Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome
Kent and Barbara Hughes' book Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome vividly portrays the significance of winning in church ministry. The book exposes the truths and myths about what constitutes success in church ministry. The book is divided into two major sections with minor components at the conclusion that include encouraging words as well as information on how the congregation and pastor's wife might assist in ministry.
The Inner Battle
The first essential section assesses Pastor Kent Hughes' and his wife's inner battle. Barbara as they start to comprehend that what they had originally been taught about success in church ministry was wrong. Pastor Kent recalls how he first started preaching the church which he belongs to currently. He discusses how the church was initiated as well as the righteous actions they did yet the ministry was not thriving. Everything at the church did not turn out how Kent was expecting. Hughes states that, “How had I come to this? In retrospect, I can now see that much of it had to do with my expectations, which went back to the very week when as a twelve-year-old I met Christ at summer camp.”
The True Definitions of Success
The second key section describes the diverse definitions of accurate success in ministry but the authors emphasize on matters which do not constitute the church ministry. According to the authors, when the desist values for success play is arithmetical development then the warning song becomes intensely threatening, increase in figures and expands in giving. In chapter 3 to 9, the authors continue to outline the true definitions of success. The writers describe correct success as the composition of seven components including faithfulness, loving, serving, prayer, holiness, believing and attitude.
Analysis of Strengths
One of the key strengths of this book is the precision and transparency the authors show throughout the text. Kent and Barbara are both exceptionally frank with the struggles they went through in their journey to church ministry. As a matter of fact, they both apprehended that their initial belief about success was wrong. The authors humbled themselves and took accountability for their troubles which need a lot of strength for a common writer. Precision and transparency strength is demonstrated in chapter two, when Kent argues, “Barbara and I saw the problem exactly…So it was in our yellow and blue kitchen, seeming so much brighter now than in the previous few weeks that my wife and I bowed in prayer. Each of us prayed earnestly, asking for God's forgiveness and freshly committing ourselves to his service. We asked God to protect us from our cunning adversary who had so subtly seduced us.”
The next strength is depicted in the way the book is written. The writers do not pretend like they are above the reader and use words that are complicated to comprehend. Each opinion is offered in a way that is appropriate to any scenario, regardless of whether the reader is currently a pastor, or a common person attending church and trying to live a religious lifestyle. The writing unambiguousness strength is demonstrated in chapter ten, when Barbara says, "We have come to understand that, as we minister, God, our Father sees us and our success in ways we cannot readily see ourselves. An experience from our time as parents of young children helped us see something of this". Also, the way the writers tell their narrative is spoken in a very humble way.
Weakness Analysis
The tome has situations in which it can be criticized despite its numerous strengths. Firstly, there is a weakness in the age gap between the reader and the authors. The novelists are able to communicate well with the parents, pastors and other leaders in the church but lacks good communication skills with the young people who are the main readers of this book. The young generation can find it hard to understand the book content at an intellectual level. For instance, Kent and Hughes argue, “Recently, Barbara and I spent an attractive evening with a young pastor and his wife who had lately begun a job in their first pastorate. After supper, we talked about how realism not only demands submission to God's utterance but hard work". Young people who do not have the experience or knowledge about marriage can feel not being part of this section hence reducing their reading morale.
The next area which a weakness can be derived is the practicality of the book. The principles described in the tome are not practicable and more so to the young people. For instance, the author states that "the congregation should ensure that they lead worship which does not put numbers above all else" which is not practicable in a normal church worship. Additionally, the book does not have vast insights about love, faith, humility, holiness and other characteristics of Christianity which were described by the authors in the volume.
Bibliography
Hughes, R. Kent, and Barbara Hughes. Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008.
