Full/part-time paid/voluntary set-apart gospel ministry? Trying to find the best language for raising up the next generation of…
A lot of people recognise that Jesus’ words about the workers being few (Mark 9:37) are as true today as it was in the first century. I was recently standing in the garden of a friend, who’s the vicar of a rural parish, and he pointed north, south, east and west to neighbouring parishes where there were congregations without any meaningful pastoral oversight. And that’s just maintenance. If we’re talking about really getting into the unreached parts of the field and harvesting those outside the church then it’s going to need a lot more workers. If churches are going to be planted in significant numbers and at a significant pace across the UK then we’ll need hundreds more church planters in the next couple of decades. But as soon as we start talking about raising up workers for the harvest field we run into difficulties finding the most helpful language to use. ‘Christian ministry’ or simply ‘the ministry’ has a long history of use as shorthand for ordained...