Engaging in real ministry, young pastoral workers will encounter challenges that they have not learned or experienced in theology classes. When joining the church and starting to serve, what aspects should young pastoral staff pay attention to? Of course, they may think about expository preaching, the exercise of various spiritual gifts, visiting and exhorting believers, and caring for the lives of churchgoers, which are all very important in their ministry, for they are the manifestations of their spiritual abilities.
As the teaching of the Lord and the foundation of ministry, unity should be the direction of pastoral workers.
As long as the pastoral team is unified and capable, the overall service of the church is unified and capable. When faced with the problems and challenges of believers, even serious conflicts and faith problems, the pastoral team has the spiritual ability to solve them, therefore the church stays stable.
But if the pastoral team is not unified, with conflicts, jealousy, and strife among pastoral co-workers, the church is not unified but has relatively a large split. Even if there are only one leader and one pastoral worker in the team, they can still cause a great church split for these two people cannot be unified but compete with each other instead. Admitting believers is peaceful, but if the pastoral team is divided, then the church will have a big hole without stability.
Therefore, when young pastoral workers join the pastoral team and start serving in the church, the first thing to focus on is how to integrate themselves and maintain unity with the team. The church is a unity that especially requires the pastoral workers to have a sense of community. One of the important spiritual qualities that Christianity expresses in the church is love for one another and oneness, which the Lord Jesus teaches.
As a result, working alone in the church community, highlighting oneself, and lacking a sense of community will not only fail to bring more benefits to the church as a whole but will damage its unity.
Knowledge of spiritual authority is essential.
It is not easy to achieve unity with all pastoral staff in the pastoral team. The church of God should be a disciplined and orderly community, where the pastoral workers should maintain discipline and order. First, they need to know spiritual authority. In the community of the church, God rules through spiritual authority and executes God's laws from top to bottom. The power of spiritual authority varies from top to bottom, from the spiritual leaders to the cell group leaders. Unless there are special circumstances (such as serious faults and sins committed by leaders), God executes His will through the authority on the top to work at His church, and will not easily surpass the top authority of the church, that is, spiritual leaders, for it is the spiritual order established by God Himself.
Thus, pastoral workers should have a sufficient understanding of the spiritual authority of leaders, and pay them adequate respect and obedience. Meanwhile, they have to recognize that leaders represent God in spiritual authority, which is God's authority given by Him, and He will also maintain His authority. Naturally, those who fear God and submit to His authority should show sufficient obedience and respect in front of spiritual leaders. In this way, the spiritual authority from leaders to pastoral workers is unimpeded and consistent. At the same time, the link between spiritual authority and pastoral workers is carried out without hindrance, so that the governance of the church can be unified without impediment.
Young pastoral workers need to position themselves accurately.
They must know their position and role which is their authority in ministry. They need to carefully distinguish what kind of work can be done, what kind of work can’t be done, and what kind of work will affect the ministry authority of other co-workers. It’s important to avoid harming the unity, as well as to avoid doing work with no benefit. Sometimes it’s observed that the work that should be done that they have the authority to do, is yet to be done. The work that shouldn’t be done that they have no authority to do, has already been done much. In this way, pastoral workers think that they have worked much, but in fact, it does not benefit the overall ministry.
The scope of the authority in ministry is defined by the spiritual leaders, for which the pastoral workers need to communicate with the leaders in time and obey them. All kinds of ministries receive authority from the leaders so that the work is consistent and orderly, not sporadic. Pastoral workers and spiritual leaders establish a healthy spiritual relationship, which unifies the pastoral team from top to bottom and connects it from left to right, making the whole team more powerful and stable.
(The article is originally published by the Gospel Times and the author is a believer in Jilin Province.)
- Translated by Shuya Wang
