Multigenerationally Manning-Up for Ministry Part 3: Engaging - GBC Bulletin Column #8

The local church should equip its members for ministry with a solid diet of God’s word and entrust those who are faithful with responsibilities that provide them with opportunities to use their gifts. Most vital, and often most lacking, is the congregational training and trusting of multiple generations of men with leadership responsibilities, especially that of teaching. Indeed, the failure to do this in the past is one reason why many churches no longer have multiple generations of men in the present, if they have any at all! Likewise with women and children, if they are not being equipped and entrusted with responsibilities suited to their gifts and abilities, they too will ultimately disappear. When church becomes a meeting to attend instead of a membership to be a part of, a bus to ride on instead of a body to belong to, it will die. Equipping and entrusting are important.   

But they are incomplete. A soldier may be armed and assigned a mission, but what if he just sits around in the barracks playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on the Wii? What if he finally goes completely AWOL? As the Apostle Paul awaited death, he shouldn’t have had to worry about one of his co-workers pulling such a stunt. But we read in 2 Timothy 4:10: “Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me…” Soldiers, athletes, farmers, and all other metaphors for the Christian, must engage. Quite different really from getting ‘engaged’ this isn’t about walking down the aisle, it’s about marching to war and charging into battle.  Those who engage can say “we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.” Why? So that people will turn “to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” (1 Thess. 1:9-10).

As a church we are committed to multigenerationally equipping, entrusting, and engaging people with God’s Word. Are you being equipped? Grow in faithfulness so you may be approved. Have you been approved and entrusted with a responsibility? Use it as a means of engaging the feeble idolatry of the world with the triumphant good news of Jesus Christ.

This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) 16/06/2013.