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Written by: Graham Stanton

SustainableYouth Ministry

MARK DEVRIES
IVP, 2008

Sustainable Children’s Ministry

MARK DEVRIES AND ANNETTE SAFSTROM
IVP, 2018

Reviewed by Graham Stanton

Good strategies for children’s and youth ministry often fail due to ineffective systems. Mark De Vries uses the metaphor of a dancefloor: it doesn’t matter how good a dancer is, if they have to dance on a rotten stage, their performance is going to end in disaster. In Sustainable Youth Ministry and Sustainable Children’s Ministry, DeVries (together with Annette Safstrom for the children’s ministry version) helps churches ‘attend to the dance floor . . . ensuring that the right systems, priorities and infrastructure are in place before beginning the dance’. Though written from a North American perspective and requiring some ‘transposing’ into an Australian context (and a small church context), there are valuable ideas in these books that will help churches think carefully about the systems that can enable children’s and youth ministries to thrive.

Graham Stanton is Director of the Ridley Centre for Children’s and Youth Ministry. He teaches Introduction to Children’s Ministry and Introduction to Youth Ministry in the Ridley Certificate program: (certificate.ridley.edu.au)

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Written by: Mark Simon

National Church Life Survey

Many Anglican churches in Australia have participated in the NCLS (most recently undertaken in 2021). NCLS has 9 core qualities that measure church vitality: 1 alive and growing faith, 2 vital and nurturing worship, 3 strong and growing sense of belonging (these three are grouped as internal qualities); 4 a clear and owned vision, 5 inspiring and empowering leadership, 6 openness to imaginative and flexible innovation (grouped as inspirational qualities); 7 practical and diverse service, 8 willing and effective faith-sharing, and 9 intentional and welcoming inclusion (grouped as outward qualities). Completing the NCLS gives a church leadership team some quantified measures of health in each of the core qualities.

NCLS provides notes and a suggested planning process for addressing weak core qualities at https:// www.ncls.org.au/articles/act/. This process is based on ‘appreciative inquiry’ and assumes that reflection on the church’s past, combined with a shared new vision, followed by strategy and implementation steps, will yield positive change. I’m not convinced. The NCLS planning materials are fairly thin on biblical priorities for church life and mission, and in trying to appeal to any Australian church from any tradition and any denomination, they feel too openended and theologically vague. Evangelical Anglican churches would likely seek a stronger ecclesiology and missiology (such as that found in Tim Keller’s Center Church, and which is incorporated into City to City Australia’s Church Revitalisation consultancy process).

Natural Church Development

Like NCLS, Christian Schwarz’s Natural Church Development (ncd-australia.org) uses a survey tool filled in by church attenders to produce a report on a church’s health. NCD has eight quality areas: empowering leadership, gift-oriented ministry, passionate spirituality, functional structures, inspiring worship services, holistic small groups, need-oriented evangelism, and loving relationships. NCD is better than NCLS at providing resources and strategies to address a church’s ‘minimum factor’ – that is, the area which scores lowest on the 8 health characteristics.

There is a series of books with titles beginning ‘The 3 Colors of…’ which each address gifts, community, spirituality, ministry, etc and provide tools to improve church health in that domain. NCD presupposes a pattern of Sunday services and mid-week small groups as the engine room of church life, and this would be familiar to most evangelical churches. Therefore, it won’t yield revolutionary change in ministry shape or priorities. Notwithstanding its conventionality, NCD has established itself as a reliable tool for church revitalisation.

Mission-Minded

Peter Bolt
Kingsford: Matthias Media, 2000

This brief book (70 pages) is short enough for every parish council member and ministry leader in the church to read and act on in one week. It provides a simple tool (a one page table) that leaders can quickly fill in to evaluate the extent to which the church’s current activities are contributing to evangelism or edification (with 3-4 stages specified under each broad goal). The tool enables a church to quickly see why it is not growing through conversions or not growing in spiritual maturity or in ministry impact. Mission-Minded can help a leader start a revitalisation process with some straight-forward analysis and a clear strategy for improving churches stuck in maintenance mode.

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Written by: Chris Porter

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Written by: Chris Porter

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Written by: Chris Porter

Zeal Without Burnout
Christopher Ash
The Good Book Company 2016

One infamous quote on burnout comes from the 19th century Scottish Presbyterian minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne—of the bible in a year reading plan—who wrote of his impending death from typhus: “God gave me a message to deliver and a horse to ride. Alas, I have killed the horse and now I cannot deliver the message.”

While M’Cheyne’s metaphorical aphorism may appear dated, the experience of burnout is far from past. Christopher Ash’s short book draws from a range of personal engagements and examples, including his own experiences of twice coming “to the edge of burnout” (15).

The book is punctuated throughout by interviews, vignettes, and personal stories of burnout experiences— including that of Peter Adam.

Ash helpfully starts the book by addressing the burnout elephant in the Christian ministry room: the mis-construal of burnout as a sacrifice for Jesus, hinted at in aphorisms such as George Whitefield’s “I would rather wear out than rust out” (24). In response he suggests that there is a “partial parallel between burnout and self-harm … [in that] each damages strength and life to no good effect.”

The aim then is not to flee from sacrifice—for we are called to costly sacrifice (Rom 12:1)—but rather to engage in what Ash describes as “sustainable sacrifice … the sort of self-giving living that God enables us to go on giving day after day” (26).

