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.
