Just last week, I was interviewed by Phil Miglioratti for his website The Reimagine.NETWORK about my book The Ministry Driven Church. Here's an excerpt that I hope you'll find interesting:
PHIL >>> Before inserting ministry as the central role, what would leaders need to "re-place" or reposition?
ROBERT >>> Some of my later research shows that the church expanded greatly because it built hospitals, orphanages, and old folks homes and staffed them with Christian doctors who were often also priests, Christian nurses and other staff (see "HEALTH AND HEALING IN BYZANTIUM" and "Seek the Welfare of the City.") But over the centuries, especially in the last century, we have allowed these functions to be taken over by the secular state's welfare programs and socialized medicine. So in order to grow again, it must be relevant to society: the church needs to reclaim her social ministry.
The Evangelical movement is based upon witnessing, soul winning and studying the Bible. But if the main thing is just to get people saved from sin and on their way to heaven, why didn't Jesus, right after His baptism when John said: "Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world!" – go immediately to Calvary, be crucified and rise from the dead? NO! There's more to salvation than just going to heaven. "Salvation" is "soteria" in Greek and it has the dual meaning of healing as well as going to heaven. Jesus came to heal body and soul. In my role as editor of a revision of the Russian Bible and producing a harmony of the Gospels during our 17 years as Evangelical missionaries in Russia, I studied the ministry of Jesus, the Messiah (Christ). He began His ministry by reciting in the synagogue the prophecy of Isaiah that the Messiah would heal the sick, give sight to the blind, etc. Then He spent 3.5 training His disciples: showing them how to do diakonia-ministry and then sending them out to actually do that kind of ministry. Only then did His time come to die, rise again, and go to heaven.
Here's how to learn about our "Agape Restoration Communities" – then scroll down halfway to see how to get a free copy of my e-book The Ministry Driven Church.
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