God has designed His church to function like a loving family that you can invite people into. Church is not a place to issue edicts; church is a place to nurture growth. Church is a place that exists for the purpose of helping people grow and mature from being spiritual babies to being spiritual adults.
In Ephesians 4:11-16
this portion of Scripture explains this
concept of growth perhaps more clearly than any passage. This is a central, core passage that is going to help us all to
understand why our involvement in a local church is so vitally important to our
spiritual life.
In verse 11 Paul begins-- "It was
[Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be
evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers..." Verse 11 spells out four specific gifts of church
leadership, each one of which involves teaching God’s Word.
When God gave birth to the church He used apostles and
prophets to establish healthy believers by means of writing down the New
Testament Scriptures. Today, God continues to build up the size and strength of
Body of Christ through the work of apostles, prophets, evangelists, many of
whom serve as missionaries around the world, and pastor-teachers, both of who teach
the Scriptures to people.
What’s God’s goal or purpose behind a pastor in the local church, me
for example? The purpose is to teach the Bible to you? God’s answer to that
question in verse 12 is, "to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the
body of Christ may be built up..."
In our culture a pastor is expected to preach, lead,
administrate, visit, marry, bury, care, and counsel. In many people’s minds, he’s
supposed to be the generalist who "does"
the entire ministry for the flock, putting out all the fires, oiling the
squeaky wheels, and solving all the problems.
But that’s all
backwards. Ephesians 4:12 makes it very clear that a pastor’s main role is to
equip and prepare God’s people to do the work of the ministry. How do I do
that? By training the members, that’s you, to meet each other’s needs. My
primary job is to help you to grow spiritually so you will become willing and
able to do the ministry of the church.
In Verse 12 the word "prepare"
comes from a Greek word
[katartizo] which speaks of repairing and preparing a person’s life in order to
equip him and get him ready for service.
For example in Matthew 4:21,
this same word is used to describe James and John as they repaired and prepared
their nets for fishing. It says (Read v.21)
“Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of
Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee,
preparing their nets.” You don’t get the whole meaning but this involved
cleaning the nets of seaweed and sticks, then mending parts of their nets that
had been torn or damaged, and then untangling and folding their nets so that
they would be quickly useable at a moment’s notice. All of this preparation was so that their nets would be ready to catch
more fish. [These nets were not
being prepared for storage, but for service.] It’s important you understand
this.
[In ancient
literature, this same word is also used to describe a physician who realigns a
dislocated limb in its socket or who sets a broken bone, bringing healing from
the pain of injury and putting it back into proper relationship with the rest
of the body. Paul uses this word to describe bringing people to wholeness
by completing what’s missing for their full spiritual development (2 Corinthians
13:9, 11). That’s the result of being repaired and prepared. It gets
you ready to be effective fishers of men.
The way it works is that through the process of being
equipped, trained, prepared and completed, Christians are restored to their
proper dignity as ministers. According to 1 Peter 2:4, 9, if you are a believer, you are a priest.
Maybe you see yourself as just a regular, every day Christian, but God sees you
as part of a holy and royal priesthood.
What it means is that God gives you authority to do
ministry. You are not a second-class Christian. You are a minister. More tomorrow...You are loved!
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