When I studied media, one of my subjects was non-linear video editing. Unlike editing older analogue videotapes, someone doing non-linear editing can begin with a scene from the end of the movie rather than the beginning. They can play with the order. I’m struck that Christian leadership requires a similar non-linear approach. Not only is Proverbs 16:9 true that “in their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps”, it’s also the case that every person has a different background, capacity, and set of circumstances. We need to be ready to adapt and work with unexpected and inconvenient situations.
A common linear way of making plans in Christian ministry is to use pathways (or pipelines). These help us aim somewhere useful. And it’s true that if we aim at nothing, we’ll hit it 100 percent of the time. But I want to suggest that while structured pathways have their uses, they also have their problems.
The Benefits of Pathways
God wants us to help people move towards maturity in Christ. There is a linear movement from being dead in trespasses (Eph 2:1), to alive in Christ (2:4-5). Once someone is a Christian, they join a body-building entity:
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Ephesians 4:16)
As a way of moving others to maturity in Christ, a pathway, whether you call it that or not, is unavoidable.
Pre-evangelism–evangelism–discipleship–training, is a kind of pathway. Such a pathway is conceptual or principle-based, rather than linked too tightly to a particular structure or program. It is fairly adaptable. It can be used one to one, or in groups, or with different structures attached. There are also structure-based pathways. For example, there is the evangelistic course–follow-up course–Bible study group–trained to serve, pathway. These are more fixed and tied to a ministry context.
When someone becomes a Christian there is a linear path they will tend to take towards maturity. They’ll learn to pray, understand Scripture, find their place in the body of Christ, and discover and use their gifts in service. These things can happen organically or through participation in ministry structures. Without some sense of the progress we’re seeking, we can’t be useful in ministry. If there is no sense of a goal in our ministries, they will likely be haphazard and inconsistent and accidentally neglectful. They can quickly dissolve into something like holy ghettos of guitar strumming, board game playing, niceness and irrelevance.
However, we need to be vigilant: the analogy of the trellis and the vine reminds us that ministry structures (‘the trellis’) need to support the growth of a spiritually healthy church (‘the vine’; see John 15 where Jesus calls his himself the vine and his disciples the branches). Otherwise, they are being maintained in vain. If we can’t make hard assessments of expired structures, we may be too attached to nostalgia, afraid of upsetting people, or addicted to activity.
The Problem with Pathways
But there’s a massive problem with pathways. And that is, to put it simply, there are people in them. Real living people! Sometimes what they need is not the next step along a linear pathway, but love and encouragement as they hold steady, or even go backwards. If we only think of ministry in terms of progress and growth, we reduce the full personhood of people. They become a bit too much like objects.
God often yanks someone off our structured pathway and puts them on another one we hadn’t thought of. It might be another location, another church, or in some life situation that fits God’s logic but not ours. At other times people take themselves off a good discipleship pathway, by making mistakes or going backwards. Or perhaps consequences of past decisions catch up with them. For reasons known only to him, God might have chosen a very painful pathway for someone—a hospital visit that lasts for years, a redundancy, a child born with a disability.
Our linear structured pathways can be suddenly interrupted. People fall off the plans we have for them. If they are God’s children, he knows what he is doing with them and they will be moving towards the new growth that he has planned. But it may not be using the pathway we had laid out.
Know Your Tendency
In my experience, Christian leaders are either more drawn to linear-pathway thinking, or to a less structured, more relational approach. It’s useful to know yourself. For leaders who find pathways stifling, it’s important to remember that in the church, one of the most loving things we can do for each other is to work for movement towards maturity in Jesus. That may look different in different seasons. But without a clear sense of what maturity looks like and how we’ll go about fostering it, it’s easy to gather a group of people keen on talking only about TV shows and reaching for their guitars.
For Christian leaders who are attached to pathways, the tendency may be towards frustration when someone falls off our spreadsheet. Such leaders may even give up on someone who has made a poor choice, forgetting that their journey with God is not over. Or, tragically, they may misinterpret the infrequent attendance or disengagement due to a private illness as a lack of commitment. Such leaders need to remember that they don’t know the whole picture and that Jesus never broke a bruised reed (Matt 12:20). A great deal of God-ordained maturity comes through suffering and sometimes even through the repentance and reflection that comes from folly or sin.
The best solution is for Christian leaders to be non-linear. The beauty of non-linear video editing is that one can still work in a linear chronological fashion, but the flexibility is there to edit a clip out of order if needed. Likewise, we should use pathways when they are useful for disciple-making. But when they are not helpful, don’t fret. We should hold loosely to our structured pathways and tightly to the essential ingredients of ministry: loving relationships, the word of God, and prayer. Even as we care for God’s people as a collective, we shouldn’t forget individuals. Yes, many will be able to follow a pathway much of the time. But some will end up far from it for reasons whether unavoidable or regrettable. We need to remember that our Father is the shepherd who is willing to leave the ninety-nine, as he seeks out the one (Matt 18:12–14). And be willing to do likewise.