In response to the elephant Ash reminds the reader that we are but creatures of dust, embodied, finite, and limited beings in comparison to our creator. Yet our own human predilections tend to blind us to that reality, preferring— in our strength—to “believe that we are something other than dust” (37), contingent on the animation of God’s breath in us. Indeed, as it was this delusion that was shattered on a societal level by the sudden spread of COVID, should there be any surprise that we have such high levels of burnout in the post-COVID landscape?

Ash’s solution re-centres us as God’s creatures, dependent on Him, and importantly with our finitude and frailties known by Him.

From this basis Ash suggests seven “keys” of sustainable sacrifice. The first four come in the form of our own finitude, and form foils to God’s infinitude: Sleep, Sabbath, Friends (peers and fellow workers), and Food (renewal and sustenance). While each seems relatively straight forward, Ash deftly walks through each topic with a biblical guide to our own frailty, looking for God’s sustenance at each point. Suitably this focuses our attention on God’s love for us, rather than our own self-reliance.

Each chapter ends with some practical actions for the reader, and stories from those who have gone before us into burnout.

The final three keys are less attributes, as they are to do with temptations. The first addresses the celebrity culture of the modern church—of which there is no shortage of examples for how this has gone wrong. The second is a broad encouragement—and an encouragement to encourage others. Too often ministry can be seen as a competitive sport, and Ash defuses that mentality here.

The final key is a continual rejoicing in God’s grace, rather than gifts. Having joy in God’s grace as the motivator to ministry is the key here—drawing from J.C. Ryle. The book is rounded out by an extremely helpful appendix on a clinical approach to defining burnout from Dr Steve Midgley, a trained psychiatrist and Church of England minister. This chapter is worth the price of the book on its own and is invaluable at taking a self-assessment or giving to others.

Overall, the book is mercifully short for those who want

something to bite into quickly—and let’s face it, most people who are at risk of burnout will benefit from a shorter work—yet is deep enough to sustain. Highly recommended for anyone in Christian ministry— volunteer, lay, or ordained—and best read before any signs of burnout.

Chris Porter is the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Theological School, Melbourne

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Written by: Rev Dr Christopher Porter

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
by John Mark Comer
Waterbrook Press (2019)

There is a distinct irony with writing this book review heading to a busy conference on a long-haul flight. But perhaps this is exactly why it is a good book for our modern culture. While the pandemic has certainly changed the dynamics around “busyness” over the past years—and this book has been woefully overshadowed by COVID—the underlying characteristics of Hurry that this book aims at are ever more present as we exit the active stages of our COVID pandemic and attempt to catch up on the past two years.

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is a deep reflection on the challenge of modern life—although there are hints that this is a universal human predisposition rather than a uniquely modern challenge. The book is peppered with the author’s—John Mark Comer—autobiographical account of hurry and burnout with his outwardly successful megachurch, and his ongoing conversations with his quasi-mentor John Ortberg (17).

The book moves through three distinct sections. Firstly, a solid analysis of our predisposition towards speed and hurry. Secondly, some approaches towards a solution. Then thirdly, some active practices for “unhurrying your life.” Throughout the book the diagnosis of our situation is clear, as he quotes from Byung-Chul Han “[the Western world is] too alive to die, and too dead to live.” (9)

The response to this diagnosis is clear, with the titular line coming from John Ortberg’s mentor, Dallas Willard: “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life” (19). But eliminating hurry is easier said than done, as our modern society has baked in our predilection for speed into everyday life. From smartphones which are touched on average 2,617 times a day (36) through to advertising which persuades us that busy is better.

What is the solution that Comer offers? Drawing on biblical themes and Jesus’ example he emphasises the finitude of humanity, and the vastly disparate prioritisation of the time that we have. As he observes we often say we are “too busy,” and yet the average American spends 2,737.5 hours a year watching TV (72).

The solution then? Take the easy yoke of Jesus. A Jesus centred rule of life. Often “rules of life” are treated with suspicion by evangelical Anglicans, yet as Comer offers, they are a trellis for our lives. “The point of a trellis isn’t to make the vines stand up straight in neat rows, but rather to attain a rich deep glass of wine. It’s to create space for the vine to grow and bear fruit.”

With that diagnosis and prescription, Comer moves to the final portion of the book: four practices for unhurrying. Helpfully alliterated for our sermon centric ears, these are: silence and solitude, Sabbath, simplicity, and slowing. Each of these points digs deep into Jesus’ life described in the gospels and sees how His practice can be applied to our lives.

Throughout the book Comer is friendly and laconic and comes across as a mentor rather than a sage. While the examples are firmly American-centric, it is not hard to translate these for any modern context. At times the book feels a little “self-help-y,” although that is likely a product of the proliferation of self-help books on the market. Nevertheless, this is a helpful read, diagnosis, and engagement with our hurried lives. Perhaps on a busy flight is the best place to read this, it has certainly given me a lot to think about.

It isn’t a quick “life hack for the soul” (12) and nor does it claim to be. It is not exactly short at 286 pages, but instead it aims for deep formation. As Comer sagely reflects “Life is extraordinarily complex. Change is even more so. Anybody who says differently is selling you something.” (