In my last post, I argued that the first goal of many ministers should be to move their congregations to be held captive by the Word of God. I speculated that this would make it easier to lead a church to change its beliefs, its vision, or even the organization of its programs. If you have a congregation held captive by the Word of God, and you ground all your changes as a minister in the Word of God, then this will naturally lead your congregation to these changes.

If my argument in my last post is correct, then the cornerstone of change in a church is its being held captive by the Word of God. Then the ministers can present plans, visions, and doctrines that flow from the Word of God.

In addition to the churches changing, it will help prevent ministers from getting burned out, discouraged, or even fired.

Let me clarify one thing: the change I am speaking of is Biblical change. Changes can be affected otherwise, but I do not believe that true, sustained change that is motivated by the Bible can take place.

But how does one lead a congregation to become captive to the Word of God? It’s easy to say that we need to do it, but what are the steps?

I ended the last post by suggesting that some ministers do not set a goal of having their congregation submit to the Word of God because they do not know do to do that. So I am going to offer some suggestions.

I should warn you that, as a young minister, these suggestions merely come from my thoughts and not from my experience. I have not tested these suggestions to the extent that I can say that they work, though I can say that in my limited experience following them have been useful for my ministry. Time will tell how well they truly work.

I want to give five suggestions of things to do, and two suggestions of things not to do.

What To Do

1. Expositional Preaching. By expositional preaching, I simply mean that each lesson or sermon should be based in a Scriptural text, and the main point of the lesson or sermon should be the main point of the text. When you effectively teach and preach the Word of God, people come under its conviction. In addition, when people begin modeling their lives after the Bible, then the resulting spiritual growth increases their confidence in the Bible. Thanks to the work of Mark Dever, John Piper, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, I am convinced that this is the most important and most overlooked aspect.
2. Teach the Holy Spirit. I grew up in a congregation that had almost no stress on the work of the Holy Spirit. But as I have matured in my faith and in my understanding of God, I have grown in my awareness of the work of the Holy Spirit. One work of the Holy Spirit is that it confirms that Word of God in our lives. We need to make sure that people understand this important work, and that they expect God to act in this way. More than any of the other suggestions, this might be the most important.
3. Model Captivity to God’s Word. Do you submit every area of your life to God’s Word? No one’s perfect, but where is your heart? If you are not willing to submit your financial decisions to God’s Word, then do not expect your congregation to submit their decisions to God’s Word.
4. Make sure your leaders are held captive by the Word of God. Are your church’s deacons or elders in their position because of their spiritual lives? Or did they get the position because of their social connections? Because they were successful business men? Because they are members of influential families in your congregations? Mark Dever makes the claim that a church’s level of spirituality does not rise above the spirituality of its leaders. Likewise, a church’s love of God’s Word does not rise above the love of God’s Word that the church’s leaders have.
5. Do negative apologetics. This is my least important suggestion, because I think it will influence the least number of people. Even the intellectuals are less affected by criticisms of the Bible than they are by hypocritical leaders or a lack of an awareness of the Holy Spirit. But some people (I am one of those) still have nagging questions about the trustworthiness of the Bible and the truth of some of its points. This is a barrier to recognizing the authority of God’s Word.

Things Not to Do

1. Don’t focus (primarily) on numbers. If you are looking for quick growth, then design a new program or introduce some innovation in worship. Trying to increase your church’s reliance upon the Word of God will likely not cause overnight explosions. But I believe that the Bible teaches that that will lay the groundwork for future growth and future maturity of the church. After all, don’t many churches who use “church growth” methodologies have trouble with their congregation being, on average, shallow?
2. Don’t focus on short-term success. Again, if you are going to measure your success by how well you’ve done in one year, then you will likely be disappointed with focusing on being captive to the Word of God. But you will likely be disappointed no matter what you focus on. One statistic that I’ve seen is that the average church plant only has 50 people after its first year. I’ve also heard the following: ministers overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in ten years. So I think there are plenty of reasons to focus on long-term success rather than short-term success.

[Updated 6/4/2011: Added "primarily" to the #1 in the "Things Not to Do" section. Fixed a sentence that was missing its ending the #2 of the same section.]

Every minister I know would like to change some aspect of his congregation’s doctrinal beliefs. Perhaps the congregation needs to become more missional and evangelistic. Or it needs to have a greater sense of the sovereignty of God. Maybe the congregation needs to understand the Biblical doctrine of grace and banish legalism from its midst.

