A powerful temptation for ministry leaders comes when we see the miraculous ways God is using other leaders and their ministries and we want to see the same things happen in ours. Unfortunately our first inclination often is to try to duplicate the way God is moving in their setting by simply implementing their systems, methods, and programs. It’s understandable. But I’ve learned from experience that it doesn’t work that way.
Each miraculous display of God’s power and favor is custom tailored to specific situations. The Red Sea parted once. The walls of Jericho fell once. The sun stood still once…
God has no set paradigm for how He does the miraculous. He wants to do new things in new places at new times. And that includes how He powerfully works in churches. Any time we take a tangible manifestation of how God is moving in another church and turn it into a method that we think can’t fail in ours, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. The strategy that God used in one setting to reach thousands might actually decrease the attendance in yours.
By all means study other churches’ systems and best practices. Learn what they have done to harness the momentum that a move of God creates. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that a system itself can create a move of God. You can’t build a God-infused ministry through trying to mimic the miracles that God has already worked through other people.
But you can through imitating their faith.
The makeup of a miracle changes. The key ingredient of faith in the people who get to be conduits for the miraculous never does. Leaders are first and foremost models of faith before they are models of ministry. God has not raised up ministries and their leaders so that everybody can do what they’re doing. What he really wants is to put on display the kinds of things that can happen when people have the faith to believe Him for the impossible.
Don’t try to mimic anybody’s miracle. Instead, imitate their faith in a God who can do the miraculous.
God wants to do powerful things through you that the world has never seen before. But He wants to do them through bold faith that He has used and rewarded time and time again.