THE DEEPER CONCERN

While it is the interplay between doctrine, experience and practice in pastoral ministry that defines the approach of my dissertation study, this really serves a deeper concern. Underlying this is a quest to understand better the spiritual dimension of Christian ministry with a view to making it a more integral part of the practice of pastoral ministry. It is this passion that motivates me in my study.

Jesus demonstrated both through his example and teaching that ministry in the kingdom of God is ultimately spiritual. Incarnate Son of God though he was, his teaching and healing ministry was the outflow of his union with the Father and anointing by the Holy Spirit. On several occasions he told people that his words and works were not just his own, but were the outcome of being “in the Father” and the Father “in him” (John 6:57; 8:28; 10:38; 14:10; 17:21). He was most specific in his farewell words to his disciples. In trying to convince them of his identity with his Father he said, “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10). On another occasion, when accused of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub their prince, he answered by saying that his act of driving them out through the Holy Spirit was evidence that “the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). His Father, present with him and working through him by the Spirit, made his ministry a manifestation of the kingdom (or dynamic rule) of God.

So dependent was Jesus upon his Father that he could say to his Jewish inquisitors that he didn’t do anything on his own. “I tell you the truth,” he said to them, “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19). There was in all his activity a co-working with his Father, and correspondingly, a spiritual power and presence that made his work extraordinary.

Jesus meant his disciples to understand that this would be the character of their ministry as well. They would not be able to fulfil their mission by unaided personal power. They could only do so through his indwelling presence and the anointing of his Spirit. He portrayed this most graphically in his well known allegory of the vine and the branches (John 15:1-17). His followers were “in him” and he “in them” in the same way that branches belong to a vine. It was his (and his Father’s) purpose that they should bear fruit, but that was something they could only do if they “remained” in him. They could no more do so by themselves than a common vine branch could bear grapes if it was severed from the vine. However far Jesus intended his disciples to push the analogy, one thing was clear: there was more to being a fruitful follower of Jesus than human effort alone could achieve. It was something that could only happen in union with him.

It is this dimension – this living union with Christ as the source of effective Christian service – that is so little emphasized in current writing on church growth and ministry. It is not denied, but typically it is not emphasised. It is generally assumed as foundational (and indispensible), and left at that. But it is not viewed as integral to the actual processes of ministry. You do not find it integrated into the methodology of Christian living and church ministry. You do not read, for example, of how our union with Christ relates to deriving a personal vision for ministry, or how it bears on the way in which we conduct church meetings. It doesn’t feature in the “steps”. Consequently, the spiritual aspect of Christian life and ministry gets dwarfed – or at least compartmentalized. Christians are encouraged to have their “devotions” but not helped to walk with Christ moment by moment in the down-to-earth realities of everyday life and ministry. Not surprisingly, there is a decided lack of spiritual power associated with what we do. If we are honest, we have to admit that Christ is not in most of it. We hope he is there somewhere – behind us or in some way with us – but we do not consciously involve him in what we are doing. And that’s not the way he or his first followers appeared to live.

My deepest concern in my dissertation work, then, is with recovering the spiritual factor in Christian life and ministry. Without it we are deprived of essential grace; with it, there is something supernatural about the most ordinary things we do. In my view it is this factor more than any other that is needed in the church today.