Philosophy of Ministry

So how do you ground your vision in the life of your church? Agree an upfront philosophy of ministry!


A philosophy of ministry is more important than we realise as leaders. I think this is often very much amiss in church leadership teams. Who believes that we should be involved in outreach? We all believe that. Who believes that we should witness? Right. Now your philosophy of ministry - that is, how you take those biblical values and apply them in church life, can take you in differing directions. So your philosophy could be, well we’re going to do door-to-door work - that’s one outworking of outreach. Others will say, ‘We don’t do it that way’ - that’s actually a philosophy. Another philosophy is to say - we believe in relationship and process evangelism, and so we use the Alpha course. Many of us would be there. At King’s we believe in outreach and witness; we do Alpha and our philosophy of implementation is centred on Thursday night when a large team of dedicated people run the Alpha course here. We’ve done it for over 10 years and seen great fruit – fantastic! It’s an approach to review from time to time.

Your Sunday meeting is also in your philosophy. Do you see it as being for believers and for teaching the saints? Even if you haven’t articulated it, Sunday preparation can be done as though that is what they are for. At King’s we haven’t gone to the point of running ‘seeker services’ which is what Bill Hybels did at Willow Creek, where they said ‘Sundays are for unbelievers and midweek meetings are for believers.’ That’s not where we are - but we would have numbers of Sundays which are designed for the needs of unbelievers, not for Christians and in this way our philosophy impacts how we do Sundays. I’m sure many churches do this - we just seem to do it a bit more than some.

Strategic Thinking

At King’s we would be able to say on any given Sunday, or at any given major event that we do, exactly why we’re doing it and at what point on the Rick Warren circles (community, crowd, committed, core) we find our ‘target audience’. So when some years ago we did our Freedom event, which was to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade - in our context a massive, massive issue as we are in very multicultural context - our team discussed together and said ‘this is how we’re pitching it.’ We identified our target audience.


The result was three Sunday meetings and 1400 people through the doors. That was a big Sunday for us. The mayor of Lewisham and Steven Timms MP came along to add to the moment, but really we were trying to connect into our community. So our presentation and the content were full of the gospel but we weren’t overtly evangelistic. It was very much a time of sowing and giving our church greater credibility in the community. I think we achieved that goal.

So in that sense our lesson has been - be strategic and be really clear on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. My experience of working with churches is that doesn’t always happen; the attitude can be more one of ‘we do it this way, we just preach the Bible’. At King’s we have learned to integrate our approach and package things in a way that links what we’re doing on Sunday with our midweek activities. We want our vision to be grounded in the whole life of the church and we have found it pays to be strategic.

Watch your language!

We really are happy to work with ideas from others! The next idea came from Rick Warren’s book, Purpose Driven Church - if you look at our Vision Statement you will see that it’s exactly the same as his - apart from the fact that he had a few more noughts on the number of members in his vision… He’s done it and we’re on our way! So I feel fortunate in this - I will just take things that I see others doing that God is owning and blessing and integrate them into our philosophy and strategy. We have found this approach to be really very helpful.


We believe that ‘doing church’ is not just about the members. Within Newfrontiers, with our restoration foundation, we automatically think about church members. At Kings, we believe it isn’t as simple as that – you also have a community around you which you are there to reach. How many people live in your community? Around King’s we have 250,000 people and we see it as our responsibility to get around to thinking how they will find their place with God.

There is a crowd of people that live near your church and around mine who are not yet members - but they’re coming on Sundays. Some of you have got two such people, some might have twenty. Then you have the congregation - that might well be your membership. We do have a membership at King’s and think it is very important as a commitment to a local church - but it doesn’t stop there because you know within your members’ list that there are some people that are even more committed than others in terms of turning up and serving! It’s not just members and then the rest - it’s more complex than that. Members need to be encouraged into greater maturity. And you’ve then also got some people that are your ‘core’ people.

I found this analysis very helpful in understanding my church - it affects me every time I get up on the platform on a Sunday morning because I’m aware that I’m speaking to a very broad group of people with different levels of involvement and commitment. That realization should affect how you present your message. If you’re ‘new people aware’, it will influence how you organise church life and how you explain church events, including the notices. Listen to what is said from a visitor’s point of view. Delete church jargon, ‘in jokes’ and those easy terms and acronyms familiar to you – but not to new people. Watch your language!

Growing a Church: Keep It Simple!

When it comes to bringing vision to the church, at King’s we try to present it in a creative way and engage people to step in. This might be at a meeting with lots of people being baptised or one of our regular ‘ministry fairs’ on a Sunday as serving is a very real way in which people can engage with the vision. On that Sunday all the ministry teams set up a stall and there will be a high level of ownership as they look to recruit more volunteers to help within their sphere. I’ve noticed that cakes seem to feature strongly on some stalls…! So, with Vision Sunday, a baptism and a ministry fair, the fourth Sunday of that particular month might feature a guest speaker.


One January we went through a highly recommended series – based on the book Just Walk Across the Room by Bill Hybels. We took four Sundays to cover it and I began the series on our Vision Sunday talking about one of our goals - to reach people. We integrated our mid-week group programme during that month with the topic – preaching through the series, followed by discussion in our mid-week groups, supplemented by having the book for individuals to read – these three approaches really saturated the church culture.

