What does it mean to be Word based and Spirit empowered?

Many ministries I work with would say that they are "Word based and Spirit empowered" but have not defined what that means. It was an instructive exercise for our organization to go through the process of defining what we meant. Here is our definition. As you will notice it goes far beyond simply knowing Scripture.

Word Based & Spirit Empowered

1.    Believing – We are confidently believing that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, trustworthy and without error in the original writings, and the divine and final authority for Christian faith and practice; and that the ministry of the person of God the Holy Spirit is to convict, regenerate, baptize, indwell, fill, anoint, empower, sanctify, guide, instruct, comfort and distribute spiritual gifts to the believer for godly living and service.

2.    Listening – We are growing in our confidence, awareness and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit by intentionally taking time to wait upon God and listening to Him as individuals and teams.

3.    Engaging – We are growing in our regular practice of engaging the Scriptures personally, i.e. reading, studying and meditating upon them as a source of spiritual food, guidance and communion with our Creator; and engaging the Scriptures corporately, i.e. receiving within a grace filled community of the Body of Christ, truthful, challenging & helpful teaching and preaching to understand God’s truth and apply it to our lives.

4.    Seeking – We are regularly seeking and asking for the filling and supernatural empowering of the indwelling Holy Spirit in our lives and ministries.  This empowering is expressed as the Holy Spirit sovereignly chooses to empower the gifts He's given us, orchestrate events, produce transformation, and enable us to do the “greater works than these” that Jesus said we would do.

5.    Obeying – We are growing in our obedience to the Scriptures, to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and to His will for our lives. We are learning to more quickly confess our sin, repent for our failure and return to the Father to ask for the Holy Spirit’s filling.

6.    Abiding – We are growing in our intimate relationship with our heavenly Abba. And we embrace “Intimacy Before Impact” i.e. the necessity of this spiritual intimacy with God and dependency upon Him before we can have “much fruit” in our lives and ministry.

7.    Praying – We are growing in another aspect of this abiding relationship with our God, the ongoing conversation with God which the Bible calls prayer.

8.    Worshiping – We are growing in our personal and corporate praise, thanksgiving and worship of our amazing God.

9.    Expecting – We are growing in our faith, expecting that our Sovereign and Almighty God, because of who He is, will do the extraordinary, the miraculous, both in and through us and our ministries.

10. Impacting – We are growing in our passion for the glory of God and the above elements, all resulting in transformation and the bearing of much lasting fruit.