St Michael’s has been a great trainer, sender and supporter of people going into Christ’s harvest field. That’s what Harvest: Next Steps in Focus [Wednesday, June 24th from 6:30-9pm at Wollongong Hall] is all about – to continue as a church praying, raising up, sending and supporting God’s people into Christ’s massive harvest field. Now we’re concentrating on raising up people who are gifted by God to go into paid gospel ministry in the future. But this doesn’t cancel out the fact that God gifts every member of his body to play a particular role in preaching the gospel to the world. So even if you’re not gifted to lead God’s people, don’t think that you have no role in building up the body of Christ. And don’t think you cannot be a part of raising up, training, sending, supporting and encouraging others to go into paid gospel ministry. We need the whole church to be involved in this training task.  

As we think about raising, training and sending some of God’s people into paid vocational gospel ministry, there is a complex mixture of God’s conviction expressing itself in personal desire to be an overseer (1 Tim 3:1), the guidance of God’s people (eg Acts 13:1-3),  training from the leaders of God’s people (2 Tim 2:2), God’s gifting (1 Tim 4:14), time , age, and sex play a role (Titus 1:5-9 elders, in one sense means an older man… he has had time to mature.) All of these factors are important in raising, training, sending and supporting some of God’s people to go into paid gospel ministry.

But I want to just remind you today that God takes people down many different pathways to become workers in Christ’s massive harvest field. I want to do this by looking at a few Biblical examples and then some current examples. Ultimately I want us to remember that the people Jesus sends into his harvest field are not competent or able to fulfill their responsibilities by their own strength, conviction or character, no it’s God who makes them competent, it’s God who sustains them, it’s God who raises them up and brings them down. They are normal people, just like you and me, it’s God who uses them in his massive harvest field… to him goes the glory.

As we start our series in Exodus this Sunday, Moses comes to mind. His parents knew there was something special about him (Exodus 2:2), Moses knew he was to be a leader of the Hebrews (Acts 7:23-29) but he was rejected by his people and became a foreigner in a foreign land. God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and confirmed that he was sending Moses back to Egypt to rescue the Israelites out of Egypt and take them into the promised land (Ex 3:7-10). But how did Moses react to God sending him to rescue Israel? “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Exodus 3:11. And even after God says to Moses that he will be with Moses, Moses spends nearly two chapters excusing himself from the task set before him because of his slowness of speech and tongue and the hard heartedness of the Israelites toward him. But Moses needed to be  reminded that God is the one who will rescue his people from Egypt. Moses needed faith in God. He didn’t need great public speaking abilities because it wasn’t about him and his wonderful talents, it was about God and his powerful arm, which would bring his people out of Egypt under Moses’ weak and often patchy leadership.

We know nothing about Elijah’s preparation to be God’s prophet. He just appears to Ahab speaking God’s words to him (1 Kings 17:1), We do know however how he felt after Mount Carmel and the revelation of God to Israel and the destruction of the prophets of Baal. On the run from Jezebel, he seeks out the Lord at Mt Horeb (where Moses received the 10 commandments). When God questions him about why he is on Mt Horeb, Elijah says he has been very zealous for God and he is the only one left who hasn’t rejected God’s covenant. God’s reply. That’s not true. There are 7000 people that God has protected from bowing down to Baal. And now Elijah is to anoint new kings in Aram and Israel, and he is to appoint his own successor Elisha. In other words, Elijah isn’t indispensable to God. God uses him for  a season and then he uses other people for a season. A good reminder that God uses our service but we are not indispensable to his sovereign plans.

The obvious example of a servant of God in the New Testament is the Apostle Paul. He is quite autobiographical in many parts of the New Testament, so we know a lot about the circumstances of his conversion and apostleship. He was born in Tarsus of Cilicia, a Greek speaking town in modern day Turkey (Acts 22:3) and trained in Jewish law by Gamaliel in Jerusalem. He had Roman citizenship from birth (Acts 22:28), He was a Pharisee, who persecuted, killed and jailed Christians until his conversion on the road to Damascus. On that road, Paul saw the risen Jesus, was blinded and sent to Damascus for further instruction. Ananias was sent to him by God to commission him as Christ’s apostle to the Gentiles. Immediately, being filled with the Spirit he began debating the Jews and proving from the Old Testament that Jesus is the Christ (Acts 9). He didn’t need further training before he set out to preach to the Gentiles. Whereas Timothy, his son in the faith was trained at Paul’s side.

Paul met Timothy in Lystra (Acts 16:1-5). Timothy had learnt the scriptures from his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois from the time he was a little boy (2 Tim 1:5; 3:15). The believers in Lystra spoke well of Timothy to Paul which suggests they knew of Timothy’s gifting, character and suitability for ministry (Acts 16:2). But Timothy needed on the job training from Paul as he settled into gospel ministry (See 1 and 2 Timothy as training manuals for Timothy as he sets up and establishes new churches in Ephesus and other places). 2 Timothy 3:10-17 is one example of Paul urging Timothy to imitate his pattern of gospel ministry, even when, especially when, Paul has died and Timothy must pass on the baton.

As we come into our own time, I am reminded of Don Carson’s Memoirs of an ordinary Pastor in which he writes about his dad and the ordinary, difficult ministry that Tom Carson carried out over a lifetime in French speaking Quebec… with much persecution and without many results. Carson’s aim in writing the book was to highlight the endurance and the very ordinary nature of his father in situations that aren’t flashy in order to encourage most pastors, who end up caring for normal-sized churches with seemingly little results.

If I think of my own dad and mum, also both ordinary people, trained teachers who were convicted by God to go as workers in Christ’s massive harvest field. They both went to Bible College. They joined the organisation called Language Recordings. They were sent to Papua New Guinea and spent 16 years of their lives walking or canoeing their way up and down the rivers of PNG, sleeping in mosquito nets, living in villages and trying to record bits of the Bible into some of the 900 languages in PNG, so that locals could be saved by Jesus. My dad later studied to train missionaries and pastors in cross-cultural communication. He received a masters and a PHD in missiology. And yet he never taught missionaries and pastors full-time. His life was a combination of conviction and character and yet time and age and even opportunity affected his service.

On Tuesday, July 21 from 10:30-12pm you are invited to the launch of a biography about David Seccombe, converted here at St Michael’s, who became a significant figure in the evangelical church in Perth and was also Principal of one of South Africa’s best evangelical colleges, George Whitfield College (see article in e-news). What caught my eye in this short article was this paragraph: ‘While David has packed a lot of living into his 80 years, his story is a very ordinary one. What makes it intriguing is the way that God has used a very quirky, idiosyncratic and free-spirited follower of Jesus to accomplish an astonishing variety of things in living for his Creator/King.’

The Apostle Paul speaking of his own new covenant ministry in 2 Corinthians chapter 3…says the reason he never gives up in gospel ministry is not because he puts his confidence in his own competencies (that would be reason to give up) but his confidence is in God.. who makes him competent as a minister of the new covenant (2 Cor 3:1-6). So no matter where we are on the trajectory of training, sending and supporting people to be in paid gospel ministry. Or maybe we are on some different pathway, let’s remember God is the one who makes us competent. He deserves all the glory. We are his servants, to be used or not according to his sovereign plan and we should delight in whatever role he gives us, as co-workers in his massive harvest field.

Kingsley Box (10am & 5pm)