Some people ask me, ‘What have you done that’s different to other churches?’ or even questions like, ‘What’s the secret of your success?’ The strange thing is that we haven’t really come up with a new idea because I’m not that creative. I’ve met pastors who are very creative but don’t do what’s really simple and what works. They have to reinvent the wheel and as a result make it hard for themselves; that creative element can really complicate their lives! I like to keep things really simple and so practically all the things we’ve done have been taken from the tried and tested experience of other leaders and churches - and we’re very happy for others to take them from us as well if it helps!

80/10/10

At the beginning of one of our building projects at King’s (and there have been several in the life of this church since I came!) I wrote to the leaders of our church – that would include those who lead ministries or small groups - to tell them that we were in earnest discussion with banks and I said, ‘I need to know if you are really with us!’ Their response was to commit themselves to giving over £720,000 over the first three and a half years of the project. There were 150 of them, representing 88 ‘giving units’ as some of them were married. That’s 88 families committing themselves to giving.


Since I began to lead King’s I have taught the following principle: give 10%/save 10%/ live off 80%. This makes for sound budgeting and is honouring to God. The thing is – most people live of 105% of their income – that’s the culture we are in and the results of that approach have caught up with our world in a big way, in case you haven’t noticed! Spend, borrow and manage debt is the way the world does things – but living by the 80/10/10 principle will restrict some of the things you would like to do because you are making a priority call – putting God first and putting something aside for a rainy day.

There will be those who are in debt and who would like to honour God but have lived life at 105%. Being in debt is not fun – we know that. It can be crippling and can destroy lives. At King’s, in order to offer help and support in this area, like some other churches we have set up a debt advice team – people who will sit down with those in debt and help them to see the way ahead.

For others it is simply a matter of making priority calls and deciding what to do with the money we have. To give at King’s, people can put cash in the buckets as they are passed round during worship - but those who have been around the church for any length of time will know that as those buckets go along the rows, especially the front row, it begins to look as though no-one is giving anything. No-one seems to put anything in the bucket! The reason for this is simple – we actively encourage people to give by monthly standing order directly from their account into the church bank account. There is a great deal of money given in this way – the easiest way to give. So, for Deb and I, we have worked out what to give and when there is a salary increase I immediately work out the extra needed so that by the next bank transfer it has been updated. That’s how we do it!

Willing giving!

King’s continues to seek to raise millions of pounds beyond our usual tithes. As we look at the Old Testament we see that beyond their tithes there were opportunities for them to give offerings – voluntary and freewill offerings. I want to draw your attention to three such occasions.


In Exodus 36, when the Tabernacle was being built, it records that the Israelites brought freewill offerings ‘morning after morning’. The result was that the skilled workmen who were creating the Tabernacle left their work to come to Moses and ask him to tell the people to stop giving as there was more than enough! And it says that Moses did so and ‘the people were restrained from bringing more’ (Ex 36:3-6). This is a leadership challenge I have yet to face – but would love to have to deal with! In the past I have restrained one generous lady from giving £25,000 to one of the King’s projects – knowing her circumstances I thought this was a right thing to do. She gave £5,000 instead.

The next example is in King David’s time. He raised money to honour God but it was his son, Solomon, who actually did the building. David raised the money before it was actually needed. In 1 Chronicles 29 it says,

‘Then the leaders of families and the officers of the tribe of Israel, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds and the officials in charge of the king’s work gave willingly. They gave towards the work of the temple of God five thousand talents and ten thousand darics of gold, ten thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze and a hundred thousand talents of iron.’

It’s a great passage! Afterwards David stands and gives a great prayer of thanksgiving – if you read it you will notice that it has great similarities to what we call the Lord’s Prayer and is the Old Testament foundation for it – in effect, the Lord’s Prayer is founded on generous, willing giving!

The early church and giving

Paul wrote to the Corinthian church about giving and instructed them like this,


‘On the first day of the week each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income’

This indicates that giving should be regular, systematic and proportional. Later on, in the second and third century, Iranaeus, an early church father said, ‘The Jews were constrained to regular payments of tithes. Christians, who have liberty, assign all their possessions to the Lord, bestowing freely not the lesser portions of their property since they have the hope of greater things.’ In other words – it’s all His!

Augustine even put it this way – ‘let him render tithes and out of nine parts let him seek to give alms.’ In other words, there’s the principle of the tithe as the starting point of giving and then you ‘give alms’ on top of that – that’s showing mercy by giving to those in need.

So how are we doing with this? You might say to me, ‘Steve – you are always talking about grace. Doesn’t grace mean that God loves us – even if we don’t do anything that comes close to this?’ And you would be right! The message of grace is that God’s acceptance of us in Christ is not dependant on our performance. We cannot earn our salvation – we couldn’t earn it before we came to Christ and we can’t earn it afterwards, either. But – it would be a misrepresentation of the message of grace if we took it to mean, ‘I don’t need to pray, I don’t need to read my Bible, it doesn’t matter how I live my life... and it doesn’t matter what I do with my money!’

Randy Alcorn wrote this, ‘I will listen to the Christian who says ‘Tithing isn’t meant for us today’ – provided that he gives regularly and that his giving exceeds the tithe.’ Now there’s a statement to make us smile – and think! That’s the message of grace. Under the grace of the law it was a tithe – surely under the grace of Christ it can’t be a lesser amount... can it?’