Servant Leaders
Below is from a church planting manuel;...some good food for thought...and deed.
Two key ministries are at the heart of building servant leaders: caring ministries and leadership development. Caring ministries provide a nurturing context for spritual growth. They also provide opportunities for existing and emerging leaders to reach out in practical ways to people in need. The building of Christians into Servant Leaders is never done in a vacuum, much less in a classroom. It is always the combination of spiritual ministry (doing), spiritual maturity (becoming), and instruction (knowing).
If we read how Jesus taught his disciples, we see that he did not educate his disciples in a classroom. A classroom relationship is one in which the students and teachers contact one another on the intellectual point only. They do not live together, eat together, and contact one another socially, emotionally and spiritually as well. Jesus did not set up a classroom relationship between himself and his students nor between his students and one another. Rather, he created communities of learning, where there was plenty of time to work out truth in discussion, dialogue and in application. Therefore, the crucial (though not exclusive) venue for discipleship is in communities, not classes. That is, fellowship groups, friendships, not academic settings alone.
posted by Dale Callahan at 9:56 AM
1 Comments:
WOW, Good stuff to think on. I have long been a proponent of disicpleship instead of "programming".
In alot of contemporary churches around North America, "programming" is becoming the norm. We see a need, we build a program and we provide a service to those in needs. Sounds great, but it isn't the demonstration that God laid out in the early church.
We see clearly thet God place men in leadership roles to love and become part of everyday for other belivers. They ate together, worked together, laughed together and worshiped together.
They all committed to one another to meet each others wholistic needs.
I find it far to often that a program is made and 2 or 3 people are burdened with trying to care for a single need for numerous other people in the church. Singles groups, divorced groups, childrens groups, college and career groups, 50+ couples groups, Hymn groups in churches that sing only contemporary worships songs, Modern Worship events for churches that sing only hymns and the psalter.
We are allow modern though and traditions to turn our churches into consumer gatherings not church.
Scripturally, I see whole groups of people caring for wholistic needs of the people in that group. That is what church is about.
If someone is moving, we don't make a "moving ministry" that is on call for that, we commit to one another to help move. We shouldn't need a minsitry to care for one another. If one of my church family seems to be a single over 25 and hasn't found a potential mate, we don't or shouldn't have to start a "Singles over 25 group". We should as a body of beleivers be willing to talk with that person, invite them into our homes and into our lives as with other people and refer Godly men and women to other Godly men and women.
It is so easy to become a consumer and not a partaker of church, and as soon as you do it is no longer church! I pray that we can all seek out a few, close, and dear people that we can commit to wholistically. If we all do that then everyone is taken care of by everyone. Not 3 pastors and a secreatary struggling to form groups to supply the most basic and needed care for a body of beleivers.
Those are my two pennies.
Blessings & Peace,
Shep
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