Or perhaps the minister wants to fight another type of problem in his congregation: organizational problems. Volunteers are not organized. Small groups are not effectively planned and revised regularly. The church’s finances are not kept up with and held accounted for.

And so, with these problems looming over his ministry, impeding the work of God, a minister is driven to throw himself against the rusty mechanisms of the church. He hopes to move the church onward to more Biblical doctrines and more effective organization. He desires the church to be energized by God’s Spirit and for this congregation to advance the kingdom of God in this world.

In my short time in ministry, I’ve some experience with this, but it was certainly limited. But what I want to write about is not my experiences, but the experiences of other ministers that I know of.

Many ministers have tried to change their churches beliefs, visions, values, and administrative structures. The sad truth is that many ministers end up burnt out from this. They do not have much success in their endeavors, and it feels like swimming against the current. The church does not take much interest in their new ideas. The few people that do take interest end up forgetting about it as they get distracted with other projects or discouraged with the lack of success in the current project.

Or worse: some ministers get fired from the backlash over their attempt to change a church’s beliefs or administrative structure. People are offended that they would attack age-old beliefs or traditional ways of doing “church”. A significant group in the congregation come to oppose the minister. Often this group is made up of the people “in power” at the church, because it is their activities and beliefs that are most affected by change. If you do away with the traditional Vacation Bible School program, then the members who planned and ran that program are threatened by your change.

Eventually, this group’s opposition is so strong and fierce that the minister is fired. Or perhaps he leaves because the hostile environment is not conducive to his work or his family. Either way, the minister is gone.

So ministers end up burning out, walking out, or being kicked out. All because they wanted to change the congregation for the better.

I want to leave aside the possibility that the minister’s changes are misguided, the beliefs he is championing are unscriptural, or the new programs he has designed are lackluster. This is probably a frequent cause of his problems. But it is not what I want to focus on (although I will address it briefly later).

Look at the position the minister is left in:

1. The church has real problems, whether doctrinal or administrative; and
2. The minister’s attempts to change them will lead to him burning out, quitting, or being fired.

This is a difficult problem, surely one that has robbed many ministers of the joy of their work. What is one to do about it?
I don’t have anything groundbreaking to offer. I am still a very young and inexperienced. But I will offer a suggestion. Here’s two things that I’ve noticed:

First, many congregations are not held captive by the Word of God. The Bible is part of the background tradition, perhaps an integral part of their background traditions. But the average person in the pew is not held captive by the Word of God. They do not submit their lives to it. They do not see it as authoritative -and- helpful. They do not turn to the Word of God for guidance, because they ultimately do not regard it as true and helpful regarding their specific circumstances.

The Word of God should convict Christians and motivate them for action. When Christians are held captive by the Word of God, they are moved to do the things that the Bible commands and encourages.

Second, sometimes ministers do not push doctrines or programs (especially programs) that are a clear outflowing of the Biblical message. As ministers, especially young or new ministers, our authority is tied up with the authority of the Biblical message. Our visions and beliefs are credible and authoritative insofar as they flow from the Bible. What we want with our visions and our programs is that they grab hold of our congregation. The congregation finds them compelling and exciting.

Take small groups as an example. We can speculate about the benefits small groups will have for our church. We can estimate what type of growth our church would have if we had small groups. We can give examples of other churches that had success with our programs.

But this doesn’t guarantee that the church will like small groups. Perhaps they’ve had a failed attempt at them in the past, so all of the projections for small groups sound like wishful thinking to them.

What if, though, the church members had a deep respect for the Bible and submitted their lives to it guide? What if the minister showed the need for community, fellowship, and accountability in the Bible, and then explained how small groups effectively meet those needs? Maybe it would still go poorly, but it seems to me that one’s chances are better.

If I am right, then the cornerstone of change in a church is its being held captive by the Word of God. Then the ministers can present plans, visions, and doctrines that flow from the Word of God.

The reason this is interesting to me is that it is very rare that ministers aim at the first goal. I’ve talked to dozens of ministers about their plans in their ministries, and I’ve developed plans for my own ministry. But I’ve never met a minister whose first goal in his church is to create a church that is held captive by the Word of God. I’ve never heard that stated as an explicit goal. Perhaps we don’t see its importance.

Or maybe ministers do not set that as a goal because we do not even know what action steps we can take to achieve that goal. More on that in the next post.