You simply be what you are in Christ, no more, and no less, and let that speak. go together as manure and a fruitful garden go together.Īs a pastor, will you be merely trying to do a job and fulfill a duty, or will you be letting Christ in human flesh through to the people you are mixing with? If the latter, then it is the easiest thing in the world. William Still, The Work of the Pastor, Kindle Loc. They belong together, as manure belongs to a fruitful garden. Hurt and fruit, death and life, sorrow and joy. The two belong together, as Peter says over and over again in his first epistle. If we are not prepared to suffer (and suffering is not fun nor is it meant to be fun), we shall not reign. You can see what a death this is to die to those who think you are nothing if not popular. It is the glorious agony of those who are used of God amidst the oppositions of the world, the church, and certainly the devil, that we are ever dying men and women… Every time we essay to minister there must be a new death. That is the profoundest and most practical principle in the Bible. Death works in us, but life in others (2 Cor. It is only out of a life that is dead not only to sin (obvious) but to self in all its various and subtle aspects, that God will bring resurrection to others. This is really the same point as the last, but it has total ramifications in the life. The end result is that they will begin to counsel others effectively as well.Īnother thing: to minister fruitfully (and God does not call us to anything else) we must minister as those who have died. The goal for Still is to teach people how to apply the Word to themselves so that they can learn to counsel themselves and thus become less dependent upon you. Now they are able to become, as I said before, pastors to others, to help them solve their problems through the Word (Loc. They have found the solution to their problems and, much more important, have learned to live with those which will only be fully solved in heaven. At last they need him no more as clinician or nurse. 323Īll this has to be faced in the ministry of the Word: nevertheless, it is that ministry which makes Christian character, so that healthy feeders need the pastor less and less. – William Still, The Work of the Pastor, Kindle Loc. Indeed, one of the features of such a radical and total ministry of the Word is that it thrusts so many into spiritual and social work that I can hardly keep a congregation together on account of their scattering throughout the land, and indeed, the earth. It enables those who receive it and seek to live by it to understand and solve so much in other lives, that instead of becoming a liability on my time and energy, they become pastors themselves. My pastoral work of personal dealing, considerable though it is, has been greatly reduced through the years because the building up of people’s faith, by the ministry of the Word of God, solves so much in their lives.
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