Local church ministry is a complex endeavor. It involves a small group of people empowering a much larger base to volunteer, give, and live in community with one another. Leading a church is as much art as it is science.
One thing I’ve learned from sitting in various lay church leadership positions and from listening to and working with many church leaders across the country is that they all wish they had a better system for uncovering ministry silos. Just to be clear, ministry silos are places within communities of faith (sub-groups) who come to believe that their place of service or role ministry is the primary and predominant vehicle of ministry.
Ministry, especially local church ministry, is at its core interdependent. We need one another and must work together to create any degree of measurable change or Kingdom impact.
I believe there are six reasons you should be concerned about identifying ministry:
- They lead to dysfunction and lack of trust.
- They lead to competition for people and resources.
- They can result in little kingdoms within the church.
- They can result in pride.
- They can result in dropped balls as unique, disconnected systems are created to support them.
- They aren't Biblical!
If you choose to ignore ministry silos, you are allowing a shift in power to occur that could potentially limit the influence of the ministerial staff, elevate individuals with less than pure leadership intentions, and you risk fracturing your church body. None of these scenarios allow the local church to be the transformative agent within any community. In fact, they provide good evidence of why so many refuse to come to church in the first place.
Do you have a system or process in place to identify ministry silos?