This past week
I’ve continued to think about what makes a ministry transformational rather
than simply informational. I’m convinced that it’s such an important matter
that we need to think about it deeply. Let me share some of the ideas that have
been clarifying in my own mind.
Informational
ministry, as I mentioned last week, is primarily concerned with communicating
ideas, facts and propositions to the minds of people. There’s an important
place for this in every area of life, including spiritual life. Without truth
we will be spiritual jellyfish. We can never grow strong in the faith with
understanding the facts of our faith. So from that point of view, there’s
nothing at all wrong with communication that aims at helping people know,
understand, remember, and use information. Indeed, we cannot have too much of
it.
A problem
develops, however, when our interest in the facts and doctrines of the
Christian faith remains a purely informational interest. Simply understanding that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God, that he died to redeem people from their sin, and that he reigns in
heaven until he returns at the end of the age, isn’t what the gospel aims at.
These facts must be presented and understood, but they must also be believed and responded to. They are supposed to result in changed lives. Without
that response, they lie useless in our minds.
That’s where
transformational learning and ministry comes in. It’s concerned with lives
changing in response to truth. It wants to see people’s minds becoming channels
for life change, not canisters for storing information. It presents truth to
the mind that it might reach the heart and change the life.
The question is:
What is different between the two kinds of information transfer or
communication? What is it that makes some of our teaching nothing more than
informational, and some of it truly life-changing? Can this be analyzed and
explained?
When it comes to
spiritual truth changing people, the most essential factor is the Holy Spirit.
The facts about Jesus Christ can be communicated in a way that can be understood by anyone. However, they won’t
make sense to anyone until the Holy
Spirit opens the eyes of our hearts to see their personal significance. Without
his ministry of illumination the most important information knowable will leave
our hearts untouched.
That understood, there are nevertheless ways in which we can present truth
that are adapted to affecting change
in the lives of people. One of these is to speak directly to life issues – to
select and present information is a way that addresses issues of the heart.
This past
Sunday, for example, I wanted to help my adult Sunday School
class grasp that the first step to a closer walk with Christ lies in
appreciating what God has done for us in him. I wanted them to see that it doesn’t
consist in something we do – a
mechanical technique or set of rules – but in realizing what God has done in bringing us into a
relationship with Jesus.
I could have
contented myself with telling them that, but I knew that if I did, its impact
would be minimal. Likely as not they would forget what I had said within
moments. I needed to present the idea in a way that made the natural
(works-orientated, self-reliant) tendency of their hearts clear to them, and
that pointed them to the gospel solution. In the end I decided to do so by
taking them to the book of Colossians. In that brief letter Paul shows the
Colossian Christians that the way to a fuller experience of God is not through
ritual observances or self-imposed bodily pains, but through faith in Christ
alone.
How effectively
I did that is not the point. Hopefully it does illustrate, however, that
transformational ministry aims to bring about change by addressing issues of
the heart, not merely by supplying information to the mind. I will write more
on this subject next week.