The Trellis and the Vine (11 page)

[
6
] Richard Baxter,
Reliquiae Baxterianae
, ed. M Sylvester, London, 1696, p. 115, cited in JI Packer,
A Quest for Godliness
, Crossway Books, Wheaton, 1990, p. 38.

[
7
] Richard Baxter,
The Reformed Pastor
, 5th edn, Banner of Truth, London, 1974, p. 112.

[
8
] Baxter,
The Reformed Pastor
, p. 211.

[
9
] Baxter,
The Reformed Pastor
, p. 175.

[
10
] Baxter,
The Reformed Pastor
, pp. 179-80.

[
11
] Baxter,
The Reformed Pastor
, p. 196.

[
12
] Baxter,
The Saints' Everlasting Rest
, sig. A4, cited in J William Black,
Reformation Pastors: Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor
, Paternoster, Milton Keynes, 2004, p. 177.

[
13
] Black,
Reformation Pastors
, p. 105.

Chapter 9.
Multiplying gospel growth through training co-workers

Let’s return to our inspired but overwhelmed pastor. He wants his church to become a training centre, and he wants to equip his people as ‘vine-workers’, but at the same time he is swamped with work—preaching, committees, pastoral crises, and all the rest. He has 130 people to take care of—regular attenders and various contacts and people on the fringe—and he goes through the exercise of listing them all down and assessing where they are up to in the ‘gospel growth’ process.

The problem is, he barely has time to spend with ten of them, let alone 130. How is he going to start ministering personally to this sort of number? How is he going to make progress in training them to be vine-workers?

Let’s break the problem down by considering our seven imaginary people from the ‘gospel growth’ table in chapter 7.

Now, say our pastor only has time to meet with two of them personally. Which two should he meet with?

We might say Jean (because she really needs help) and Bob (because he really needs to hear the gospel). Then again, we might say Mark (because he is close to crossing the line and becoming a Christian) and Tracey (because she has crossed the line and is in urgent need of follow-up). This leaves our more mature Christians (Barry, Don and Sarah) with no input from the pastor, but since they are pretty solid, we assume that they will cope.

However, the diary only has room for two people. So who’s it going to be? In the end, most pastors would probably end up choosing Tracey and Jean, because they are members of the congregation and Christians, and the pastor may feel he owes it to them. He will have to leave Bob and Mark (the non-Christians) until some other time.

At one level, these sorts of decisions simply throw us back on the sovereignty of God. All Christian ministry is like this. There are more people than we can ever get to. It doesn’t all depend on us, praise be to God!

However, in terms of making wisest use of his time and energies, and maximizing the possibilities of gospel growth, the people our pastor should really pour his time into are Don and Sarah, followed closely by Barry.

Don, remember, is already doing some training in how to share the gospel with others. If our pastor puts some time into helping and mentoring Don in this, then he can encourage Don to pray for and meet with Bob and Mark (the two non-Christians), perhaps to work through some evangelistic Bible studies together.

Sarah has the heart and the gifts; all she needs is some personal encouragement, instruction and mentoring, and she would be more than capable of getting next to Jean to encourage her, as well as doing some basic follow-up with Tracey.

So by putting his time into Don and Sarah, our busy pastor has also ministered (through them) to four others. That leaves Barry, and he is next on the list to do some training with.

This, it has to be said, is counter-intuitive. It goes against the grain. Our first instinct is to go straight to those who need the most help—and of course, as pastors, there will always be times when we need to leave the 99 to go after the one. There will be pastoral emergencies and problems that we just have to deal with.

But if we pour all our time into caring for those who need help, the stable Christians will stagnate and never be trained to minister to others, the non-Christians will stay unevangelized, and a rule of thumb will quickly emerge within the congregation: if you want the pastor’s time and attention, get yourself a problem. Ministry becomes all about problems and counselling, and not about the gospel and growing in godliness.

And over time, the vine withers.

Paul’s band of brothers

Of course, we are by no means the first to suggest that Christian ministry is a team game. The apostle Paul himself had a large network of colleagues and co-workers who worked alongside him in his ministry. Up to 100 names are associated with Paul in the New Testament, of which around 36 could be considered close partners and fellow labourers. Paul uses two names in particular for them: fellow workers (
sunergoi
) and ministers (
diakonoi
).

Without trying to slavishly reproduce the Pauline pattern, what can we learn from his example? Let’s look at each of the two titles or designations.

Fellow workers

Paul characteristically speaks of himself as a labourer for Christ, a worker who toils and strives in the work that the Lord has given him to do (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 3:8-9, 16:10; Philippians 1:22; Colossians 1:29). The result of his ministry, such as the Corinthian church, he describes as his “workmanship in the Lord” (1 Cor 9:1).

It is natural enough, then, that Paul should refer to those who work alongside him as his
sunergoi
, his co-workers or fellow workers. In Romans 16, Prisca and Aquila are described as his “fellow workers in Christ Jesus”, Urbanus is a “fellow worker in Christ” and Timothy is just a plain “fellow worker”. Elsewhere, Timothy is also called “our brother and God’s co-worker in the gospel of Christ” (1 Thess 3:2). The noble Epaphroditus is a “brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier” (Phil 2:25). And Paul wants Euodia and Syntyche to patch up whatever it is they are disagreeing about, because these women “have laboured side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life” (Phil 4:2-3).

