Shepherding urban believers is critical to modern churches. A Chinese preacher named Chen Enzhun of Guangdong Union Church shares six key points of shepherding urban believers: to put the Bible as the core, the workplace as the threshing floor, families as units, fellowships as the model, care as the feature and preaching as the circle.
The last passage talks about the first three key points. This passage will talk about the next three points.
4. Fellowships as the model
After the Jerusalem Church had a revival that raised the number of men to about five thousand in a day in the time of Early Christianity, the apostles adopted the fellowship model to shepherd believers.
"Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people." So "the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2:46-47)
So Sunday service is not enough for a healthy church. Churches should hold meetings for different groups, namely fellowship services or group services besides Sunday service. The groups can be named after organizations, ages, places, languages, occupations or people in the Bible.
For example, the group name can be XX Church Fellowship, Youth Fellowship, College Students Fellowship, Chinese Fellowship, Nurse Fellowship, Lamb Fellowship, Stone Fellowship, Couple Fellowship, Daniel Fellowship, etc.
Fellowship meetings include praying, worshipping through hymns, Bible studying, sharing, gathering and preaching the gospel. The content of meetings varies according to the members’ needs.
5. Care as the feature
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35)
The most obvious characteristic of Christianity is love. "We love because he first loved us."(1 John 4:19) Any fellowship should be a fellowship of love. Believers loving each other is the main characteristics of fellowship life and the key symbol which measures the maturity of a church.
6. Preaching as the circle
"He said to them, 'Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.'"(Mark 16:15)
"And the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."(Matthew 24:14)
The mission of preaching the gospel can't be forgotten. The Great Commission Jesus Christ announced before his Ascension. Churches should teach believers to preach the gospel to people around them besides being testimonies in the workplace.
If possible, churches can provide opportunities to further strengthen the believers' awareness and action of missions through seminars and short-term missions to promote the church planting ministry. Churches even can encourage believers to take part in domestic and overseas evangelistic missions to make the mission ministry continuous.
