The Workers are Few
Towards the Repair of Pastoral Training
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By all indications, the Western Church is facing a crisis of pastoral ministry. Not only are pastors in churches repeatedly demonstrating that they are unfit for the weighty responsibility of pastoring, as seen in the ever-growing list of moral failings in our churches, but we are also training and ordaining fewer ministers than we are losing. Pastoral ministry is on a trajectory of decline despite the fact that the population in Western countries is more and more becoming either post-Christian or non-Christian; God has opened a massive mission field on our doorstep, a mission field that requi...
By all indications, the Western Church is facing a crisis of pastoral ministry. Not only are pastors in churches repeatedly demonstrating that they are unfit for the weighty responsibility of pastoring, as seen in the ever-growing list of moral failings in our churches, but we are also training and ordaining fewer ministers than we are losing. Pastoral ministry is on a trajectory of decline despite the fact that the population in Western countries is more and more becoming either post-Christian or non-Christian; God has opened a massive mission field on our doorstep, a mission field that requires workers. We haven't even mentioned the problem of the professionalisation of ministry, whereby the traditional task of soul care is replaced with teaching and leadership, leading to malnourished churches. The Western Church is in the midst of a pastoral crisis, yet we continue to export the same model of ministry and training to the global Church, inviting them to join us in the state of crisis. In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus invites his disciples to consider the vast harvest of souls God has prepared, a harvest awaiting workers. If we want to see our churches healthy and our neighbours come to know Jesus, we must be interested in God's work to prepare workers for the harvest. This book is an attempt to repair what is broken, to contribute to the repair of pastoral ministry. I am convinced that no problem is more urgent to the church globally than this one, yet I am also convinced the solution to this problem is quite simple. This book argues that we are in the midst of a crisis because we have swapped the biblical vision of pastoral ministry for a poor substitute and are failing to raise disciples in our local church. Part 1 identifies significant reasons why we are in a crisis; Part 2 lays a biblical foundation for rebuilding a biblical model of pastoral ministry; and Part 3 shows how this foundation can be built upon in the life of a local church. By all indications, the Western Church is facing a crisis of pastoral ministry. Pastoral ministry is on a trajectory of decline despite the fact that God has opened a massive mission field on our doorstep, a mission field that requires workers. Moreover, we continue to export the same model of ministry to the global Church, inviting them to join us in the state of crisis. In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus invites his disciples to consider the vast harvest of souls God has prepared, a harvest awaiting workers. If we want to see our churches healthy and our neighbours come to know Jesus, we must be interested in God's work to prepare workers for the harvest. This book is an attempt to repair what is broken, to contribute to the repair of pastoral ministry. I am convinced that no problem is more urgent to the church globally than this one, yet I am also convinced the solution to this problem is quite simple. This book argues that our crisis is the result of swapping the biblical vision of pastoral ministry for a poor substitute and are failing to raise disciples in our local church. Part 1 identifies significant reasons why we are in a crisis; Part 2 lays a biblical foundation for rebuilding a biblical model of pastoral ministry; and Part 3 shows how this foundation can be built upon in the life of a local church.
