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Pastoral Overview:
Identifying Missional Giftedness
by Curt Watke, PhD,
Missiologist & IICM Exec. Director
© Copyright 2007 by Curt Watke, PhD and used by
IICM with permission
Ephesians 4:11f provides the promise of spiritual gifting that
every congregation has received. Every church, regardless of
size, has been given spiritually-gifted people who were
given to the church to equip the believers for ministry service and
mutual encouragement. Thus every church has someone or some
people who are uniquely gifted and called by God to function in
a pastoral role that furthers the missional task of the congregation.
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Types of Pastoral Missionality Gifting
Many people confuse the pastoral gifting with the
institutional office of the pastor. However, long before there was a
pastoral "office" in the organized church, many believers exercised the pastoral
gift of nurturing and shepherding the faith of others. The pastoral gift
is the special ability that God gives to certain members of the Body of Christ
to nurture the spiritual formation and development of a group of believers. They
“relate” to believers, encouraging them in their spiritual walk and equipping
them to shepherd others.
Those who have the pastoral gifting are designed to be
Discipling Pastors and/or Integrating Pastors -- desiring to
build up others spiritually through strong personal relationships. Because
Discipling Pastors understand people so well, their great interpersonal
communication skills enable them to nurture the spiritual faith of new and
maturing believers. As they mentor others they provide the relational
context necessary for these believers to address personal and spiritual issues.
Through these relationships they facilitate interaction between believers in
small group and one-to-one settings. Discipling Pastors understand that
discipleship is equipping believers to live as an authentic Christian within
their own cultural context -- not getting them to conform to some Christian
"subculture" that has been defined previously. This means that the
discipling must address the spiritual and cultural issues that new believers
from the social and ethnic groups within the community face. Thus only
culturally-appropriate discipleship materials are used and new believers are
encouraged to address their own spiritual and cultural issues from within a
Biblical framework.
Integrating Pastors provide the
interpersonal skills that missional teams need to keep the team
moving forward and moving together. They facilitate effective
team building and participative decision making processes.
They also manage conflict well -- which will be needed as missional
teams begin to work together. They understand the need to be
culturally sensitive to missional team members who have differing
APEPT missionality gifts, social backgrounds, and ethnic heritages.
They encourage the missional team to develop their spiritual walk,
understanding of Bible doctrine, and understanding of and exercise
of their spiritual gifts in culturally appropriate ways. But
most of all, Integrating Pastors work side by side the other APEPT
giftings on the missional team to function in their role of
equipping others in spiritual formation and spiritual development.
Dimensions of Pastoral
Missionality Gifting
Because of their pastoral giftedness, Discipling and Integrating Pastors 1)
feel a great need for harmonious relationships among the people with whom they
minister, 2) seek to facilitate involvement and teamwork, and 3) want to care
for the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of others. As caring
individuals they are internally focused on the congregation or missional team
while encouraging spiritual growth through participatory congregational
learning. Committed to the group, they foster personal interaction between
team members and the new and maturing believers. As a member of a
missional team, those with pastoral giftedness provide a nurturing environment
that promotes consensus and integrates their disciplemaking efforts.
Because they value relationships and seek to foster participation and
involvement, those with the pastoral gift tend to also emphasize collaboration
and good interpersonal communication within the group.
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Summary of Pastoral Missionality Gifting
Shepherds
The Pastor
(Pa) Gift has a primary pastoral gifted role.
This gift produces “Shepherds” who may believe they are
called to foster interpersonal relationships between believers and
spiritual transformation within believers through a deepening
relationship with God and one another.
To prepare for this type of ministry you will need to foster
sensitive intercultural relationships between the various
sociocultural groups represented among the believers through
facilitating spiritual growth and maturity.
You may need to coach believers in becoming spiritually
grounded in basic beliefs and foundational spiritual disciplines in
culturally-appropriate ways.
You may also need to mentor believers in ways that deepens
the person’s spiritual walk, understanding of Bible doctrine, and
understanding and exercise of spiritual gifts.
Your desire to foster strong interpersonal relationships may
need to be tempered if the quest for harmony prevents you from
addressing the spiritual and intercultural issues that prevent
biblical discipleship. "Doing
things together" becomes a theme that drives much of this
person's orientation.
Variants of the Pastoral Gift
The following APEPT gifted blends are variants of the Pastoral Gift:
- Pastoral-Apostolic (PaA) Gift Cluster
- Pastoral-Prophetic (PaPr) Gift Cluster
- Pastoral-Evangelistic (PaE) Gift Cluster
- Pastoral-Teaching (PaT) Gift Cluster
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