Charting our Course

Yesterday morning as I was preparing to lead Sunday worship I saw with fresh clarity the direction I want this writing project on spiritual ministry to take.

It can be summarised in a series of successive steps:

• The first is to establish that Christian ministry (service for the Lord in whatever form that takes) has a spiritual dimension to it. This is evident throughout the Bible, but especially so in the New Testament era of the Spirit.
• The second is to establish that the spiritual dimension involved is not the influence of an impersonal spiritual force but the co-working of a personal spiritual presence. That is to say, ministry that is spiritually effective is the result of the co-working of God with us through the Spirit dwelling in us.
• Third, that this fact makes effective Christian ministry, from a human point of view, dependent on relationship rather than technique. The influence of the Spirit in our ministry or work cannot be manipulated or forced. It comes as the free gift of God's grace. And it is typically obtained in the context of an intimate, dependent relationship through prayer rather than through any "tried and proven" method.
• Fourth, the Lord Jesus provides a paradigm for such empowered spiritual ministry. His own ministry was a ministry "in the Spirit" - a ministry enabled and empowered by the presence of his Father with him (Acts 10:38). And the means by which the constant empowering of the Father was obtained is set before us in the dynamics of his relationship with his Father unfolded in the Gospel according to John.
• The dynamics of Jesus' relationship with his Father are not of a different kind, but the fulfillment and perfecting of, the relationship enjoyed by believers in every age. The book of Psalms offers detailed insight into the intimate, interactive, dependent relationship God has always meant his children to have with him.
• A study of Jesus' life and of the Psalms enables us to recognise several elements to the relational spirituality necessary to effective Christian ministry. These elements include reality, realisation, reckoning, receptivity, responsiveness, reliance and rejoicing. A consideration of each of these provides a framework for the kind of relationship that ensures the presence of God working with us in our service for him.
• These different elements have proved integral to the varied aspects of pastoral ministry that I have engaged in over the past two years. They have been true of my life in Christ for a much longer period than that, but have surfaces with greater clarity over the past two years.

The entries in this blog will fall within this broad structure. They won't be in sequence, but will fit somewhere within this framework. The task of ordering them will come later.