THE PASTORAL CHURCH
The Era of the Pastoral Church is OVER!
Most, if not ALL of the churches you have known over that past several decades have practiced this simple paradigm ...
PASTOR
] [
CONGREGATION
There is a pastor (s); there is a congregation. This is what I refer to as the "Pastoral Church".
In a Pastoral Church, each church has a "pastor(s)", and it's that pastor's job to "minister".
A Pastoral Church is not structured to effectively "equip the saints" to do the work of ministry. For over 2 decades, I strove to function as a part of this approach to church administration ... it almost destroyed my life, my marriage, and my family!
Recently, in a discussion about this topic, a pastor shared with me that he had recently proposed to the "deacons" of his church (there's the 1st problem) that he wanted to start a ministry training class, to train his "members" (there's the 2nd problem) for altar ministry. The chairman of the deacons rebuked him and informed him that the deacons had "voted" (there's the 3rd problem) to "disallow him" (there's the 4th problem) from doing so! The deacon's position was, "We don't want you to train members to minister; that's what we pay YOU to do"!
Unfortunate[y, most modern-day churches, ESPECIALLY traditional denominational churches, would ascribe to this mindset! The pastor is THE minister. His "job" to do the ministry. This is a business-CEO paradigm, not a Kingdom paradigm!
Maybe even more unfortunate is the mindset that many pastors feel threatened by the thought that members of the congregation could/should minister. After all ... what if they proved to be more effectively than the pastor? Many pastors have bought into the idea that their "job security" lies in the fact that they are more qualified than the "laymen".
In the Pastoral Church, "laymen" are the mere "members" of the congregation. The word "laymen" means ...
laymen ... one who is untrained; without knowledge
Simply put, this is not an acceptable biblical concept within the Body of Christ! The born-again children of God are SAINTS, not laymen! God never intended for His Church to be filled with people who are "untrained" or "lacking knowledge". Read Ephesians 4:11-16!
But in the traditional Pastoral Church, that is how "members" are taught to view themselves. They "attend" church, sing some songs, listen to a talk, give a offering (maybe), and never imagine that there is much more. They drive to a church on Sunday morning, sit in nice, neat rows of pews or chairs, follow a man-prescribed "liturgy", and head home thinking they have done God a "service" ... mere RELIGION!
The REAL tragedy of that way of thinking? Every single one of those people have supernatural "spiritual gifts" either available TO them, or lying dormant WITHIN them ... waiting to be developed to transform a lost & dying world! If the "laymen" of the church get born-again & baptized in the Holy Spirit, it would unlock a whole new world ... a restoration of salvations, miracles, signs, wonders ... the things that made the 1st Century Church the most dynamic, transformative entity upon the face of the earth!
The problem is, in most modern-day churches, the saints are never encouraged to discover, understand, and learn how to activate their spiritual gifts. Thus, they never get trained to operate in their supernatural abilities and the church is reduced to little more than a corporate gathering of "hearers of The Word", with few "doers"!
The result? Today's churches function at a low (if at all) level of power, and the lost & dying world is not being reached ... certainly not TRANSFORMED!
This is NOT the paradigm ... the model of ministry that the Early Church was birthed into, or functioned in! The Early Church was birthed into an APOSTOLIC, 5-fold model (Ephesians 4) ... and it was never intended to change!
Most, if not ALL of the churches you have known over that past several decades have practiced this simple paradigm ...
PASTOR
] [
CONGREGATION
There is a pastor (s); there is a congregation. This is what I refer to as the "Pastoral Church".
In a Pastoral Church, each church has a "pastor(s)", and it's that pastor's job to "minister".
A Pastoral Church is not structured to effectively "equip the saints" to do the work of ministry. For over 2 decades, I strove to function as a part of this approach to church administration ... it almost destroyed my life, my marriage, and my family!
Recently, in a discussion about this topic, a pastor shared with me that he had recently proposed to the "deacons" of his church (there's the 1st problem) that he wanted to start a ministry training class, to train his "members" (there's the 2nd problem) for altar ministry. The chairman of the deacons rebuked him and informed him that the deacons had "voted" (there's the 3rd problem) to "disallow him" (there's the 4th problem) from doing so! The deacon's position was, "We don't want you to train members to minister; that's what we pay YOU to do"!
Unfortunate[y, most modern-day churches, ESPECIALLY traditional denominational churches, would ascribe to this mindset! The pastor is THE minister. His "job" to do the ministry. This is a business-CEO paradigm, not a Kingdom paradigm!
Maybe even more unfortunate is the mindset that many pastors feel threatened by the thought that members of the congregation could/should minister. After all ... what if they proved to be more effectively than the pastor? Many pastors have bought into the idea that their "job security" lies in the fact that they are more qualified than the "laymen".
In the Pastoral Church, "laymen" are the mere "members" of the congregation. The word "laymen" means ...
laymen ... one who is untrained; without knowledge
Simply put, this is not an acceptable biblical concept within the Body of Christ! The born-again children of God are SAINTS, not laymen! God never intended for His Church to be filled with people who are "untrained" or "lacking knowledge". Read Ephesians 4:11-16!
But in the traditional Pastoral Church, that is how "members" are taught to view themselves. They "attend" church, sing some songs, listen to a talk, give a offering (maybe), and never imagine that there is much more. They drive to a church on Sunday morning, sit in nice, neat rows of pews or chairs, follow a man-prescribed "liturgy", and head home thinking they have done God a "service" ... mere RELIGION!
The REAL tragedy of that way of thinking? Every single one of those people have supernatural "spiritual gifts" either available TO them, or lying dormant WITHIN them ... waiting to be developed to transform a lost & dying world! If the "laymen" of the church get born-again & baptized in the Holy Spirit, it would unlock a whole new world ... a restoration of salvations, miracles, signs, wonders ... the things that made the 1st Century Church the most dynamic, transformative entity upon the face of the earth!
The problem is, in most modern-day churches, the saints are never encouraged to discover, understand, and learn how to activate their spiritual gifts. Thus, they never get trained to operate in their supernatural abilities and the church is reduced to little more than a corporate gathering of "hearers of The Word", with few "doers"!
The result? Today's churches function at a low (if at all) level of power, and the lost & dying world is not being reached ... certainly not TRANSFORMED!
This is NOT the paradigm ... the model of ministry that the Early Church was birthed into, or functioned in! The Early Church was birthed into an APOSTOLIC, 5-fold model (Ephesians 4) ... and it was never intended to change!
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