What do you think is the essential quality of a shepherd who makes disciples?Here is my best attempt: to rejoice in the ministry of others.
Fishing with the Apostle Paul
- In his book The Art of Shepherding.
- David Hansen provides a remarkable illustration of this by describing the parallel between a great? Spiritual director? And an excellent fishing guide:.
The highest quality of the greatest fishing guides is the highest quality of the greatest spiritual directors. The best fishing guides, the masters of this trade, all like to see their customers fish as much as themselves. Sometimes it’s ridiculous to see how an excellent fishing guide starts laughing, even laughing like a young high school student, when a customer starts fishing.
Hansen continues
Similarly, the characteristic that distinguishes great spiritual leaders is childish joy, which by sheer love gives you all the attention and when you catch your fish, when your net is full, there is always that smile, that spark in your eyes that you say you just spent the best time of your day with you. [1]
Continuing his somewhat mystical and contemplative spirituality, Hansen sees the role of a spiritual director as discerning and paying attention to God’s work in someone’s life. I think it is certainly an element of pastoral discipleship, but the scriptures go further. Ephesians 4:11-13 declares that Christ gave shepherds and teachers to perfect the Saints for the performance of their service, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all came to the unity of faith and the full knowledge of the Son of God. God. ?
In other words, the pastor’s job is to equip church members to carry out the ministry, to edify one another to maturity. To refine Hansen’s illustration, isn’t it a shepherd’s job to just catch his people?Show them to fish and I suggest it is appropriate to examine a shepherd to see how much joy he finds in the works of the ministry of others and how he builds his ministry around that joy.
Think about fatherhood. It is important that children have knotted laces, but it is much more important that they learn, in due course, to tie the laces alone. While parents are sure to do a number of things for their children, they should always keep an eye on what they can teach their children to do for themselves. And parents, for their part, are delighted with every new skill their children acquire. So it has to be with the shepherds.
Do not store apartments, distribute them
In light of this, pastors should not store ministries, but should disseminate them.
Be a canal, not a dead end
Is caring for people vitally important in the pastorate? There is nothing to discuss. But if your personal ministry involves only compassion, then you run the risk of making people dependent on you, rather than preparing them to find care in others and take care of others.
Again, preaching, teaching, and evangelization are essential to pastoral ministry, but let’s say that you have been in the pastorate for ten years and that you are the only person in the church who shares the gospel regularly or who can teach in Sunday school. or who can preach the Bible, how healthy would your church be?
You don’t want to be a dead end, you want to be a chain. You don’t want to fill up with the ministry, but fill other people’s dishes with everything they can and then help them cope.
He tried to store
Many pastors are tempted to do everything for themselves. On the one hand, especially if you are the only one with the title of “pastor”, people will naturally come to you for pretty much everything. But it’s their job to re-educate them.
More than that, pastors may be tempted to replenish the ministry, because there are certain things they can do better than everyone else in the church, but it will be much better for their church to endure some mediocre Sunday school classes and then a few months. or a few years later, be fed by a qualified teacher who grew up under his diligent training. It will be much better for the church to learn to listen and listen to other counselors than to try to carry all the burdens yourself.
A matter of heart that hides
Can we be proud of a job well done?Especially if church members realize this work correctly. It takes true humility to divert one’s attention and direct it to others. It takes a real detachment to designate another person for something he can do better, in the name of that person’s growth in Christ and, ultimately, in the name of the growth of the whole church.
If your desire is to equip your church and help it grow to maturity, then you will find as much joy in the ministry exercised by others as you do exercising it yourself, or even more, and this joy will be contagious. This will help build a culture of discipline and ministerial training in your church.
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See practical examples of this posture by reading the full article
By: Bobby Jamieson. © 2012 9Marks. Original: The Heart of a Shepherd Who Makes Followers.
This article is part of 9Marks.
Translation: Vin-cius Silva Pimentel. Review: Vin-cius Musselman Pimentel. © 2015 Faithful Ministérium. All rights reserved. Website: MinistryFiel. com. br. Original: The heart of a pastor who makes disciples.
Authorizations: You are authorized and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format, provided that the author, his ministry and translator are no longer no longer modified and not used for commercial purposes.