Episode Details

A few weeks ago, from out of a post-viral haze, I posted some thoughts about the mysterious nature of Christian ministry—that is, the counter-intuitive way that God in his wisdom deliberately uses weak and stupid people, preaching an apparently weak and stupid message, in order to save people in such a way that the credit is all his (to channel Paul’s vibe in 1 Cor 1-2). 

And I asked you to help me figure out how this truth fits with the concepts of planning and wisdom in ministry. Faithfulness requires us to examine ourselves, to observe when something ‘isn’t working’ in ministry, and to make some changes to try to improve things. That’s hardly controversial. In fact, it’s hardly avoidable if we’re going to be good stewards. But how does this responsibility (which involves working with cause and effect, as far as we can observe it) fit with the spiritually mysterious nature of ministry?

Well, I was hardly inundated with responses (the always thoughtful John Lavender notwithstanding), which could mean that you’re a bit stumped about this (like I was) or not very interested, or both. 

Here’s one more bite at the question, by posing it in its possibly sharpest form. 

Is it right to plan for conversions? 

Under God, we’d love to plan and pray and work hard towards seeing 40 people become Christians over the next 12 months.

Does that sort of statement make you a tad uneasy? 

It certainly sparked off a lively debate in our ‘Strategy Working Group’ at Campus Bible Study earlier this year. 

We were preparing a draft set of goals (or ‘Desired Outcomes’ as we’re calling them) for the ministry over the next few years. We’d talked about setting some goals for maturing the Christians that we ministered to; for growing the number of people involved in the ministry traineeship; for reaching more people on the campus with the gospel; and so on. 

Interestingly though, we found that setting an ‘outreach’ goal was one thing (“we’d like to present the gospel to X number of people on campus”). Setting a ‘conversions’ goal felt like another. Isn’t this expecting the Spirit to blow according to our will, rather than his own? 

Then again (as we talked), we noted that we were happy enough to work towards other goals that depended on the Spirit’s sovereign work—for example, working towards seeing more people give up their worldly ambitions and go into full-time ministry. We didn’t baulk at having that as an aim, and to prayerfully plan and prioritise and work hard towards achieving it, all the while acknowledging that God gives the growth by his Spirit. 

But planning towards 40 (or 400) people becoming Christians? How would you even know if they had become Christians? And if our evangelistic plans and methods and strategies helped us achieve that goal, how would we prevent ourselves boasting—even just a bit, even in our own minds—in the efficacy of our strategies rather than in the Lord? 

It’s a particularly sharp form of the question we’re considering. 

How can we be practical and wise in ministry planning and practice, without beginning to boast in the efficacy of our clever methods and systems? Without beginning to think that we’ve cracked the code, and can now reliably predict what it takes to get the Spirit to blow through people’s hearts and minds? 

Having pondered this further, I have four thoughts. 

First, I don’t think we’ll ever completely solve this question, any more than we will ever penetrate all the mysteries of how God’s will and human responsibility hold together exactly. It’s another case of holding two contrasting truths together. (See this earlier post on the frequent ‘two-n