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 Re: Community Discipleship
 
 11/30/2006 4:30:41 PM
User is offlinejulieann
14 posts


Re: Community Discipleship
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Wow, Robin, that is so beautiful.  I have seen that happen too and I totally agree that there is something so natural and lifegiving about it.  It sounds like you belong to a very healthy body of believers.  From your description, your pastor seems to have a really good sense of what it means to be a shepherd.  I do not think you are being idealistic.  I think what you are describing is exactly how God has desired His Church to function.  But why is it that experiences like yours are so much more the exception than the rule?  My guess is that it has so much more to do with the maturity of the pastor(s) than anything else.  It does not sound like your pastor simply "downloads" information to his congregation, such an attutude would require a kind of ego, that it sounds like in his case, God has allready dealt a good deal with.  This seems like the root of the issue.  We can change church structures that encourage community and interaction, but at the end of the day, our flesh will break them or the Spirit will make them.  What a blessing it is to have such confidence in your leadership!  
 11/30/2006 8:03:02 PM
User is offlineRobin
20 posts


Re: Community Discipleship
 (N/A) Modified By Robin on 11/30/2006 1:09:33 PM)
Oh Julieann. Yes. It is so beautiful. I have to come back and say that I posted a composite of many churches and many experiences. Everything I said is true but it is not all true about the specific church where I currently worship. But most of it is happening in that church. Most of the care and shepherding I've received has been from peers or my small group leaders, but if I asked for it and approached a paid pastoral staff person, I received care and shepherding. I just had to initiate it. The pastor kept the climate of being approachable and telling me to ask for pastoral care when I needed it. My pastor did not actively approach me as a small group leader and ask me if I needed care. I have a friend at another church who is a small group leader and they have people pursue them and ask if they have a need, but it is not their pastor, it is a peer in the small group where my friend is a member not a leader.

I'm seeing another lovely trend where some churches hire a licensed professional counselor to their staff and make that counseling/therapy available to their congregation. I think this is just STELLAR because it means that if someone is experiencing tough issues like anger or depression or marital difficulty, they can receive ministry from a counselor who has BOTH clinical skills and a bibical worldview.

I believe the key issue is for everyone serving in leadership still have a reliable viable place for them to receive personal ministry, discipleship, love and support. Ideally, the source should be someone who is in a pastoral role over them. But a peer is wonderful too, as long as the person in leadership is actively admitting their needs to God and another human being and that other human being is partnering with God to minister to those needs.

Balance of nurture in nurture out is so key when one is serving in leadership. We've all seen the big bad ugly examples of what can happen when someone in ministry does not have a trusted source for personal nurture and support where they can tell the truth about what happening in their heart and life and they fall into addictive counterfeit ways to meet their needs and next thing you know there's a scandal. But we don't have to wait for some awful scandal to point out this truth. I've had a church leadership person who was spread too thin and not caring for their own heart verbally abuse me while I was receiving ministry from them just after I had major surgery. Not to excuse their behaviour but it was so clear they were a person spread too thin and getting burnt out.  The point is, if you're having a burnout (we all do sometime), then go get some pastoral care yourself and don't try to keep on caregiving. It will not be pretty. God will not be glorified. There will be collateral damage.

Caring for our hearts ala Proverbs 4:23 is serious stewardship. If we don't do it, our hearts will get cold and hard and we will hurt other people, especially if we continue to serve in leadership while running on empty. <wince>
growing, learning, enjoying the ride
 2/8/2007 4:50:55 PM
User is offlineGlennMurphy
2 posts


Re: Community Discipleship
 (N/A)
Hey, everyone. Well I'm only about two months late to this conversation, but I only discovered it today. I really "lit up" when I read your suggestion about churches hiring an LPC to help with the spiritual care/counseling/nuture needs of the leadership. That is exacly what we've done at my church. In fact, I'M the LPC who gets the privelege of pouring into the lives of the pastoral staff and volunteer leaders. Our philisophy is that our church will never grow emotionally or spiritually healthier than our leaders, and that the "healthiness" of good leaders will flow downward and permeate the congregation. Regarding the earlier question on small group leaders and group participants who "miss" the heart of their fellow group members, the key we've discovered is in the leadership training process. In our leadership training we spend very little time on "skills" and techniques and lots of time on the heart of the leader. By taking leaders through a journey of interior renovation where they get to know their own heart deeply and intimately, and the heart of God deeply and intimately, they are much more unlikely to mishandle the heart of those in their small group.
 2/9/2007 7:39:39 AM
User is offlineHenri
28 posts


Re: Community Discipleship
 (N/A)
Glenn, thanks for your comments. I think you are right - it is incredible to me the position that staff members are in at churches, particularly the ones who are the "up front" leaders. The pressure to come across as someone without real problems, the problem that if you actually share your problems from the pulpit people become more enamored with you as a person, etc.

I can't count the number of pastors I have met that don't have any real friends. When they talk about their "close" friends they are usually referring to people they don't see anymore. I think that's so sad. I can't imagine having the kinds of pressures that pastors do without a daily, or if nothing else, weekly interaction with someone else about my heart. Heck, even coming on here and doing anomalously would be a good start.

On a much smaller level, I think that same issue is true for lay leadership - like small group leaders. Because of their (usually) limited background in leadership, it becomes an even greater temptation to try and be the person who "has it all together."

There is another trend where churches are started to utilize spiritual directors for their staff, who not only meet with them monthly but help them plan out sabbaticals. I think this is an encouraging trend as well.
 2/9/2007 4:11:07 PM
User is offlineRobin
20 posts


Re: Community Discipleship
 (N/A) Modified By Robin on 2/9/2007 9:12:00 AM)

 GlennMurphy wrote
Hey, everyone. Well I'm only about two months late to this conversation, but I only discovered it today. I really "lit up" when I read your suggestion about churches hiring an LPC to help with the spiritual care/counseling/nuture needs of the leadership. That is exacly what we've done at my church. In fact, I'M the LPC who gets the privelege of pouring into the lives of the pastoral staff and volunteer leaders.

I'm glad you're here, Glenn. I think God could teach us a lot through you. About the 'how' especially, even more than the 'why'.

 GlennMurphy wrote
we spend very little time on "skills" and techniques and lots of time on the heart of the leader. By taking leaders through a journey of interior renovation where they get to know their own heart deeply and intimately, and the heart of God deeply and intimately, they are much more unlikely to mishandle the heart of those in their small group.

Oh my gosh, Glenn. Hearing that just put a little extra helium inside my heart. What a lift! How reasurring to hear that one heart at a time, one church at a time, that people are experiencing this. There's so much freedom and life in living this way and loving each other this way. I've always heard the church described as a spiritual family and that is God's design. But the word 'family' and what that means in our culture today is so fractured and dimmed from God's original design. It is my sincere belief that just the act of living and caring for each other they way you described just screams REDEMPTION to our weary jaded world. Isn't it beautiful to see how He keeps on saving us? Watching that process unfold....

Oh my! That is what it's all about. That's what The Church Body is all about. To me, this is the difference between Spiritual Formation and Church Growth Programs. Not just one more activity in the bulletin, but addressing the pressing needs of the heart. It's the things that keep us awake at night, the things that put a knot in the pit of our stomach...these are the places Jesus wants to heal us. And until the Body of Christ addresses that healing by experiencing it and embracing it and then offering it, they will have diminished cultural relevance. If hearts are not changed and healed, then our voice is just one of many cultural chatter in the debate.

growing, learning, enjoying the ride
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