Adapted from Mike Day’s address to the
Baptist Identity Conference II
Union University
February 2007
Church Driven – Associational ministry starts with the church as the legitimate expression of God’s mission in the world. It affirms that the Great Commission was given to the church.
Priority Based – The association bases its ministry on the priorities of the local church.
Leadership Development: most of us learned our leadership skills in a less complex church and cultural environment and need to add to our skills base for today’s leadership challenges.
Membership Deployment: The work of the ministry is the responsibility of the whole body and we must find ways to involve a larger percentage of the body in the work of the church, inside and especially outside the church walls.
Life and Community Transformation: Unless the gospel changes the way we live the world will have little reason to believe our testimony that God can change their life and destiny. Being a transformed people we must seek to transform the world in which we live.
Spiritual Reproduction: The ultimate end of all we do is to produce more Christians and more churches.
Institution Free – The association supports and encourages institutional ministries but does not own and maintain them. It encourages churches to be in the ministry business or helps develop parachurch organizations to operate institutional ministries.
Resourced Focused – The association helps provide the churches the resources they need to accomplish the mission to which God has called them. It has no programs to maintain; no ministry of its own to develop but uses its resources to assist the churches to fulfill the commission God has given them.
Strategically Managed – The association provides a non-directive, catalytic and facilitative model of leadership for the local church. Non-directive in that the association will help the church decide for itself the direction of its ministry under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Catalytic in that the association will help the church in developing its response to the great commission without inserting itself into that church’s ongoing ministry. Facilitative in that the association will help the church discover its resources for fulfilling its mission without the church becoming dependent upon the association for those resources.
