Pastoral ministry – Page 2

Tag: Pastoral ministry

Facets of Pastoral Work I Enjoyed

10 December 2021 blogpastor Leave a comment

Teaching God’s Word

Equipping the saints is not a cliché for me but a major reference point for pastoral ministry. It is therefore not surprising that teaching God’s Word through sermons and Christian education courses was something I found great joy in. I loved teaching the Bible and every year I devoured books on preaching, and experimented and incorporated new homiletical insights, ideas and styles into my preparation and delivery. I found satisfaction when I received feedback that the adaptations were effective, and concerned when they fell flat. I also enjoyed the development and execution of Christian education curriculum. I enjoyed running Life in the Spirit seminars to help members receive the baptism of the Spirit, and conducting membership and foundational courses for new believers.

Pastoral Care and Mentoring

Another facet of ministry that I enjoyed was meeting with leaders and members individually and giving them pastoral care, personal counsel or coaching. Patient listening to members’ concerns and struggles is a powerful way of equipping and helping them move towards wholeness. When I first began pastoral ministry in the 1980s, visiting families in their homes was the norm, but gradually I noticed that with the formation of home cell groups, the pastoral care that came through cell groups lessened the need for pastoral home visits unless there were special needs or circumstances involved. Still, it was the one on one sharing and sharpening of life that I found fulfilling.

Blogging as Ministry

Halfway in my forty years of pastoral ministry, I stumbled into blogging through my son Joshua’s suggestion. At that time around AD 2000 I began blogging on Xanga to reach out to the youth in church, and later moved my blog to my own website. Somehow this blogpastor.net website was blessed by the Lord to influence its readers. Readers from around the world read the blog. The blog was cited in the Asia Wall Street Journal, the Straits Times, and in books and articles. The discussion was very active and beyond my ability to monitor and I saw that blogging allowed for conversation/discussion and thus was a good platform for teaching and influencing thought and attitudes. I enjoyed this thoroughly as it also led me to see my writing as an extension of my teaching and pastoral ministry.

Soul Care

Later in the last decade of my pastoral ministry, I was more interested in spiritual formation and spiritual direction. I saw how waiting on God in silence in a retreat setting with a spiritual director to guide helped me recover from a burnout, and I became convinced this kind of ministry to be vital for the spiritual health and vitality of pastors, church leaders and members. I completed a Master’s program on Christian Education and Spiritual Formation with AGST Alliance, went for annual silent retreats, and searched for spiritual director formation training. The whole area of spiritual formation of the soul became a focus for me.

Coaching

During the last five years of my role as senior pastor, I also became more engaged with issues of pastoral succession and sought to equip a team of new ministry staff so that when I retired, the church would have a leadership team able to feed, care for and lead the church. My main concern was to equip them to do what would be a major means of equipping the saints – the Sunday sermon. As this was my main strength, I designed a simple program to give them opportunities to develop their preaching ministry. They have all been trained in Bible Schools but I wanted them to apply what they have learned in a systematic way and with peer group supervision and encouragement. I enjoyed this coaching role in the last five years of pastoral work.

If leading, feeding and caring are the main roles of a pastor, then I would rank the roles in order of personal fulfilment this way: 1) feeding, 2) caring and lastly 3) leading.

My Call Into Pastoral Ministry

3 December 2021 blogpastor Leave a comment

I believe God’s call to each person is unique. We can conclude this from scanning the Bible and analysing the different experiences of ordinary people when they were called by God. They ranged from the supernatural experiences of burning bush (Moses), visions (Ezekiel), angelic encounter (Gideon), and prophetic utterances (David), to ordinary experiences like Jesus inviting Matthew the tax collector to follow him (modern equivalent: the pastor asking you to pray about joining the church staff). Thus, what I share here may or may not find resonance with the call of other pastors, missionaries and full-time Christian vocational workers.

I feel grateful that the context of my call to pastoral ministry was the charismatic revival that visited Singapore in the 1970s (you can read more about this in the book, “Unfolding His Story” by Georgie and Galven Lee). I was initiated into a period of intense and deep experiences of repentance, baptism, and the infilling of God’s love and power. These powerful encounters with God and other prayer encounters would generate in me an overwhelming passion for God and his church.

Discovering My Gifts and Calling

This passion and desire to serve God’s people grew and blossomed, and ranged from running the library, to intercessory ministry, doing personal evangelism and follow-up, serving in the church management committee, and teaching Bible classes and preaching from the pulpit, first in the youth fellowship and then in the Sunday worship services.

