Sometimes organisational consultants and sociologists study church dynamics. The church growth movement was filled with such thinking, and the people involved with it made some valuable observations and suggestions. Of course, there is the fact that the church is not just a human organisation. So, there are spiritual matters to keep in mind; the church is a fascinating thing that is at the same time both an organisation and an organism.

When I was a young man, I joined the multiple staff of a large church in the Sacramento Valley of California, in the United States. There were about 2,500 people in the church, and we met in a large complex that had once been on the outskirts of the city of Sacramento. As the city grew and spread out, it overtook the place where the church was located.

When the church had begun, it had met in a one-room building next door to a pig in a dirty pen. By the time I joined the staff, there were all those people, a head pastor and several associates and assistants. One man was in charge of Christian Education.

Another was in charge of High School, and another in charge of college and single adults. Another was in charge of missions, and still another was in charge of music and worship.

When I joined them, I took over a ministry to the children and their families. That group of men was made up of young and old, those with hardly any experience and those with decades. It was a rich mix of people and a great experience to be among them. Every year the pastoral staff of the church would go for a retreat. We would pile into the church van and drive up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to stay in someone's cabin.

While there, of course we would pray, but we'd also have a great meal together, and we'd talk about ministry.

Since those days I've been in other large churches as well small ones. In every place it seems there are similarities and differences, but some things seem to come up in every place.

One issue that persists is the need to understand just what "the ministry" actually is. What is "ministry?" In one way of seeing, it's service to others. In another consideration, it's yielding to God so that God works through a person to effect growth in others — growth in the knowledge of God, in one's abilities, in one's character. I learned there are several ways to think about ministry. During one of those discussions while on the pastoral retreat, I noticed I was becoming quite involved with the dialogue. One of the men who had mentored me said that he believed it was the pastoral staff's job to get out of the way of the lay people so they could perform the work of the ministry. I remember disagreeing with him, and I recall feeling quite passionate, asserting, "Well, it seems to me we ought to BE in their way — that is, that we should be doing something for them, making a difference in their lives.

Two considerations regarding ministry help determine the nature of a church. In the first, the pastor and his staff decide how they will approach all the things that need to be done. In the second, a vision for ministry is communicated and spread among all the members. Either the pastor will do all the work himself, or he will organise others, nurturing, encouraging, and supporting them to develop ministry as they feel led by God to do so. In terms of vision, either there is one or there is not, and a true vision is not some slogan that can be repeated and rehearsed but that does not take hold and gain traction in the imaginations of anyone.

A true vision for ministry will not let a person go, and when God leads a church through the magnifying of such a vision given to its leadership, then the whole community of faith completes it.

Without such vision, the Bible declares that a group of people will perish. They will languish. They will fail to thrive.