Some points from a Matthias review of Payne and Marshall's book:
The vine of Christian ministry is people; the trellis is the various organizational structures that exist for the health of the vine. So vine work is “the work of watering and planting and helping people to grow in Christ”, while trellis work has to do with “rosters, property and building issues, committees, finances, budgets, overseeing the church office, planning and running events” (p. 9). The warning the authors offer repeatedly is that our tendency in Christian ministry is to let the trellis work take over the vine work (p. 9).
Marshall and Payne add that the habit of many churches is maintaining and improving the trellis—to the point where this sort of work ends up eclipsing vine work. But our goal should be “to grow the vine, not the trellis” (p. 14). Furthermore, since “structures don't grow ministry any more than trellises grow vines”, many of our churches need to make “a conscious shift—away from erecting and maintaining structures, and towards growing people who are disciple-making disciples of Christ” (p. 17).
It's this basic: “Christian ministry is really not very complicated. It is simply the making and nurturing of genuine followers of the Lord Jesus Christ through prayerful, Spirit-backed proclamation of the word of God. It's disciple-making.” (p. 151). Simple though it may be, the authors have this final warning: “Churches inevitably drift towards institutionalism and secularization. The focus shifts from the vine to the trellis—from seeing people grow as disciples to organizing and maintaining activities and programs” (p. 152). The continuing challenge is to keep your focus on vine work.
Showing posts with label Payne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Payne. Show all posts
Monday, April 5, 2010
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Tim Chester Reviews "The Vine and the Trellis"
A summary of the book:
?Vine work is about the ministry of the Word of God, by the power of the Spirit. It is the ministry that sees people converted, changed, and made mature in Christ. Trellis work is all the other things we do in our churches that hopefully support that vine work, but which actually aren?t vine work in themselves.? The authors of this book don?t dismiss ?trellis work? ? all the institutional and structural stuff of church. But they argue we need a refocus onto ?vine work? ? making disciples.
There?s a lot of good stuff in this book. I particularly love the key principles elaborated of chapters 2 and 12:
Ministry mind-shifts
1. From running programs to building people
2. From running events to training people
3. From using people to growing people
4. From filling gaps to training new workers
5. From solving problems to helping people make progress
6. From clinging to ordained ministry to developing team leadership
7. From focusing on church polity to forging ministry partnerships
8. From relying on training institutions to establishing local training
9. From focusing on immediate pressures to aiming for long-term expansion
10. From engaging in management to engaging in ministry
11. From seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth
Summary Propositions
1. Our goal is to make disciples
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upwards
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful teaching
4. The goal of all ministry ? not just one-to-one work ? is to nurture disciples
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker
6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence
7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities
8. The Great Commission, and its disciple-making imperative, needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings and the place of training in congregational life
9. Training almost always starts small and grows by multiplying workers
10. We need to challenge and recruit the next generation of pastors, teachers and evangelists
Making a start
Step 1: Set the agenda on Sundays
Step 2: Work closely with your elders or parish council
Step 3: Start building a new team of co-workers
Step 4: Work out with you co-workers how disciple-making is going to grow in your context
Step 5: Run some training programs
Step 6: Keep an eye out for ?people worth watching?
?Vine work is about the ministry of the Word of God, by the power of the Spirit. It is the ministry that sees people converted, changed, and made mature in Christ. Trellis work is all the other things we do in our churches that hopefully support that vine work, but which actually aren?t vine work in themselves.? The authors of this book don?t dismiss ?trellis work? ? all the institutional and structural stuff of church. But they argue we need a refocus onto ?vine work? ? making disciples.
