The Evangel Dean Basic Training Resource Handbook

156 • T HE E VANGEL D EAN B ASIC T RAINING R ESOURCE H ANDBOOK

The Strategic Role of the Local Church in Your Institute

The story of God has the Church at its center, and the local congregation is the concrete expression of God’s universal Church worldwide. As a training Institute, you must be careful to respect the role of the local congregation in the training of your students. To equip urban Christian leaders for the ministry is to prepare them to be effective disciplers in the context of existing urban churches, as well as to equip them to evangelize and do justice that leads to the formation of healthy, spiritually vital churches in urban areas where Christ is not yet known. We are convinced that the relative impact of your training will be directly connected to your commitment to strengthen and multiply healthy reproducing urban churches in your community, especially those committed to minister to the urban poor. 1. The local congregation is a concrete expression of the Church Militant, the spiritual outpost authorized to make disciples and demonstrate the life of the Kingdom. The Church nurtures and equips Christians for warfare, enabling them to represent Christ with honor as they “take ground” for God. No other institution can wield the sword of the Spirit against those spiritual forces undermining our urban neighborhoods. As a training Institute, one of your first priorities is to partner with the local congregations in your area to enrich and stimulate cooperation between them and other ministries in your community. You must seek to strengthen the worship, witness, and works of every local church in your area, for this is the place where believers reach full maturity in Christ (Eph. 4.7-16; Rom. 12.4-8; 1 Pet. 4.10-12). Please ensure that all of your students are members in good standing within their local congregations, are submitted to their pastoral leadership, and are open to fulfilling their ministry as their leaders and congregations confirm. 2. The local congregation is both the ground and the end of all viable ministries which seek to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. As disciples of Jesus, we are not only called out of the world to love God and our neighbors (Matt. 22.30-31), we are also called to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28.18-20). Individual Christians are called by God and gifted by the Holy Spirit to be ambassadors of Christ in the world, beginning in their own neighborhoods and wherever else the Spirit leads (2 Cor. 5.20). Below are several principles related to the central role that the local congregation should play in your Institute.

The whole of biblical revelation

and salvation history is organized around a profound drama, the romance of God with his creation, and in particular, his own precious people. The Church is the very community of God, the body of Christ, and the agent of the Kingdom of God on earth today.