The Apostle Paul: Partnership in Evangelism and Mission Part Two

Overcoming the inhibitors of ministry through the Apostle Paul's teachings.

Movements in Partnerships:

I have not yet met a church or ministry organization that does not have an innate desire to move people along some form of the continuum toward maturity in Christ. The hard truth is, though, that most churches and ministry organisations do not have an existing plan on how to move people forward in their faith and in their ministry involvement to become multipliers in ministry and not only maintenance-driven. Many have written about one possible cause – a discipleship deficit – which continues to rob evangelicals in particular of missional people serving the purposes of God in a timely fashion. My diagram below, entitled the “Partnership Matrix,” illustrates the movement of people toward ministry involvement and multiplication. In this article, I will explore the various stages in the process toward multiplication and unpack several ministry inhibitors that remain as obstacles for believers in moving to the next stage of their growth in their conceptualisation, articulation, involvement in the missio Dei.

Most people that have grown up in evangelical churches around the world would appreciate the centrality of the Word and the quintessence of the atonement of Christ to the Christian faith and a need for repentance and conversion. These are important themes in the evangelical discourse. Many, however, have had a tainted understanding of mission and evangelism, believing that these tasks were either for the professional, gifted, or were to be in the realm of the pastorate. In other words, most evanglicals held no responsibility for these central aspects of the Christian faith. This has led to the current inertia evangelicals have experienced in church life in recent decades ...