Equipping the Saints
We are no longer living in the middle ages. What with the black plague, belief in a flat earth, and the paying of indulgences... and as a lover of indoor plumbing and Spotify, I am thankful for the progress. Indulgences, if you have not studied church history, may be a term you aren’t familiar with. The pre-reformation, pre-printing press church suffered from greed and corruption due to a lack of accountability. Very few people had a copy of the Scriptures, and those who did were the elite - the priests. They greedily took advantage of the ignorance of the masses by telling them that if they wanted their deceased loved ones to be pardoned of their sins and make the transition from purgatory to heaven quicker they could do so by purchasing indulgences from the church. With the advent of the printing press, and the resulting ubiquity of Scripture, reformers whose stories you have probably heard began to read the Word of God for themselves, and began to see Scripture as the authority in the life of the believer and the life of the church, and didn’t find the place in Scripture where Jesus required payment for forgiveness.
It wasn’t only the selling of indulgences that typified the divide between the “professionals” and the “laity”. As the Bible became available, it was very much discouraged by the church for the Bible to truly become accessible. Translations into the heart language of the people were discouraged, even forbidden, thus perpetuating the feudalism of the church. John Wycliffe, in 1382, was among the first to translate the Bible into English - a work which was quickly banned by the Church. It wasn’t until 1611, after the reformation had more than taken shape, that James, the King of England, authorized an official translation of the Bible into English. A groundbreaking step forward, to be sure, but there is one singular and unfortunately placed comma in the book of Ephesians that symbolized and even defined the relationship between clergy and everyone else.
The 1611 authorized version of the KJV translated Ephesians 4:11-12, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:” Ephesians 4, if read with this grammar, tells us that the role of the pastor/teacher is to perfect the saints, insert comma, AND to do the work of the ministry, AND to edify the body. A more correct rendering of this passage, and one that is much healthier for both pastors and the church, is that the role of the pastor/teacher is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Do you see the difference a comma makes? When correctly translated and correctly applied the role of the pastor/teacher is NOT to do the work of the ministry, the role of the pastor/teacher is to equip the saints to do the work of ministry.
This has been the paradigm shift that we at International Friendships UNC have made this semester. We have always used volunteers to do tasks. We even would have said that we were equipping and empowering volunteers to do ministry. And it has always been our ideal to equip and empower international students to do international student ministry as they are better positioned for the ministry than anyone else. But beginning this semester we have put all of our eggs in the basket of a team of people; American students who love Jesus, international students who love Jesus, and church volunteers who love Jesus, whom we are equipping to do the work of the ministry. It is an exercise in trust. It is a shift in the focus of my time and energy. It might sacrifice quality at the beginning. But ultimately it is a model of multiplication! Now, instead of having 5 professional support raising staff members who are doing the work of the ministry with the aid of volunteers, we are intentionally equipping and empowering 25 people to do the work of the ministry. So instead of having 5 campus ministers we now have 30! And instead of us 5 doing the ministry year after year we will see these 30 graduate and move on somewhere else, equipped as ministers of the gospel wherever they end up. For some of them that will be research at another university. For others it will be returning to their home countries to be leaders in their fields. And for some of our church volunteers it will be right here at UNC helping to minister to the next batch of international students and scholars that will descend upon Chapel Hill.
We don’t want to lead a ministry that perpetuates the clergy/layperson divide. The truth is that the larger the divide, the less effective the ministry. We are no longer in the middle ages, but we often still operate as a church as if the “professionals” - the ministers, the missionaries - are the only ones who possess the Word of God, are the only ones capable of teaching it. This mentality is especially dangerous, we have seen, in an Asian culture - a culture in which there exists a respect and an unavoidable hierarchy where students submit to teachers. We could teach the Word to Chinese students all day but they will never get to the point where they believe they are equipped to teach someone else the Word as long as see themselves as “students.” But if we equip them as fellow minsters... May we as “professionals” be equippers of the saints who lead ministries of multiplication.
