Confirming the Need for Balance by Dr. Gary Becker

A recent Wall Street Journal has confirmed the importance of the ministry of balance in ministry. Speaking about the megachurches, the article starts by saying, “These churches have grown by staying away from hard-core biblical teaching and instead have lured the curious with slick multimedia presentations and skits, sermons with cultural relevance of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and maybe an iced cappuccino for the trip home.” (The Wall Street Journal – June 27, 2008, “Houses of Worship – Less Seeking, More Thirlls” by Dale Buss)

BBM began out of a conviction that churches and pastors were in need of balance. It became apparent that a movement in the culture of churches was leading to an imbalance. The imbalance led to a depreciation of the importance of sound biblical exegesis. Emphasis was placed more on the quality of the worship music than on the content of the message.

The challenge we have sought to bring to churches has been the importance of balance between relating to our culture and sound exposition of the Bible. We have emphasized that the exposition of the scriptures should never be compromised for the name of “worship.” Unfortunately the idea of “worship” began to be more of a focus on expression and less about hearing form God.

Our ministry continues to remind pastors and churches of the four simple balance points.

1. First, keep the priority on the character of God. A weakness in ministry for several decades has been the emphasis on God’s love to the exclusion of God’s holiness. The emergent movement today speaks of having a “conversation” with God. A danger in this concept is that we lose the prophetic nature of ministry. Prophets are called by God to pronounce God’s message not simply offer a discussion. Balance begins with recognizing the responsibility to make our first priority declaring who God is.

2. Founding ministry on the Biblical exposition is the essential to balance. The tendency in the seeker driven ministry is to avoid biblical truth that may be confrontational. This is actually a failure to truly teach the “whole council of God.” Balance is dependent on not simply teaching the Bible basics, the “milk,” but moving on to the “meat” of the Word of God.

A simple illustration of this is to evaluate what is essential to worship. The pulpit being in the center of the platform has historically stood for the teaching of the Bible as the center of worship. Worship services often make music, drama, or testimonies the center over the exposition of the Bible.

3. Following up on people through fellowship and ministry is the third essential to balance. Churches are often faced with measuring their effectiveness by numbers in a worship service. Numbers can be a tool in measuring effectiveness if you look at all the numbers not just attendance. The priority of worship moved from a “prophetic” ministry declaring who God is to a performance or “conversation.”

Balance in ministry requires that we evaluate effectiveness not simply by worship service attendances. We need to be sure people have faith that is deeper then a once a week service where people can get “lost” in the crowd. Balance comes from getting people into growth group settings and meeting needs through mutual ministry.

4. Focusing on the world through local and global evangelism is the fourth point of balance. Social responsibility cannot be ignored, but remember the difference between the church and social agencies is the church is called to meet social needs for the purpose of meeting the eternal needs. A loss of balance has come through our focusing on being sensitive to world crises. It has become easier to think of ministry in terms of social responsibility than meeting the deeper needs of salvation.

The ministries of BBM continue to seek to help churches in evaluating their ministry and equipping them for a balanced ministry. We encourage relevancy that is balanced by an absolute commitment to biblical foundations including teaching the “hard-core” truths of God’s Word.
 

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by Dr. Gary R. Becker, President

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