Both the private and public ministry of the Word need one another and feed another. They are both essential and founded on the bedrock of the divine potency of the Scriptures. I resonate with everything in this article, and it raises a panoply of practical questions for me. Here are three:
How do I get better at the private ministry of the Word? That’s the biggest reason that I’m taking this class. I have formal training in the public ministry of the Word (seven years of theological education in prominent evangelical schools), yet almost no training in private ministry. I need my skills to be developed. And it’s more than just classroom training needed, of course, I need to get better at the cure of souls by working with real souls. It feels terrible for my church family to be “guinea pigs” and suffer through my learning experiences, but it’s better to do that than to not learn at all!
How do I equip others in the private ministry of the Word? Lane writes, “Ironically, private ministry of the Word is not an individualistic activity. Rather, it is a community activity. It flourishes particularly when people live in close relationships with one another. It does, though, raise massive questions for equipping every member to think and speak in ways that are consistent with biblical truth” (pg. 13). The goal would be to train our church to be a “wisdom community.” But how do we get there? I need a plan.
How do I change my preaching to feed into the private ministry of the Word? I need to beef up the applicational quotient in my public ministry, especially taking it beyond asking simplistic questions such as “How does this teaching apply to you?” I also need to work on the applicational side of the message earlier in the preparation process and make sure that it engages earlier in the sermon than just at the end. Illustrations from real life must become a staple.A
A Community of Counselors
This article dovetails with the last (see above). Tripp calls upon preachers to preach in such a way that the listeners become ministers: “The preacher is called to counsel the counselors, to comfort the comforters, to teach the teachers, to encourage the encouragers” (pg. 52). The public ministry of the Word not only feeds into the pastor’s private ministry, but informs the private ministry of the whole congregation. I see several implications of this thesis:
I need to think of my Sunday message as equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry. Normally, I think of it as inspiring, informing, and convicting, but I need to intentionally plan the message to equip our disciples to minister to one another. There are lots of ways to do this, I’m sure, but I need to pick at least one each week!
I need to get my people to think of the Sunday message as equipping them for the work of the ministry. People tend to listen to a message for personal application–at least the healthy ones do, some people listen for entertainment or to critique it. But I need to train my hearers to not only think of themselves as they engage with Sunday’s message, but to think, in love, of how it applies to the people that have been placed around them in their lives. Do they even know that they are all called to ministry? I hope they do, but how can I reinforce this truth?
I need to come up with some practical ways to encourage the private ministry of the Word. In times past, I’ve emphasized to the fathers of the church that they should start conversations about the sermon at the Sunday dinner table. It would be great if we provided a list of suggested questions. This could be done for more than just families, too. Small groups, classes, couples, roommates, etc could all benefit. What other practical ideas could be put in place to stimulate this kind of deep, loving, wise, one-another interaction?
Mark & Kendra Petras (self-portrait with Micah and Anna) are new friends, new district church planters, and new bloggers.
