Pastoral Ministry

In discussing the unity and maturing of believers, Paul describes in Ephesians 4 how God’s comprehensive and unified work results in grace for each individual believer (Eph 4:7). Each of us can rejoice, knowing that God has given us individually the grace we need, while at the same time we can understand that we are not independent of Him nor of each other. We are designed to function as His body—as one—even though we are individual members of His body.

Considering the unique source of grace and the gifts that stem from grace, Paul explains that Christ gave the gift (4:7), and He gave gifts (4:8). His grace included not just the singular gift of salvation (as described in Eph. 2:8-9), but also everything necessary for complete sanctification (as described in Eph. 2:10).

Ephesians 4:11 identifies four vital gifts: “and He gave indeed the apostles, and the prophets, and the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.” This is a literal translation accounting for each Greek word in the passage. Notice that the objects of verb gave are preceded in each case by the definite article the. Also notice the passage does not say that He gave the gift of apostleship, prophecy, evangelism, and pastoring and teaching—if that is what Paul intended to say, he could have easily structured the passage to make that meaning clear. Instead, he identifies the gifts as the apostles themselves, the prophets themselves, the evangelists themselves, and the pastors and teachers themselves.

Dear Young Seminarian,

Have you thought about your future? Of course you have, you think. You are in seminary, or headed to seminary, or just finished seminary. You are hoping for a pastoral position, or looking for one, or maybe even in one.

But what do you want to be?

Do you want to be a pastor? Or do you want to pastor?

At first, glance that may seem like a strange question. But it actually flows from an old, perhaps cheesy, thing that was making its way around college back in the day. It was a little statement about relationships and dating, and people who were “in love” with being “in love” rather than being “in love” with a person.

Now, dear seminarian who has learned to exegete Greek and Hebrew (at least you better have learned to if you have a seminary degree), don’t over exegete the words “in love.” I am not really sure what they mean myself, and I am pretty sure that these words are the cause of a lot of broken marriages and broken hearts.

Republished, with permission, from Voice magazine, Mar/Apr 2013.

Most greetings are mundane and meaningless. “How are you” is the standard icebreaker in the U.S. That inquiry is normally answered by an equally empty: “fine.” The greeter normally doesn’t really care how you are doing and the responder normally isn’t all that “fine.” But this perfunctory greeting moves us to further conversation. So we continue to do it.

Greetings in Africa are totally different. The normal Zulu greeting is “sawubona.” It literally means “I see you.” It is a kind and gracious way to acknowledge the worth of an individual. It acknowledges the presence and importance of the other person. It means my life stops to focus on yours.

African greetings can be long. It is not unusual to engage in an extended line of questions about the condition of your home, children, wife, goats, farm, garden and work. Greetings can go on for several minutes.

As a Westerner, it seems like a waste of time to spend five minutes saying hello. But in a relational culture, there is serious interest in the other person as an individual. Relationships are important in an African culture. So greetings take a while. It just isn’t polite to launch into a conversation without an appropriate greeting.