Your Christian Office: Believer

We Presbyterians like to talk about our “offices” – I don’t mean the room our desks are in, I mean the function of our calling in the church.  People usually think of words like Ministers, Elders, and Deacons when we say “office.”    Every office has duties and work assigned to it.  For example, as a minister, I have a pastoral duty to ensure the continuity of the apostolic teaching and life as the years pass after the apostolic age.  That is my part of the work of the church – to build up the body of Christ – that’s why God gave us the gifts he has given. 

I am also supposed to remind people of the meaning and practical implications of the Gospel – the good news of Jesus Christ which led them into the body of Christ in the first place.  My office has a lot to do with Orthodoxy and Piety…

What about you?  Are you fulfilling God’s calling to your office? Don’t think you have one?  You do.

It is really sad that the pastoral office, with its concern for guarding orthodoxy and helping people on the narrow path, has in many places tended to convey a message that this kind of leadership is the only leadership we mean when we talk about pastoral care. 

Now, all believers are rightly to be said to have an “office,” in that they have a duty to serve the Lord Jesus Christ in his church.  We are called to follow Him, the Good Shepherd.  To hear his voice and obey Him.  Do you know what the primary feature of the image and character of the Good Shepherd is?  It’s Jesus’ self-sacrificial love for his sheep, an accomplished work of His (the cross and resurrection) which calls for an unfettered response from every one of His followers — that’s your office, that’s my office.  In this task, leaders and teachers have no special privilege in this central meaning of shepherding; The Good Shepherd’s self-sacrificial love is a call we must all learn to answer in the exploration of  the pastorhood of all believers.   Keeping our nose in the Word and our feet moving and carrying the Gospel, our mission on earth is promoting and extending the awesome reality that each person has a call to lead in this special way  – the Way of the Good Shepherd.   

(prompted from Alistair Campbell, Rediscovering Pastoral Care)