ORGANIZING PEOPLE FOR MAXIMUM MINISTRY IMPACT

Being the pastor of a church is a challenge that is unlike any other. Suddenly life is much more busy and complicated than a seminary student ever thought it would be. There are an endless amount of places to be and faces to see. While there may appear to not be enough hours in the day to get all of the work of the ministry accomplished, there are many things that can be done to make life easier on the shepherd. One of the most important traits for any pastor to have is the ability to organize people. Developing skills in this area will go a long way toward maximizing ministry and minimizing maintenance, and thus, alleviate a great deal of frustration for the busy pastor.

Moses Organizes the Children of Israel

The book of Exodus gives some excellent insight into the leadership abilities, and at times the lack thereof, of a man by the name of Moses. In chapter 18, after the Lord has used him to lead the children of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt, Moses is paid a visit by his father-in-law, Jethro. After the customary giving and receiving of pleasantries, Moses begins to recount for Jethro all that the Lord had accomplished on behalf of His people as well as the hardships that they had met along their journey. The next day an interesting exchange takes place between these two men which would change the course of Moses’ ministry forever. In Exodus 18:13-14 (NIV) it says, “The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, ‘What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?’”

No doubt this question came as a surprise to Moses. His reply to his father-in-law seems to indicate that Moses had never before thought that his daily routine of ministry was actually a problem. “Moses answered him, ‘Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and laws’” (Exodus 18:15-16 NIV). To put this into modern day ministry vernacular, in essence what Moses was saying was, “But this is the way we’ve always done it.” Jethro’s response was firm but loving because he wanted to insure that his son-in-law would not burn-out from the workload. “Moses' father-in-law replied, ‘What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone’” (Exodus 18:17-18 NIV). Thankfully Moses wasn’t so set in his ways that he refused to glean from the wisdom being presented to him by his father-in-law. For the remainder of the chapter Moses is given instruction and begins to implement a strategy of ministry which is still thoroughly applicable for pastors today. Jethro tells Moses that he should continue to be God’s representative to the people by teaching them His Word, but that he should also establish a structure whereby capable men would be chosen to assist in leading groups of thousands, groups of hundreds, groups of fifties, and groups of tens. This, however, was not the only place where we see the organizational skills of Moses on display. In Numbers chapters one through five we see another example of Moses’ desire to structure the children of Israel in such a way as to achieve maximum ministry impact.

In his notes on The Moses Model, Dr. Michael R. Mitchell asserts that “Moses’ administration of God’s will and directives was characterized by a blend of structure construction and job design.” Dr. Mitchell shows that in the life and ministry of Moses three categories become evident: the work, the worker, and the workplace. The work that God had called Moses to do was to initially lead the people out of Egypt and then to serve as a judge over them. The interesting thing to notice about Dr. Mitchell’s notes is that Moses was not the only “worker”; God was right along side of him in order to help him carry out the mission and ministry that He had called Moses to do. This should be a great encouragement to pastors as they seek to accomplish the daunting task of discipleship. The workplace that Moses had to endure was one where people were lining up from sun up to sun down in order to have him decide their legal rights in a given situation. The sheer volume of this type of labor would be enough to make any man crumble in a short amount of time. This is why, according to Dr. Mitchell, “a structure was devised to facilitate the desired environment.” Moses was to give spiritual guidance and vision and other capable men were to be chosen who could carry out the day to day operations of ministry. These men would be organized as leaders over clusters of people; some serving as supervisors over groups thousands, groups of hundreds, groups of fifties, and groups of tens. From there Dr. Mitchell also points out how the Lord organized the work, the workers, and the workplace for Moses. In Numbers chapter 2, we see Moses arranging, grouping, and sorting the tribes of Israel around the Tabernacle of God. In Numbers chapters 3 and 4, we see Moses appointing the Levite families and clans to specific tasks. And finally, in Numbers chapter 5, we see Moses setting up rules and regulations for purity and holiness in “the workplace.”

We can be certain that God’s agenda for the people of Israel was to build, what Dr. Mitchell calls in his notes On Team Building, “chemistry,” “camaraderie,” and “collegiality.” The big idea here is that all of the individual parts are working together in harmony and unity in order to create a synergy of purpose and production. As Dr. Mitchell suggests, this was intended by God to create an environment where “esprit de corps” or group spirit and morale was in no short supply. A pastor should be reminded here of the words of the Apostle Paul to the Church in Ephesians 4:15-16 (NIV), “…we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” The structure that God desires is one in which the whole body is growing and being built up because each of the members are doing their part.

Application in the Local Church

Structure is “a system or organization made up of interrelated parts functioning as an orderly whole” according to Dr. Mitchell’s notes entitled On Organization As Structure (Mitchell 2004, 1). When the structure within a church is good all of the jobs have been clearly defined, the workers have been carefully trained, and the pastor is able sleep peacefully at night knowing that the work of the ministry is not resting solely on his shoulders. Although some pastors like to think of the church as an organism rather than an organization there can be little doubt that the organism would not be able to survive without a certain level of organization. Even within a human organism there are organizational systems which God has designed in order to keep the body functioning as it should (i.e. skeletal, respiratory, immune, digestive, endocrine, nervous, lymphatic, muscular, urinary, and reproductive systems). All of these systems work together to achieve God’s purpose in and through a human life.

I mention the reproductive system last because of its clear relationship to the process of discipleship. If the mission of every church is to reproduce disciples, then it is clear that pastors must implement a structure and system by which that goal can be achieved. As Lee Hardy said in his book titled The Fabric of the World, “…we may, as individuals, be wholly committed to the idea that our work should be a place where a significant range of our talents and abilities can be exercised in the service of our neighbor, but whether our work in fact has that characteristic will depend on the way it is organized.” The Senior Pastor’s role, much like Moses, is to organize the people into groupings where they can be loved and cared for by “under-shepherds.” The Senior Pastor’s job is to give spiritual guidance to his flock as well as to cast vision. The Senior Pastor must also insure that lay-ministers are being equipped to effectively shepherd smaller groupings of people. In most smaller congregations this involves the use of a small group ministry. If the “Moses Model” were to be implemented even at a small church, there would be a supervisor over a cluster of approximately five small groups (assuming each group had a grouping of ten people). Depending on the size of the church, there should also be a lay-leader, or possibly even a paid staff member, in charge of two of these larger clusters of fifty people. In an extremely large church there would more than likely be a need for multiple pastors each having oversight of groupings of 1000. If all churches would organize themselves using Jethro’s advice there would be a lot less burn-out and a lot more discipleship taking place.