Ministry...in a church?

In most churches that I've been, a ministry is kind of like an accessory. They seem to work like this. There's 2 kinds of churches: a wave church and a tree church.

I call them the wave Church and here's how a wave works. Waves start out small and builds as things get added (like ministries). The wave gets bigger and bigger, and the whole time the whole wave is working towards a goal. This goal is written and some that's not written. The written ones often apply to reaching their community or being well known in their area for something. The unwritten goals are things like, to have this number of people by the end of the year, and even things like making the people who brings in the money happy. So there are good things about this wave church. They don't usually have unnecessary ministries and are very specific on who they want to reach. The problem is the wave church is all going one direction. True they stay on direction, but they also are afraid to stretch out. They are very good at reaching one person, but miss everyone else. They also can't use anything that they haven't done before. In other words, it's not with the direction of the church.

The 2nd church is one I've called the tree Church. Here's how a tree church works. A tree grows by giving it substance, growing out branches, and constant pruning. In a tree church the tree grows. The trunk is the tree, it's the people. In a tree, the trunk doesn't change, but the branches go out from it. The branches are ministries, ways to meet peoples needs, and ways to reach people. This is one major way that a tree and a wave are different. Where a wave all works in one way, a tree works in multiple ways. The tree spreads out, covers a lot of different things, but still works for the same purpose. They all work toward the sun, and they also work to nourish whole tree. They reach many people, but it may look to some people like all the branches are not working toward the same purpose. It's up to those people in those branches to educate those on the outside. The tree church tries things new, and doesn't hold a whole lot of honor for tradition. A thing that most people don't understand about the tree is that pruning is necessary. If things don't work they get cut back. Even if an event or some program seems popular, but doesn't meet the purposes it's cut. Everything has a purpose.

There are 2 types of churches: wave vs tree. I've been in both kinds of churches. The wave works well for most older people, but ignores relevancy. They say "we do it this way because we've always done it that way." The tree church is for 30 somethings or younger. This group has the stigma of changing just for the point of change. They are very relevant, but also ignores some of the harder things from Christ in order to keep a relationship.

Neither are perfect, but both are used today...now it's up to you to decide which you should serve in. Jtw