Ministry Environment:
Churches in need of corporate healing display a variety of symptoms, all of which seem bewildering to the people who lead them. Symptoms can include irrational levels of resistance to change, distrust between leaders and followers and deteriorating interpersonal relationships. Schisms form around lightening-rod issues. Offenses become magnified. Uncivil behavior leads to church splits. The church’s atmosphere turns anxious or negative. Those who visit the church don’t stay. Church members acclimatize to the environment and no longer recognize these traits as abnormal. Unaddressed, symptoms usually increase in intensity and frequency.
Church members often misdiagnose the true nature of their corporate problems. They think the pastor, a staff member or particular lay leaders are the reason for their woes. They may attribute the problem to worship style. They sense that something is wrong, but don’t quite know what it is. Their attempts at diagnosis generally prove too shallow to be helpful.
Shepherds who minister in these contexts may blame themselves or others for the church’s stalemate. Their personal health often suffers. They carry heavy burdens and, despite their best efforts to make progress, they keep slipping back. The pressures of leadership also bear down on the pastor’s spouse and children. Serving in an atmosphere of dysfunction for long periods of time leaves pastors and lay leaders alike quietly looking for a way out.
Churches under divine discipline
Churches in need of healing are under divine discipline because of things in their history which have offended Christ. Events have transpired which incur Christ’s loving discipline on the congregation (Rev. 3:19). He uses pain to motivate them to change. He will not violate his standards and so waits for the church to take responsibility for what offended Him or languish into nonexistence.
Blessing Point Ministries brings a trained consultant into this environment. The consultant facilitates church leaders, their spouses and any church member attending through the healing process, helping the group to see for themselves what the Lord is saying to their church. The Lord makes very clear the source of the church’s problems because He wants to heal it and restore them.
The group and its leaders will be deeply affected by what they discover. They may recognize the role they played in past events contributing to the church being under God’s discipline. This results in personal as well as corporate repentance.
Courageous Leaders
Courageous leaders will make these things right before the Lord. At a corporate service of repentance sometimes called a Restoration Service, a Reconciliation Service or a Solemn Assembly, leaders exercise what we term “mediatorial authority” and “identificational repentance” for the sins of the church. The church works to rectify offenses toward those whom they have wounded in the past. Symbolic actions designed by church leaders will further illustrate the change they seek as a church.
The church then enters a new era in its corporate life. As they continue to grow out of old patterns of behavior, they experience God's blessing on their ministry in new and unexpected ways. Our Lord loves the local church and longs for it to be blessed in its work and witness. When a church responds to Him, a new era of usefulness and ministry blessing unfolds.