Ministers of Spiritual Care

Yesterday I visited a Baptist Church at Calahonda, near to where we are staying.  It's an international church, with people drawn from as far away as South Africa and America.    It's nice to worship somewhere in Spain where the language is English and a Baptist Church to boot.

The preacher was one of the Elders, Ken Oke, a Canadian.  The sermon was from Ephesians 4 verses 11-13 ¹¹ So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

He noted that people often function most effectively when they have a defined role - even an office, or title, so he suggested that each person in the church might have a title of Minister of Spiritual Care.   Whereas Christ gives us people in very specific roles - apostles, prophets etc, they are not the ones that do everything, merely to equip everyone else to do works of service so that the body of Christ is built up.    We often think of these leaders as responsible for building up the body, but it's actually each of us that have responsibility as Ministers of Spiritual Care.

We are responsible for each of those alongside us and around us, both in the church and those who don't know Jesus yet.  We have the title but it's up to each of us to fill in the blanks as to how we minister to others and we will need to pray for, pray with, help and reach the lost.   And its our being responsible to one another that will build the church up.   We do not do the work of God alone - we have been given one another.   

Whereas there are those in leadership who get trained, ordained, appointed or whatever; each of God's people is a minister and God's power is with each of us and at work within each of us and He will use us to touch other people's lives.

God has made each of us important - we are all ministers and are here to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up  until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.