MIDWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

PROJECT REFLECTION

A REFLECTION PAPER

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE COURSE

CE 8301 CHURCH ADMINISTRATION

BY

CLAYTON MILLER

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

APRIL 29, 2022

 I think that our project was ultimately a success. There are some areas that our project

could use some work on such as a successive line of thought through the project or a focus on

unity for the project. Since the project was divided up between the four of us there are some

aspects of the wider ministry handbook that might not be consistent from one section of the

project to the other. I think one reason for this could be that our times of meeting one another

were very loose and not focused on the overall project. While we were able to meet each time

that we needed, we never were able to come to our meetings with the goal that we set to be

finished with by the next meeting. This problem led to our group (besides me) to work on their

part of the project the week before or the week the project was due. This is one problem that I

think severely prohibited our group from developing a more connected project.

One thing that I realized upon looking at our final document was the overall formatting of

the project. Since each part of the paper was written by a different person it is hard to keep

consistent formatting between each section. Not to point fingers at Michael who took charge in

trying to format that paper but I know that there are aspects of the final product that could have

been changed to make it more in line with the MBTS format.

Another problem that I think hindered our project was that there was no sustained

communication between all of us about the project. We all know what areas we were working on

but we never reached out to one another and iron out things that caused problems for each other.

While I worked on the team member qualifications, I was never in contact with Jack about team

member expectations or strategy and vice versa. The lack of communication between our group

led to repeating the same things that we needed to work on at our meetings which limited our

ability to work on and grow the project. While things ultimately worked out, it was a struggle to

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try and gather the needed information from another person to work on your assigned section of

the project.

One thing that I think that we did a great job of is picking a relevant and useable ministry

handbook that any of us can use as a basis for an evangelism ministry at our future churches.

While some things may need to be tweaked for the specifics of the churches we will be at, it can

provide us a general idea of what we should be looking for in an evangelism and apologetics

ministry. The amount of material that we have worked on should give us enough of a skeleton

for a future ministry that with a couple of fixes here are there it can be used in our churches.

Another thing that I feel that we did great on in our project is proper engagement with

relevant Scripture and resources. The project is soaked in plenty of references and direct

quotations of Scripture that show that the heart of our ministry is not in pragmatic goals or

achievements but in the truth of the Word of God for the church and for the believer. Our project

was also able to use relevant data from local demographics to target our ministry in regard to the

community that Sugar Life was in. Some resources that we were able to use ranged from the

Missouri Baptist Convention’s surveys of local demographics to resources for church polity and

budgeting like Baptist Foundations or Budgeting for a Healthy Church.

I believe that Jeremiah, Michael, and Jack did an awesome job with their contributions to

the project. Each one of them did an amazing job with the assigned sections that they were given.

Michael did a great job with structuring the overall chain of command for the ministry and laying

out the general roles that each member of the ministry did. His work in the section about team

member qualifications was also a big help for me as I worked on the team member onboarding

process. Jeremiah did a spectacular job of working on the vision and values of the project. The

way Jeremiah was able to highlight how each of these values plays a big part in our ministry

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helped to bring the ministry a sense of purpose and brought it closer to reality. Jack as well did a

great job of giving the strategy for the project as a whole.

I feel that I did an alright job in terms of the church's polity and distinctives as well as the

team member onboarding process. I know that there were places in the church disctictives that I

could have fleshed out more but overall I think I did an okay job in portraying our church’s

polity and describing the process of how a church member becomes a part of the ministry.