QUOTE
The Yoido church system balances the worship/administrative system with the discipleship system of the home cell groups. Yoido operates on a fourfold ministry pattern of worship, prayer meeting, ministry visitation and the home cell groups; everyone participates in these ministries.
Yoido has a church system where the right wing emphasizes worship and prayer meeting balanced by the ministry visitation and home cell groups of the discipleship system. There are programs, such as the outreach fellowships, which are lay led (not staff) and supported by offerings (not budget).[1] Yoido has a very highly developed management structure in the A5x5″ system where section leaders minister relationally alongside of cells leaders in ministry visitation. Staff pastors do not have programming responsibilities; they work in the discipleship system. Each staff pastor relates to approximately 2000 members. After an hour of prayer time, they spend the remainder of their working day, six days a week, ministering face to face with their people, visiting the lost, visiting cell members, resolving human problems and providing training, all as a team with their senior deaconesses and section leaders.[2] The Acommunity@ of the faith community is in the fellowship of the home cell groups; worship is too large to allow an intimate fellowship. The healthy core group is invested in the fourfold ministry pattern of worship, prayer meeting, ministry visitation and the home cell groups; the hierarchical 5×5 management structure links them and provides for their needs. Leaders minister where their gifts lead them; some work relationally in the discipleship system, others perform the task-oriented duties of the administrative subsystems.
The Pure Cell Church introduced in Unit 2 overreacts to the traditional church; it seeks to preserve worship as a service celebration and destroy the rest of the worship/administrative system. The desire is to free up leaders to function in evangelism through the cells; as leaders abandon the familiar programs for the new cell ministry, the result is often intense conflict as a matter of institutional self-defense.
Pushing the task oriented
ministries of the administrative subsystem into the cells can cause the cells
to shift from being relational to task-oriented. An equipping track can
standardize discipleship training at a high level of quality, just as children
are taught by college educated professionals in public school and supported at
home by loving parents. Smaller, pure cell churches that do all equipping
through a Amentor‑driven
discipleship process@
or coaching may find great variations in the quality of results depending on
the equipping gifts of the cell leader; a resistance to standardization may
cause these variations in quality to become permanent. The gifts of the cell
leader may come to dominate the cells, preventing the cell members from using
their gifts to minister to each other; cell leaders with teaching gifts, for
example, may be tempted to make their cells into classes.
[1]See pp. 64-66 in Chapter Two: Discipleship Systems at www.disciplewalk.com/resources.
[2]For more information, see the link to the article by Karen Hurston, “A Day in the Life of a Staff Pastor: A Study in Contrasts” in the Workshop Materials section of Unit 1.
NOTE (my response)
DISCERNMENT QUESTIONS
RESOURCES
Footnotes:
The quote is from Major League Disciple Making: An Overview of the Best Research on the Cell Church, an online course developed for the Institute for Discipleship at www.BeADisciple.com in 2009. Course materials, including these lectures, can be downloaded here: http://www.disciplewalk.com/IFD_MLD_Class_Links.html
All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Please review the page How and Why We Use Quotes.