layers of leaders

Most of the morning today was spent in meeting again with others in relation to pastoral work.

In one of his books Philip Yancey speaks about a Chinese Christian he met, a man called Brother Shi, who'd been brought up in a thoroughly atheistic home and groomed for a life as a Communist Party activist. He tells of how the man had come to faith in Christ and had turned his back on the Party: and of how he now had a far-reaching 'pastoral ministry' across the land.

You work with layers of leaders,' Philip Yancey had observed to the man. 'If you added up all the church members under them, how many people in total are you responsible for as a bishop in the unregistered church?

The guy had paused to think for a moment, doing some mental calculations. 'Hard to say for sure. My best guess is two hundred and sixty thousand.'

That's pastoral ministry through what Yancey calls 'layers of leaders'. It's something like that which we're trying to develop as the pattern for pastoral ministry among God's people here.

Not that we have 260,000 people. Nothing like.

But it's that sort of pattern, that sort of framework we're trying to lay down as the 'grid' in the life of this local church, with recognised pastors each responsible for a kind of 'mini-church' of up to 50 people, and using the gifts of others among their 'fifty' to share in the pastoring work.

Layers of leaders.

It's taken a while to develop this pastoral 'grid', but we're starting now to get there: it's beginning to take some shape: it's a framework for the future, when we sense that this sort of disciple-making pastoral ministry is going to be more and more important.