There?s a lot of good stuff in this book. I particularly love the key principles elaborated of chapters 2 and 12:
Ministry mind-shifts
1. From running programs to building people
2. From running events to training people
3. From using people to growing people
4. From filling gaps to training new workers
5. From solving problems to helping people make progress
6. From clinging to ordained ministry to developing team leadership
7. From focusing on church polity to forging ministry partnerships
8. From relying on training institutions to establishing local training
9. From focusing on immediate pressures to aiming for long-term expansion
10. From engaging in management to engaging in ministry
11. From seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth
Summary Propositions
1. Our goal is to make disciples
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upwards
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful teaching
4. The goal of all ministry ? not just one-to-one work ? is to nurture disciples
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker
6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence
7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities
8. The Great Commission, and its disciple-making imperative, needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings and the place of training in congregational life
9. Training almost always starts small and grows by multiplying workers
10. We need to challenge and recruit the next generation of pastors, teachers and evangelists
Making a start
Step 1: Set the agenda on Sundays
Step 2: Work closely with your elders or parish council
Step 3: Start building a new team of co-workers
Step 4: Work out with you co-workers how disciple-making is going to grow in your context
Step 5: Run some training programs
Step 6: Keep an eye out for ?people worth watching?
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Payne on Training
Ministry training is about growing gospel workers.
In other words, if we want to start training disciples to be disciple-makers, we need to build a network of personal ministry, in which people train people. And this can only begin if we choose a bunch of likely candidates and begin to train them as coworkers. This group will work alongside you, and in time, will themselves become trainers of other coworkers. Some of your coworkers will fulfill their potential and become fruitful fellow labourers and disciple-makers. Others will not. But there is no avoiding this. Building a ministry based on people rather than programs is inevitably time-consuming and messy.
In other words, if we want to start training disciples to be disciple-makers, we need to build a network of personal ministry, in which people train people. And this can only begin if we choose a bunch of likely candidates and begin to train them as coworkers. This group will work alongside you, and in time, will themselves become trainers of other coworkers. Some of your coworkers will fulfill their potential and become fruitful fellow labourers and disciple-makers. Others will not. But there is no avoiding this. Building a ministry based on people rather than programs is inevitably time-consuming and messy.
Tony Payne on Discipleship
Tony has 10 points on discipleship; this is number five - that disciples are disciple makers.
Jesus gave his disciples a vision for worldwide disciple-making. No corner of creation is off limits, and no disciple is exempt from the work.
We naturally shrink from the radical nature of this challenge. It replaces our comfortable, cosy vision of the ?nice Christian life? with a call for all Christians to devote their lives to making disciples of Jesus.
Disciple-making is a really useful word to summarize this radical call, because it encompasses both reaching out to non-Christians and encouraging fellow Christians to grow like Christ. As Matthew 28 says, to ?make disciples? includes teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Disciple-making, then, refers to a massive range of relationships and conversations and activities?everything from preaching a sermon to teaching a Sunday school class; from chatting over the proverbial back fence with a non-Christian neighbour to writing an encouraging note to a Christian friend; from inviting a family member to hear the gospel at a church event to meeting one-to-one to study the Bible with a fellow Christian; from reading the Bible to your children to making a Christian comment over morning tea at the office.
In other words, walking in love as a disciple of Jesus inevitably means working for the evangelization, conversion, follow-up, growth to maturity and training of other people. And this happens (see Proposition 3) through prayerfully sharing God's word with them whenever and however we can.
Jesus gave his disciples a vision for worldwide disciple-making. No corner of creation is off limits, and no disciple is exempt from the work.
We naturally shrink from the radical nature of this challenge. It replaces our comfortable, cosy vision of the ?nice Christian life? with a call for all Christians to devote their lives to making disciples of Jesus.
Disciple-making is a really useful word to summarize this radical call, because it encompasses both reaching out to non-Christians and encouraging fellow Christians to grow like Christ. As Matthew 28 says, to ?make disciples? includes teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Disciple-making, then, refers to a massive range of relationships and conversations and activities?everything from preaching a sermon to teaching a Sunday school class; from chatting over the proverbial back fence with a non-Christian neighbour to writing an encouraging note to a Christian friend; from inviting a family member to hear the gospel at a church event to meeting one-to-one to study the Bible with a fellow Christian; from reading the Bible to your children to making a Christian comment over morning tea at the office.
In other words, walking in love as a disciple of Jesus inevitably means working for the evangelization, conversion, follow-up, growth to maturity and training of other people. And this happens (see Proposition 3) through prayerfully sharing God's word with them whenever and however we can.
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