratories? In many respects they have borrowed the best of what they have learned from Willowcreek and Saddleback. But in another respect their strategies are much more than mere refinements. They represent a visible return to the ecclesiological foundations of Paul's Missionary Band. New Hope's ministry is a simple and creative blend of relationship building (they call it "heart to heart"), servant leadership, and discipleship teams that rapidly reproduce.
New Hope's distinctive discipleship teams represent an advancement in the way they have combined the two most fundamental parts of a church, fellowship and witness. I call the ecclesiological essence of this catalytic hybrid simply "reproducing discipleship teams." In actual fact, they have discovered the means to fuse the best of the cell church technologies with the best team-building technologies. It is the equivalent of connecting both the sodality wire, and the modality wire on a jumper cable to a Book of Acts energy source. Once the two redemptive structures are attached a Christian movement ignites. Let's now look more closely at New Hope's story and their remarkable results.
Pastors Wayne Cordeiro and Dan Shima opened New Hope Christian Fellowship's bank account in Oahu on March 5, 1995 with a wealth of hope. Between May 1 and July 8, a P.O. Box was issued, an office was leased, letters were sent out in search of those called to pioneer New Hope, an orientation meeting was held, and initial "practice" worship was conducted. On September 3rd, 1995, at a leaders' evening service at an intermediate school in Honolulu, leaders were assimilated into seven ministry teams: front lines, sound, children/youth, greeters, ushers, parking and prayer.
Five hundred were anticipated at the inaugural Sunday morning service on September 10. Over 800 people arrived to a standing-room only service. By February 4, 1996 there were 1563 worshippers. At the end of the first four years, New Hope had grown to over 6,000 weekend attendees, with 4,800 receiving Christ for the first time. During the first five years they had planted 20 churches. Ten churches were planted between Easter 1999 and Easter 2000. Five of these were in Honolulu, two in Japan, and one each in Montana, Samoa and the Philippines.
Perhaps the most significant statistics relate to staff ratios. With 6200 in average worship attendance during the year 2000, they had 32 full time staff and 31 part time staff and 526 volunteer team members. These ratios were less than half of the equivalent ratios at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, one of the America's most streamlined team-based ministries in Tipp City, Ohio. New Hope's ratios are less than one third of the comparable ratios at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. In other words, these favorable comparisons mean a great deal more ministry is being facilitated by staff at New Hope, for less time and money than at these other two extremely healthy ministries. Also, New Hope appears to have reached an optimum level of rotating teams in order to provide adequate lead time and rest, thereby avoiding much of the burnout associated with lay involvement.
One final set of scores relate to conventional health indicators. Most of New Hope's disciples are young, first generation native Hawaiians that mirror the diverse demographics of the greater Honolulu area. During an eight-day visit, which included Easter weekend, plus the following weekend services, my wife and I experienced a level of Christian contagiousness that was the highest we have ever experienced. The joy and radiance of Christ manifested through lay leaders using their gifts in and around the service was overwhelming, and more impressive than any other feature we observed, including excellent preaching, drama, and music.
We detected no indications of institutionalism, or leadership burnout during interviews with staff and lay leaders at New Hope. Because of their unique system of deploying and caring for team members, New Hope's casualty rate appears to be insignificant, if not zero. Most important, there is no reason in theory why such multiplication of teams and churches cannot be sustained, in a pattern reminiscent of Paul's missionary band and the Celtic Christians, for several centuries.
How can we reposition Paul's missionary band in our multicultural postmodern context? When the advances at New Hope are combined with lessons from history, there are at least a dozen practical distillations that can be immediately applied. In part four, I will highlight the particular innovations that best facilitate a PMB approach in North American congregations.
Thanks Dan for your report. Send feedback directly to Dan at mailto: ReevesSC@aol.com.
Also check out the New Hope's web site at http://www.enewhope.org. I have been out to see them and it is a wonderful experience.
(Reprinted from the Church Champions Update August 27, 2001)