This heavy involvement in church work helped me discover my gifts in teaching and pastoral work, and the affirmations I received helped me identify how God has chosen to work through me most fruitfully. They would inform my pastoral ministry for years to come: firstly, of where I should give the most priority and energy and time to; and secondly, the kind of gifted people I would need to work with to balance off what I lacked.

Overwhelming Passion

This overwhelming passion to serve refused to fade or die. The deep desire never left me or waned, no matter how often I kneeled and surrendered the desire to go into full-time Christian vocational work, it would remain. When I looked at the NUS courses on offer for me, there was a complete lack of interest and deadness towards them. A vision and prophecy from a leader emboldened me to finally let the pastor know about my strong desire to serve on the church staff. Despite his advice that I should get working experience first (which I obediently followed), that desire never waned but grew even stronger, for after I was working-training as a cadet-teacher for two years, the daily devotions over a period of a few months, stirred me to leave my job and join the church staff. When I brought this up, surprisingly, the church leaders approved it. Immediately, “left my nets” and answered God’s call.

Strong Conviction and Perseverance Linked

After years in the pastoral staff, I realised the importance of having a strong conviction that God has called me. The pastoral ministry is fulfiling but also challenging. On many occasions during the forty years of service, there were moments, even periods of discouragement, inadequacy, self-doubt and hurt. There were moments of temptation when I could have given up God’s call. However, it was the strong conviction of God’s call and the Spirit’s ministry of comforting, strengthening, and encouragement that bound and anchored me to the cross, and helped me continue in perseverance and faithfulness.

God not only calls us, but he also empowers and reinforces us. Blessed be his holy name. Amen.

Retirement pangs

3 August 2020 blogpastor 2 Comments

To reflect on 40 years of ministry takes considerable time and courage. It is a lengthy period of ministry in the only church that I have been committed to since I gave my life to Christ. It cannot be done in a day. That may be too intense and unfruitful. It needs to be done by the unforced rhythms of grace. The Spirit initiates and you attend to the memories and emotions that arise from such precious, and sometimes painful moments. It takes courage to face the fact that many mistakes had been made. Errors in methodology, in decisions, in policy making, in self-sufficiency, in motivation and in dealing with people and yourself. I wish I could go back in time and redo those days with the knowledge, experience and maturity I now have. However that is impossible and all you are left with are past failures and regrets that cannot be undone. I have to remind myself to be gentle with myself. After all God has forgiven and covered all these failures with His precious Son’s blood. When I shared this with my 3-2-1 group, Dr Jimmy Tan mentioned a quotation of St Augustine that consoled me. It went this way:

Trust the past to the mercy of God, the present to His love, and the future to His providence. St Augustine

It is consoling to know God’s mercy covers my failures and faults in the 40 years of ministry in the church. Despite the fact that members may have suffered the consequences of those decisions and policies and my weaknesses, the Lord’s mercy covers them all, and on the day of judgment the Lord will not even raise it up. I was teaching members how to interpret scriptures on zoom recently and one passage was the one about Jesus restoring Peter by the beach. “Peter, do you love me?” Its poignant and significant that Jesus never brought up the fact of Peter’s denial of Christ. It is all forgiven and under the wrap of God’s bloody mercy.

It is also encouraging to know that God’s love will be with me in the present while I wrap up and hand over my responsibilities and handhold those taking over my various duties and roles. The Lord will not discard me like a used tissue paper in the hawker center. He is very close and makes sure all is well with me emotionally. I recall the tenderness with which the Lord handled the home going of Moses. He let him see the promised land from Mt Pisgah. He let him know the bad news that he won’t be leading the people to possess the land, that the task belongs to Joshua his successor. The Lord endearingly called him, my servant, and even buried him personally. To this day, no one knows where Moses was buried.

It is strange to me to entrust the future to God’s providence, being someone who like to have options and plans. I am quite determined this time to give God a blank page for Him to fill in His time. It sounds over spiritual but I will resist using my brains to easily fill up my calendars with goals and plans, but I feel I need to take a step back, and enjoy staring at an empty page and calendar. Trusting in God’s providential care – so that while trying to do the ordinary things of life, like Ruth gleaning in the fields, ended up meeting Boaz, under God’s providential guidance of events and timing. Yes, that will be nice – to experience some of God’s surprises.