“I deeply believe that to become who God calls us to be, we must move in our thinking from isolation to integration. Christianity, if true, requires this. Our great danger is to so compartmentalize our Christian lives that one area does not impact, influence or inform another, resulting in the equally tragic outcomes of fragmented lives and diminished impact for the kingdom of God.”
Jonathan Morrow in Think Christianly
In Exodus 18, we have recorded the advice that Jethro gave to Moses.
Moses was the sole judge for all the people of Israel and as such spent all of his day hearing the cases that came before him. Jethro’s advice was to set up judges under Moses who could hear the minor cases and make decisions. Thus a management structure was born.
One man cannot minister to all the people in his congregation, no matter how small the congregation may be. The pastor needs to have elders and deacons to whom he can entrust the ministry tasks. Even in the smallest congregations, the pastor cannot do all the ministry or make all the decisions. He must work together with the congregation for effective ministry to take place.
For such a structure as Jethro recommended to Moses, the viability of the structure depends on the degree of empowerment that the judges are given. If a particular judge’s rulings had to be repeatedly overrulled, that judge would have to be removed from his office since he would no longer have the credibility to do his job effectively.
In the same way, the pastor must empower his elders and staff to do the work of ministry and make decisions on their own. If every decision has to be made by the pastor, very little real ministry will take place. It does not matter if there are 100 people, 1,000 people or 10,000 people in the church, Others beside the pastor must be empowered to minister as they are led by God.
With empowerment will come mistakes. Ministry is sometimes a messy business and hindsight is always 20/20. When mistakes happen it is important that the leadership team is open about the mistake and learns from it.
What then is the Pastor’s role in the ministry? He should play a major role in setting the priorities and being the most visible voice for announcing those priorities. However, the pastor should remind himself that he is the first among equals and is himself subject to weaknesses and blind spots. The pastor should not want to make all the decisions.
Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:11–13 what the goal of ministry should be:
“And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” (NASB)
The goal is the equipping of the congregation for the work of ministry (ESV). It is the entire church body that is to be God’s instrument for changing the surrounding culture.
If the entire church body is ministering together in the community, not only will the pastor influence the congregation, the congregation will influence the pastor. When this happens the congregation will “stimulate one another to love and good deeds,” (Hebrews 10:24)
The infographic below was brought to my attention in response to one of my earlier posts which mentioned lying. I found it interesting so thought that I would share it with you.
From a Christian perspective we know that the answer to the question of “why people lie” can be found in Genesis 3. The result of the first sin was deception and blaming of others. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. The root cause of lying is our severed relationship with God which results in brokenness and alienation from others. In that brokenness and alienation is the drive to present things as being different than they are.
The church should be the one place where triumph over this effect of the Fall should be observed. But often the church is a place where people are less real about who they are. We feign that things are good when they are not. We intentionally mislead people into thinking that we are better than we really are.
Perhaps those of us in the church can look at the infographic below and purpose to be more honest about who we are and where we stand in our spiritual life.
The world does not need false spirituality, it needs Jesus. The only way they will recognize their need of Him is to see the church as a group of people who are honest about who they are and are demonstrating real progress in becoming something better.
As Paul reminds us in Ehesians 4:25, “Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” As Christians, we know that we cannot do this in our own power. It is God “who is at work in you, both to will and to work for HIs good pleasure.” (Phil 2:13)
“In New Testament times, the Greeks had a term for the underlying principle that unifies the world into an orderly cosmos, as opposed to randomness and chaos. They called it the Logos. The Stoic philospohers conceived it as a pantheistic mind pervading the universe. But the apostle John applied the term to Christ. ‘In the beginning was the Word’ – Logos (John 1:1). Every Greek who heard John’s gospel understood that he was claiming that Christ himself is the source of the order and coherence of the universe. As Paul put it, ‘in him all things hold together’ (Col 1:17). Creation has a rational, intelligible order that reflects God’s creative plan.”
Nancy Pearcey in Saving Leonardo