How about you? How about your church? Are your church’s leaders equipping the saints, are they multiplying themselves? Are they discipling people, modeling ministry, and then dangerously sitting back and watching others do the work, encouraging them when they fail, correcting them when they make mistakes? Or are they doing the work of the ministry while everyone else (maybe even you) watches from the sidelines?
Pray for our Servant Team as they learn, watch, co-labor, and take off!
It wasn’t only the selling of indulgences that typified the divide between the “professionals” and the “laity”. As the Bible became available, it was very much discouraged by the church for the Bible to truly become accessible. Translations into the heart language of the people were discouraged, even forbidden, thus perpetuating the feudalism of the church. John Wycliffe, in 1382, was among the first to translate the Bible into English - a work which was quickly banned by the Church. It wasn’t until 1611, after the reformation had more than taken shape, that James, the King of England, authorized an official translation of the Bible into English. A groundbreaking step forward, to be sure, but there is one singular and unfortunately placed comma in the book of Ephesians that symbolized and even defined the relationship between clergy and everyone else.
The 1611 authorized version of the KJV translated Ephesians 4:11-12, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:” Ephesians 4, if read with this grammar, tells us that the role of the pastor/teacher is to perfect the saints, insert comma, AND to do the work of the ministry, AND to edify the body. A more correct rendering of this passage, and one that is much healthier for both pastors and the church, is that the role of the pastor/teacher is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Do you see the difference a comma makes? When correctly translated and correctly applied the role of the pastor/teacher is NOT to do the work of the ministry, the role of the pastor/teacher is to equip the saints to do the work of ministry.
This has been the paradigm shift that we at International Friendships UNC have made this semester. We have always used volunteers to do tasks. We even would have said that we were equipping and empowering volunteers to do ministry. And it has always been our ideal to equip and empower international students to do international student ministry as they are better positioned for the ministry than anyone else. But beginning this semester we have put all of our eggs in the basket of a team of people; American students who love Jesus, international students who love Jesus, and church volunteers who love Jesus, whom we are equipping to do the work of the ministry. It is an exercise in trust. It is a shift in the focus of my time and energy. It might sacrifice quality at the beginning. But ultimately it is a model of multiplication! Now, instead of having 5 professional support raising staff members who are doing the work of the ministry with the aid of volunteers, we are intentionally equipping and empowering 25 people to do the work of the ministry. So instead of having 5 campus ministers we now have 30! And instead of us 5 doing the ministry year after year we will see these 30 graduate and move on somewhere else, equipped as ministers of the gospel wherever they end up. For some of them that will be research at another university. For others it will be returning to their home countries to be leaders in their fields. And for some of our church volunteers it will be right here at UNC helping to minister to the next batch of international students and scholars that will descend upon Chapel Hill.
We don’t want to lead a ministry that perpetuates the clergy/layperson divide. The truth is that the larger the divide, the less effective the ministry. We are no longer in the middle ages, but we often still operate as a church as if the “professionals” - the ministers, the missionaries - are the only ones who possess the Word of God, are the only ones capable of teaching it. This mentality is especially dangerous, we have seen, in an Asian culture - a culture in which there exists a respect and an unavoidable hierarchy where students submit to teachers. We could teach the Word to Chinese students all day but they will never get to the point where they believe they are equipped to teach someone else the Word as long as see themselves as “students.” But if we equip them as fellow minsters... May we as “professionals” be equippers of the saints who lead ministries of multiplication.
How about you? How about your church? Are your church’s leaders equipping the saints, are they multiplying themselves? Are they discipling people, modeling ministry, and then dangerously sitting back and watching others do the work, encouraging them when they fail, correcting them when they make mistakes? Or are they doing the work of the ministry while everyone else (maybe even you) watches from the sidelines?
Pray for our Servant Team as they learn, watch, co-labor, and take off!
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