Ministry Nuts and Bolts: What They Don't Teach Pastors in Seminary

Many seminary graduates envision ministry as ninety-five percent preaching and five percent for everything else: weddings, funerals, visitation, and board meetings. The pastor's preaching and teaching ministry is often viewed as the primary vehicle for discipleship and outreach. Most pastors, however, do not and cannot devote extensive time to preparation for preaching or teaching and find that their enthusiasm for ministry is sapped by a sense of confusion and frustration. A careful analysis of the primary areas of struggle for pastors reveals that pastoral training programs have neglected four foundational ministry concepts—values, mission, vision, and strategy. Pastors and congregations often fail to agree upon a set of core values that provide unity. A lack of direction indicates a corresponding lack of mission. And a church without either core values or mission will lack both a vision and a strategy to minister to the surrounding culture. As a church planter, pastor, and seminary professor, Aubrey Malphurs examines those four vital concepts and demonstrates how to implement them in local church ministry. Ministry Nuts and Bolts provides the pastor or parachurch leader with a step-by-step guide for developing the basics needed to lead a ministry into the twenty-first century. As the author observes, "The evangelical churches that God is blessing in north America have carefully thought through [values, mission, vision, and strategy]. Thus, it behooves the rest of the churches to learn from their examples and pursue the same if the future church is to have maximum impact for the savior in the third millennium.