The Roadmap vs the Compass
Use the right one at the right time
If you’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean, a roadmap does you no good.
If you’re lost in New York City, a compass may help a little, but a roadmap is what you really need to get from point A to point B.
In either case, if you don’t have the right thing for the spot you’re in, you won’t have a clear path forward.
Let’s apply this to ministry.1 A few examples:
Compass Question: What is Jesus asking me to do with my life?
Answer: We need to give people a compass so they can navigate Scripture, pray, and seek the Lord for a question like this. If we give them a roadmap, it might be tainted by our preferences.
Roadmap Question: How can I share the Gospel with a Muslim?
Answer: While we can do compass work here by digging through Scripture and learning the inner workings of Islam, we can also pick up a roadmap and use several different ready-made tools that will get us to our answer far quicker.
A compass in New York City is better than nothing. You’ll get there eventually. But a roadmap helps you get there faster.
We build the tools (roadmap) on the principles of Scripture (compass). But roads are different in different places, and a compass always points in the same direction, no matter where we are. We may need to come back to the compass of Scripture if the roadmap we have isn’t working.
What do you need right now? What do your people need right now?
I first heard of this metaphor for ministry from Warren Wiersbe:
Because I had received excellent training, I didn’t lack for methods or ideas, but I wasn’t clear as to principles. I was on the ocean of life with a road map instead of a compass.
Wiersbe, Warren. On Being a Servant of God. Baker Books, 1993. page 2.
A surprising classic upon rereading. The first half of it was fire.