The Journey of Ministry

Insights from a Life of Practice

Eddie Gibbs

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780830866953
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

These days, everybody wants the latest killer app for successful ministry. But ministry is not plug-and-play technology. It is an art cultivated over a long-term journey of faithfulness and perseverance.In his most intimate book yet, Eddie Gibbs articulates a personal philosophy of ministry born from his storied career in teaching and pastoral ministry. Through images from his own life and family, Gibbs shows how effective ministry is a matter of walking slowly with the family of God, overcoming hurdles and facing challenges together. He explains how the networking nature of the early church offers helpful models for connecting in our fragmented technological age. Linking fresh biblical exposition with our contemporary realities, Gibbs gives practical advice for welcoming people into the family and helping them live out God's intentions for them.If you want your ministry to last, learn from those who have gone the distance. Discover here insights that will help you lead and serve for the long haul.

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Walking

A Lifelong Journey in a Different Direction

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Isaiah 30:21

My wife and I had not reached our second birthdays when World War II broke out in Europe. Among our earliest memories are those of sirens wailing, warning of an impending air raid, and of huddling with our families on the steps leading to the basement, waiting for the “all clear” siren to sound. We remember our mothers darning socks and stockings, turning cuffs and collars, and patching holes. Nothing was discarded until it was no longer mendable.

Many years later we were looking through our family photo album with our oldest grandchild, then six, when he noticed that all of the oldest photos were black and white, with many not quite in focus. He suddenly piped up, “Nana, when did the world become colored?” He was nearer the truth than he realized, because those wartime years were gray and dark. Bright colors were few and far between.

During the war, there was strict rationing on most food items and—to the great disappointment of us children—candy, with many peacetime goods no longer available. We had to learn to do without. Then gas was in short supply, and eventually available only for essential services. Not that that impacted our families in any way; although my father was a car mechanic for most of his life, we never had a vehicle. We didn’t miss it, though, because we were a walking culture. We could play our games of Kick the Can and cricket in the street safely, with only the occasional warning shout: “Watch out! Car coming!”

In our neighborhood-based culture, everybody knew everybody else on our street. If your games proved to be a nuisance, or if you broke a window, rattled a door or were rude, your parents soon heard about it. When neighbors were sick or infirm, we kids did their shopping and our moms popped in to help in the home or for a friendly chat. That may all sound rather idyllic, but that is how we remember life in our childhood.

Those days are long passed. We now live in the impersonal, highly mobile big cities of today. Until recently Renee and I lived in a townhouse complex in Southern California. But old habits die hard. We still walked the neighborhood, though there was seldom anyone else around apart from those taking their dogs to do their business on someone else’s patch of grass. In fact, it’s difficult to walk our streets because the sidewalk is narrow and interrupted by driveways. There are no porches on the houses; entrances are at the sides. The first sign of anyone arriving or leaving is the raising or lowering of a garage door.

We were always surprised that our evening walks drew comments, especially about the fact that we walk hand in hand (increasingly for mutual support). One of the residents of our complex stopped us and broke down in tears; she had recently been divorced from an abusive husband.

Although we were members of a housing association consisting of about 140 homes, we could never achieve a quorum of the householders to conduct business at our annual meeting. Such is our culture of individualism and isolation.

But most people around the world today have walking cultures, especially in Africa, Latin America, India, rural China and other areas of Asia. People in those environments relate much more easily to the slow-paced walking culture of the Bible. They walk for a variety of reasons. For many, walking is their only means of getting to and from work. Others are driven by hunger or are refugees fleeing enemies who have burned their homes, or raped the women and taken their children to turn them into child soldiers, or sold them into the sex trade or as slave laborers.

Here in the West, most people walk for pleasure or to burn off calories and keep in shape. These are the “power walkers” or runners, wearing their fashionable athletic apparel, with their smartphones and water bottles. They often walk alone or with others for safety or support, yet remain self-focused, determined and uncommunicative.

We Westerners have a lot to learn from walking cultures. To do this, we have to learn to slow down to walking speed ourselves and to relearn some important lessons in life. This applies not just to ourselves as individuals, but also to the churches of which we are a part.

The Walking Culture of the Bible

In this chapter we will roam through many texts, because walking provides the context in which so many of the biblical narratives are set. Individuals, groups, tribes and armies cover thousands of miles of territory on foot. Think of Abram’s journey from Babylonia (Iraq) through Haran (Syria) to Palestine. Or Moses’ journey with the tribes of Israel from Egypt, through the Sinai Desert and the kingdom states on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, to the Jordan River and across into Palestine to take possession of the land. Think of the conquered people of Jerusalem and Judea being marched by their captors into Babylonia. And these were just the major journeys.

