Every member ministry

Paul has strong things to say about involvement in church.

Those parts of the body that feel important, like hands, mustn’t go telling other bits, ‘I don’t need you!’ Nor should parts that feel insignificant, like feet, take themselves off in a sulk because they don’t feel valued. Every bit is needed. No one is redundant. Every member has a ministry.

Yet our vision of that involvement can be strangely unrelational. Ministries are oddly discrete. I do the preaching; you do the tea and coffee. She does the music; he does the crèche. Church life is conceived in functional and business-like ways – the emphasis is on jobs. Yet in the New Testament the church is powerfully relational with an emphasis, not on individual roles, but on the connectedness of all the varied parts.

One anothering

It’s reflected in those ‘one another’ phrases. There are an awful lot of them: be devoted to one another; honour one another; accept one another; instruct one another; encourage one another; serve one another; bear with one another; be kind and compassionate to one another; speak to one another; submit to one another; forgive one another; admonish one another; build each other up; spur one another on; offer hospitality to one another; clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. (The references are below if you want to look them up.)*

God intends us to be doing stuff with one another. That, at the most fundamental level, is the ministry God gives us. When we think every-member ministry, we must think relationally. We must think of a church where the gospel is lived out, and spoken out, in relationship.

The next word...

I sometimes tell people that the question isn’t: ‘should your church start a counselling ministry?’ but ‘how good is the counselling ministry you are already doing?’ People in your church are counselling. A mum tells another mum that her son is getting bullied. The next words out of the friend’s mouth are counsel – she will give her advice, her wisdom. It is the ‘one anothering’ she considers appropriate for that moment. But how good will it be? Will it be distinctive gospel-shaped counsel or pretty much what she’d hear from unbelieving friends at the school gate?

All of us get to counsel. It happens whenever a church meets. Even choosing not to speak is a form of counsel. It says: ‘I don’t think our faith has anything to say about this.’ But if we don’t have things to say, if we fail to speak usefully into the troubles of life, our people will go elsewhere. They will find someone who does have something to say. Only that counsel won’t be gospel shaped, it will be the wisdom of the world.

Worldly wisdom

If all that the stressed man or woman in our congregation hears are platitudes – ‘just trust the Lord’; ‘no need to worry, God is in charge’ – they will soon conclude that the gospel can’t really help them in their struggles. So they will visit a life coach or read some time-management strategy books or take a mindfulness course. And later, when someone asks them for help, they will pass on the worldly wisdom they have received. Bit by bit our churches will learn that the gospel is no good for the real troubles of life and a wedge will be driven between our beliefs and our practices. Our churches will still say that the gospel is the answer, but we won’t believe it. Not really. Because it’s not what’s happening in the daily realities of life.

It’s not a simple thing to bridge the gap and connect the glorious gospel with the nitty gritty of life. Having a biblical counselling mindset means believing a connection is possible and that a key part of every-member ministry is growing in our ability to speak gospel truth into the lives of those around us. And it starts by having it spoken that way to us.

* See: Romans 12.10; 13.8; 15.7; 15.14; 2 Corinthians 13.11; Galatians 5.13; Ephesians 4.2; 4.32; 5.19; 5.21; Colossians 3.13; 3.16; 1 Thessalonians 5.11; Hebrews 10.24; 1 Peter 4.9; 5.5