equipping for ministry

Matt Dabbs posts Top Ten Ways To Equip Someone For Ministry.

• Get out of the way and let someone else do something you think you are really good at. It may take them longer and they may make mistakes that will make you cringe but let they try it anyway.
• Point people to Jesus rather than pointing toward yourself. People will never be equipped for ministry unless they are exposed to the life and teachings of Jesus.
• Live authentically in front of them. This includes the good and the bad. It is important for people to see how we handle our failures and even our sins if they are going to have a good role model for how to handle success and failure.
• Equipping takes time. It doesn’t happen in an afternoon. It happens over a period of time and in a variety of situations. Iron doesn’t sharpen iron in one shot. It takes repetition and a variety of angles.
• Point them to a good read. There are so many people we can sit at the feet of and learn from. People like Gordon MacDonald, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Parker Palmer, Larry Crabb, and thousands of others who speak from a variety of experiences. That leads us to the next one.
• Never think that you have had sufficient experience to equip someone by yourself. Expose them to other mature Christians and Christian authors.
• Show them that you have learned something from your time with them. They need to learn how to learn and how to integrate positive and negative feedback in appropriate ways.
• Approach your relationship with them in all humility. Never think for a moment that being the more mature Christian means you are better than anyone else.
• Take on the role of a servant to them and do nothing out of selfish ambition. Selfishness short-circuits the equipping process.
• Get your hands dirty by serving others alongside of them. Nothing teaches better than acts of service. Through service with give the word of God life and breath, flesh and bones. In a figurative sense we become Immanuel to the world.

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