Building Your Own Model for Cooperative Ministry is a program for mission development with many important characteristics …
- Cooperative development is the key to a successful mission program. Congregations are bound together into a larger configuration; not isolated. This vision of the church is profoundly important as a vital ingredient in the remedy for the theological ailment of isolation.
- The inductive approach to Bible study makes no presumptions. It leaves decisions about local mission to the congregation; yet trusts that God is present and active in the process.
- The Bible study topics are meaningful, useful and productive. There are challenging questions that are immediately relevant to ministry.
- One of the first results of these Bible studies is the emergence of new leaders, especially from among the laity. A norm for dialogue is established from within the congregation that invites new forms of ministry and empowers new leaders.
- The Bible studies serve to renew commitment to “orthodox” centrist theology. They rekindle vision for the kinds of ministry that have energized the church throughout its history. Yet there is no sense of return to the past; the studies clearly call congregations to move forward in faith and fidelity.
