A Mother’s Insight
A comment by my 84 year old mother the other day, “I told our minister the other day that he preached his best sermon. Preachers usually tell you what you should be doing, but they very seldom tell you how to do it,” sparked my thinking. How true; they teach about forgiveness, but very seldom take you through the steps of how to forgive someone, or about discipleship or sanctification, all big words that mean very little to most people as far as understanding them, but seldom walk with youth through your discipleship process called sanctification to show you by example how to life a Christ-like life. I have heard sermons about the unity of the body of Christ, but it seems no one can tell me how that unity is to be accomplished.
The purpose of the five fold according to Ephesians 4:12-13, “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (NIV) Following the fallacy of most sermon’s, I just told you “about” the purpose of the five fold to bring unity in the body and the fulfillment of Christ-likeness to each believer, but I didn’t instruct you “how” to do it. How do you “prepare God’s people for works of service” is what I think the Church must focus upon during this century.
In an effort to address this dilemma, I plan to write a series of blogs about the “how to”, not about the “about”. Not through the typical Christian Book Store approach of buying a “12 Steps Toward Five Fold Success” book, or writing a “15 Steps of Christian Service” magazine article, or establishing an 8 week course on the “8 Steps Toward Christian Living”, but by inviting you to join me in my walk together through “experiencing” the five fold, not just talking about the five fold. I am not sure where this walk will take us, but please join me in this walk together, learning from one another.