I've had two ideas knocking around inside my head this week that I just can't seem to get away from, so here's my attempt to write them out of my head.
On Sunday night we were looking at Matthew 9:36-10:15 but all last week as I studied the passage just one thing kept getting stuck in my head, one thing kept hitting me again and again. Jesus looks at the people of Israel and sees lost people but he knows he needs more workers to reach the harvest field, and so that is what he prays for. Now there is a place for strategy, there is a place for programmes and getting out there. But his immediate response to that need is to tell the disciples to pray for more workers. I can't help wondering if that influences their thinking in Acts 6, here's a problem of food distribution and serving the gospel lets pray and find more workers.
It may have been in part that last week I had been to a small church to do an evangelistic coffee morning and they need leaders and workers, it may be our own need of leaders and workers, Sunday School Teachers and so on. It actually strikes me as a pretty universal need for our churches, but interestingly Jesus sees the need for workers out there not in the church. He sees the need for people who will carry the gospel out into a waiting world. And his first response is prayer. I'm trying to make that my prayer for the foreseeable future: 'Lord, Doncaster is desperately needy in terms of people who will reach the lost with the good news of Jesus, please send us more workers.'
The second thing came in part from a discussion at LightHouse on Sunday night and in part from some other stuff I've been reading. What is a pastors job? What do you expect a pastor to do? A pastor is to equip people to live out and share the good news of Jesus. That means that the longer a pastor is in a church the less he should do of the speaking and preaching! As a pastor builds and trains up people to teach the bible, ideally in teams with built in networks of support and feedback, he will be able to do less of the up front stuff in terms of teaching. Now I still think the pastor should do the majority of the teaching but he won't speak at every guest event, every Sunday morning, every Sunday evening, lead a gospel group every week, speak at the youth group etc... In fact if he is doing all that how on earth is he expected to find time to train and disciple disciple makers.
A leaders job is to be making disciple makers. It is a pastors job, it is a home group leaders job, it is the Sunday school teachers job, it is the joyful task of every member of the church to be a disciple making disciple. How should that change the way we do things? I wonder if it would help to work through a church prayer diary in our gospel groups so we can spot those who are drifting and others pray for and look to encourage them. An Acts 2 model of church as in and out of each others homes, a continual encouraging of people to minister to others not leave the ministering to the ministers. To see it modelled.
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