One of my aims is to find potential urban church planters and then to support and equip them through training, mentoring and coaching. Coupled with my concern to see new churches or revitalised churches in communities where there currently isn’t much of a healthy gospel witness is the desire to see many more people equipped for the work of leading such churches. In that respect, I’m not looking for “church planters” as I am looking for pastors/elders and other leaders because the aim is to see these churches become viable for the long term. It is my view that traditional theological colleges will in many cases will not provide the equipping necessary.
My argument has been that we need vocational training, with people being encouraged to get on with the work whilst being coached and taught. I’ve also argued that we need to start, not with a curriculum that fits with a particular institution’s interests and priorities but rather to start with the individuals concerned and identify what their training needs are based on what we will be expecting from them in terms of gifting and character.
So, what are we looking for in terms of those things. Well, in terms of character, Paul sets this out in 1 Timothy and Titus. We are not looking for super-heroes but we are looking for people who demonstrate a godly character through both self-control and through how they care for and guide their families.
Then we are looking for people who can provide, protect and nurture a church family, leading and guiding them in godliness and in a mission to make more disciples. We don’t expect one person to have all of the competencies to do this but we do expect a church leadership to have the gifts necessary and therefore the competencies.
A competency is in effect a skill or gift that someone has where they have become proficient or competent at it. In other words, we don’t just look at whether they can demonstrate the gift at any one point, we are looking at their experience too.
These are the kinds of things we are looking for.
Teaching: This incidentally is the one specific gift that Paul mentions as crucial for elders. Teaching is broader than preaching and includes a multitude of settings from proclamation to a large gathering, through interactive discussion based small groups to one to one conversations.. It’s about the ability to open up God’s Word to one person or more and communicate what it has to say, applying its teaching to their specific context. The purpose of teaching is to help people grow in Christ.
Evangelism: Is about the ability to introduce people to Jesus, sharing the good news of the Gospel. It will include things like apologetics where the person is able to defend what they believe and demonstrate why others can have confidence in the hope of the Gospel.
Pastoral care: This is about one to one discipleship. It’s about how we help people not only survive through the trials of life but learn how to thrive by being holy in whatever situation they face.
Leadership is about getting people to come with you or follow. It’s about thinking strategically, casting vision, shaping the mission of the church and being able to grow a healthy gospel culture.
Stewardship: I could have used the word “management£ here but thought that stewardship might be better for Christian contexts. This is about looking after resources well. It’s also about looking after people well but whereas pastoral care and discipleship focuses primarily on their needs individually, management is more from the perspective of wider objectives.
If you are considering Gospel ministry in an urban context and/or if you are looking for training which either builds on or replaces traditional seminary training, then I’d love to hear from you.
Faithroots 