When preaching on the one another's isn't enough!

We have all heard sermons on the one another's of the New Testament - bear with, love, and so on.  My hunch is we have all heard more than one of those.  yet let's be honest it so often remains a theoretical rather than a practical reality.  We've all heard talks on every member ministry.  We know and we know our pastors know we know that they are not paid to do ministry but to equip us to do ministry.  But so often we still sit back and wait for someone else to do it.

So what do we do when preaching on the one another's isn't enough?  What do we do when people ascent to the idea of enquiring after one another's spiritual well being but the ascent never gets traction in the conversations they have with one another.

We have to model it.  Pastors, elders, deacons must not be Pharisees and tell the church to do something they are not doing.  We have a responsibility to be modelling one another-ness.  Our people should realise that we will be asking them how they are?  How they are finding prayer at the moment, where the gospel is changing them, what sin they are battling with, who we can pray for them to bear with?  And we will be sharing with them how we are doing too (nothing like a leader confessing their struggle and their joys to ensure we aren't put on a pedestal).  Not once a year but regularly, if not weekly then certainly monthly.  It helps to get this started if as a leadership team you take a chunk of your monthly meeting to ask those questions of each other and pray about the responses.

And if they see us modelling this pastoral care, this spiritual oversight just maybe it will become the norm.  But we also need to give other opportunities, more formal opportunities, so that we facilitating this.  What about in the prayer meeting, how about having people break of into twos or threes and share the answer to those questions with each other?  We did it last night and it created a real buzz, not for the first time and it certainly won't be the last.  How about in Gospel or Home Groups?  Could you start with small groups prayer for one another?

At the end of the day this will only become to norm if we make it the norm, if we as leaders model its norm-ness.  And just imagine the impact more people praying for one another, rejoicing with one another, mourning with one another.  More people coming open and aware of their needs and joys to the word of God on a Sunday morning.  More people readily able to discuss and apply the Gospel to one another's lives in real tangible ways.  More loving open honest community and communication.  And all for getting over a little social awkwardness!