Within this grand narrative, people were constantly on the move, precisely because it was a walking culture. Of course, not every journey was made on foot. No doubt they also traveled by donkey and mule, with the rich and powerful journeying “first class” on horses, in chariots and by camel. (I’ve seen tourists perched precariously on camels, and it makes me wonder why the people of the Bible didn’t choose to walk!)

When we turn to the Gospel accounts of Jesus calling his disciples, we see that their response to his invitation required walking around Galilee and crossing the Sea of Galilee en route to Jerusalem for the annual festivals, as far north as Caesarea Philippi and possibly to Mount Hermon (Syria). Journeys that today take hours, in those days took weeks and even months. But in our haste to get to places more quickly, we may lose out.

The book of Acts is full of journeys, first throughout Judea and Samaria and then as far as Damascus. As the church followed the leading of the Spirit in taking the good news to non-Jews, Paul began his missionary journeys across Turkey and into Europe. As churches became established in the strategic urban centers, Christians fanned out across North Africa and into Asia and Europe. It has been estimated that Paul walked several thousand miles in the course of his many journeys.

In such a culture, metaphors pertaining to walking resonate, carrying rich meaning and significance. When consulting a number of modern translations and paraphrases, I noticed that translators provided a range of words to translate the walking metaphor in more meaningful ways to non-walking Western cultures. The word in the original Greek that means “walking” or “walking about” is translated as “living,” “behaving” or “doing,” to name a few examples. There are good reasons for this, but some valuable nuances have been lost.

Walking has a further important dimension. The Australian aborigines, an ancient people living so close to and in tune with nature and their ancestors, go on “walkabouts” in the vast, arid Australian bush. This allows them to know the terrain and live in conditions where no Westerner could survive. It seems like a good idea to walk about and become thoroughly acquainted with a location and its strong points as well as its liabilities.

The sons of Korah, to which a group of kingly psalms are attributed, depict Jerusalem as the fortress of God and tell the citizens, “Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts, view her citadels, that you may tell of them to the next generation” (Psalm 48:12-13). At the time of the writing of this psalm, the city may have been in ruins, with the remains of the towers, ramparts and citadels standing. In that case, the people would have been reminded that things hadn’t always been so bad and that God would deliver them again.

Walking cultures have much to teach us. To learn more, I spent time with a concordance just looking up verses with forms of the word walk. Here are some of the things I found.

Walking as a Metaphor for the Christian Life

In the following chapter, we’ll be dealing with ten hurdles to progress within the church of Christ. One of these hurdles has to do with people thinking that the gospel is mainly to guarantee them a place in heaven and to ensure a smoother passage through life. However, the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that the gospel is just as concerned with the way we live before death. Conversion is an “about turn” intended to lead to a life that takes a radically different direction.

Repeatedly Jesus warned his disciples that he was about “to be lifted up”—onto the cross or into heaven. Perhaps there is deliberate ambiguity in his statement. “Then Jesus told them, ‘You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light’” (John 12:35-36, emphasis added to forms of walk throughout the rest of the book). When walking in darkness, you can’t see where you’re going or whether hidden enemies are about to pounce.

For the early church, baptism was no rite of passage or social convention. It signified both cleansing from sin and dying to an old way of life that the new believer may begin to walk in new life in Christ. “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Paul wrote. “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live [walk] a new life” (Romans 6:3-4). Some Christians dwell on the dying part and don’t recognize the wonderful privilege and empowerment of sharing in the Father’s glory made ours by Christ. The good news consists in both the saving death of Christ and his saving life.

Living in the midst of a decadent Roman world, the Christians needed to live a way that was markedly different. “Let us behave [walk] decently as in the daytime,” Paul wrote, “not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Romans 13:13-14). The two communities should be as different as night and day. Paul exhorted the churches in Galatia, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Galatians 5:16).

Repeatedly the letters of the New Testament exhort young churches to demonstrate their newfound faith in their manner of life. For example, Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do [literally, “that we should walk in them”]” (Ephesians 2:10).

Our Christian walk is never accompanied by a judgmental attitude. We walk not in aloof pride but in self-sacrificing love. Again, in Ephesians, we are exhorted to be “imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (5:1-2). There is no escaping the force of these words. Paul was setting an example himself, which challenges modern church leaders who insist that they can separate their public from their private lives. Most celebrities— including Christian ones—keep their fans at a distance and limit their access. But the saints’ lives are an open book. “Join with others in following my example,” Paul wrote, “and take note of those who live [walk] according to the pattern we gave you” (Philippians 3:17).

Paul was constantly in prayer for the believers in Colosse as elsewhere: “Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live [walk] a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:9-10). We receive Jesus Christ precisely that we might follow Paul’s instructions on “how to live in order to please God” (1 Thessalonians 4:1).

Our walk is never done, for there is always more to learn as we walk in company with Jesus. And, writing in old age, John reminds every generation of those who call themselves Christian, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. ...