Paul’s ministry was collegial. There is a brotherliness and unity to it that stems from their common status as fellow workers—not just with each other, but also with God:

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labour. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Cor 3:5-9)

Their common status as God’s labourers both dignifies and humbles. They are working alongside God in his great work in the world; and yet they are nothing, because it is God who gives the growth.

Ministers

Paul also uses the language of ‘ministry’ to refer to his fellow workers who labour alongside him and also act on his behalf. Paul and Apollos are both fellow workers; they are also both “servants” (or ‘ministers’—
diakonoi
in the Greek), each being assigned their ministry by the Lord (1 Cor 3:5). Later in the letter to the Corinthians, the household of Stephanas is described in similar terms:

Now I urge you, brothers—you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service [= ‘ministry’] of the saints—be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and labourer. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such men. (1 Cor 16:15-18)

It’s a lovely picture of mutual labour and encouragement. These early converts not only joined Paul in labouring for the gospel; they also travelled to meet him on behalf of the Corinthians, and to refresh his spirit.

In Colossians, we meet Epaphras, Paul’s “beloved fellow servant”, who is a “faithful minister of Christ”; having been the one who originally taught the Colossians the word of the gospel, and who now struggles in prayer on their behalf (Col 1:7, 4:12). This is the same gospel “of which I, Paul, became a minister” (Col 1:23).

We could go on. There is Tychicus, the faithful
diakonos
in the Lord (Eph 6:21; Col 4:7), and Archippus, who is exhorted to “fulfil the ministry that you have received in the Lord” (Col 4:17), not to mention Timothy, who is entrusted with the ministry of the gospel (1 Tim 1:18), and is exhorted to be a good minister of Christ by devoting himself at all times to preaching and teaching (1 Tim 4:6, 13), even when it is unpopular (2 Tim 4:1-5).

Two themes emerge as we consider the ministry of Paul’s co-workers. Firstly, although they are sometimes the ‘ministers of Paul’—that is, agents acting on Paul’s behalf between himself and the churches—they are also the ministers of Christ. They are doing the work and bidding of the Lord, not just of Paul. Secondly, the ministry they undertake is not just any service or help, but a service that is related to the spread of the word and the building of the church.

Implications

We should hardly be surprised that Paul gathered a team around him for the cause of the gospel. If nothing else, his ecclesiology would have driven him to it. Paul valued the diverse gifts of grace supplied by the Spirit for the building of the body of Christ, and accordingly worked alongside a variety of associates in a diversity of roles, from preacher to scribe to messenger to prayer-warrior. Inevitably some of Paul’s fellow workers were closer and more long term than others, but he treated them all as brothers and fellow workers. Paul had no disciples, for there is only one Master. Women were also integrally involved in Paul’s team, hosting churches in their homes, providing patronage (like Phoebe in Romans 16:1-2), and contending alongside him for the advance of the gospel.

On the face of it, we would need good reasons
not
to adopt Paul’s methodology of team ministry. Theologically, it is an expression of the character of the church as a body with many parts. Practically and strategically, it provides support, refreshment, a sharing of the burden, and a multiplication of effective gospel work.

Of course, much of Paul’s mission was itinerant, and many of his fellow workers were involved in his evangelistic and church-planting ministry. But some were also the leaders and pastors of the churches. Here, too, the standard pattern seems to be plurality rather than singularity, whether that be a team of elders/overseers working in one congregation, or a college of elders associated with a cluster of house churches.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that both the itinerant mission and the local congregational work were team operations. Yet somehow this vision has been lost in many churches, even within those whose history and tradition emphasizes a plurality of elders. Over time, the model of a single ordained minister working alone to pastor a church has become the norm, even though it is strikingly different from the normal pattern of ministry in the New Testament.

Now, before we get distracted by age-old debates about church polity and governance, that is not what we’re talking about. There are plenty of Anglican rectors who assemble strong teams for ministry, just as there are plenty of Presbyterian teaching elders who labour virtually alone—and vice versa. The important principle is that a pastor should not and cannot attempt the task of ministering to a congregation on his own. We need co-workers.

We need people, in other words, like Don and Sarah and Barry (from our illustration above)—soundly converted people of Christian maturity who can work alongside us in evangelism, follow-up, growth and training others. Co-workers can be involved in many activities, both in doing them and in training and encouraging others to do them:

• personal evangelism and training others to share the gospel

• leading small groups and overseeing a network of small groups

• following up new Christians and training others to follow up new Christians

• leading youth groups and training the next generation of youth leaders

• meeting one to one with men or women, and training others to meet one to one.

Some of these co-workers may end up being paid by the congregation to work in these ministries—either full-time or part-time—and some will pay for themselves through secular work. Some may be officially recognized in your congregational structures (by being an ‘elder’, for example); others may not. Some may be officially recognized by your denomination (i.e. be ‘ordained’); the vast majority will not.

Regardless of the structures, titles or recognition, the principle is simple: by far the best way to build a congregation full of disciple-making disciples is to assemble and train a band of co-workers to labour alongside you. When it is just you, with 120+ people needing to be evangelized, followed-up, nurtured and trained, it is just impossible—especially given all the structures, meetings, committees, programs and activities that church life seems to generate.

But what if you were to start by gathering just ten potential co-workers, meeting with them regularly, and training and exciting them about the possibilities for ministry together? You might do nothing else for a year but gather your co-workers together in your lounge room each week to pray for the congregation, to wrestle over the Scriptures, to discuss theology, to confess sins to each other, and to train them in different aspects of ministry. But at the end of that year, you would have a close-knit, single-minded team of gospel partners, ready and able to work alongside you in ministry.