Issue 200
We have been looking at types. This is the fifth. Here’s a bit of teaching for you… Apostling, prophesying, evangelising, pastoring and teaching are transferable skills: they are transferred from God to people. They are also people who specialise and they are ways of working; they are also transferred between home and work and meant to prepare Christians for work and incidentally to facilitate everyone in the ways of God.
Apostles don’t just plant churches, they plant ideas, dreams, visions and people for the service of God. Prophets don’t just predict the weather, but they catch the breeze of God and let it blow into people’s lives. Evangelists are people who make it real, while pastors are those who increase care to client, customer, colleague or company. Teachers know how to learn and enable others to learn; specifically they know how to learn to work spiritually.
If you want to know what any of these types look like, then look at Jesus of Nazareth – he is THE apostle, THE prophet, THE evangelist, THE pastor and THE teacher. See how he pioneered and suffered, listen as he gave specific words from God to individual people, observe his communication style and receive his care, learning from his example.
The game of life is not played just at the weekends, or just during the week. We are always called to work out of who we are and what God has given us.
You may be a specialist in all of the five types – the chances are that you at least prefer one of them. You will also need to operate in the other four as the situation arises. If there is no specialist evangelist around, it’s no good saying it’s nothing to do with you. If there’s no specialist pastor, you still have to care. The more we think like this, the more we can get our faith on the move so that we are ready for whatever comes our way. That is why we need each other. That is what it means to be prepared.
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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