The Equipping Ministry, Student Workbook, SW15

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T H E E Q U I P P I N G M I N I S T R Y

well-being of the entire Church, then the body, the entire body is built up. Doctrinal immaturity will be overcome and vulnerability to false teaching and teachers will be lessened. The truth will be spoken in love, and the membership will in every way grow up into the head, even Jesus Christ, who supplies the entire body with its life and supply as the members are held together through the working of each part. What a radically different vision of “church” than we have today. To reconceive the body of Christ in this way is essential for those of us called to serve in the urban community. To see the whole Church, leaders and members alike, as gifted, available, and ready servants and care-givers for the entire Church is to multiply ministry dramatically in our urban churches. Such a vision would demand that we rediscover the role of the minister, not as a single person to do all the care for the congregation, but to equip the members to do the work of the ministry. The role of the teacher would be transformed from covering ground and regurgitating information to forming disciples who understand themselves as gifted servants of God called to care for others. In a real sense, this vision of the Church revolutionizes our view of the ordinary member of the Church. In truth, according to this vision, there is no ordinary member; each part, each member is gifted, called to harness their gifts and creatively serve the others for the benefit of the whole Church. To consider the teaching ministry is to think of it in light of the systemic and holistic way, to see the ministry of the teacher as a part of the equipping ministry. We must deliver ourselves from the assumption that only a few are gifted, and our job is to find the best and most affordable gifted person and get them to work in our church! Rather, the gifted teacher conceives himself or herself as a member of the “equipping team of God” called to invest in “ordinary members” in order that they might be released to transform the world. Although this vision is ancient and clear, it must be rediscovered and reapplied often. We need to awaken in our urban churches a new vision of the meaning of ministry, and a redefinition of the nature of teaching in the Church. I believe it is time for the urban church to rediscover the power of the equipping ministry in order to release a new generation of justice-seekers, peace-makers, and care-givers into the urban communities of our time. If urban churches are to respond to the pressing needs within them and their neighborhoods, we will need an army of well-trained, tender-hearted, and tough-minded servants who know how to serve, who know what to do in that service, and are ready and willing to engage in caring for others.

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