Missio Ecclesia
Missio Ecclesia promotes starting and strengthening healthy churches in missions, explores the value of working in and through local churches on the field, highlights faithful missionaries around the world, and engages the wide spectrum of missiological ideas with charity.
Missio Ecclesia
Ep. 2 - Should Missionaries Serve as Elders?
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In this episode, missionaries and pastors Ricky Don Wilhelm and Ross Frierson join the podcast to discuss church planting in Russia and Wales, the role of missionaries in local churches, and whether missionaries should serve as elders.
Links:
Ross Frierson, Mikko Sivonen, and Ricky Don Wilhelm, "Missionaries as Provisional Pastors"
Sam Martyn, "Should Missionaries Serve as Elders?"
Russia, Church Planting, and Wales
IntroThis is Missio Ecclesia, sharing stories from the mission field, engaging ideas with charity, and recovering the church as the center of missions.
DeanWelcome everyone to the second ever episode of Missio Ecclesia. I'm Dean Polk here with my co-host Sam Martyn, and we are joined today by our guests Ricky Don Wilhelm and Ross Frierson. Brothers, thank you very much for being with us today. Thanks for having us. Ricky and Ross presently serve as both missionaries and pastors, which I suppose for some is like jumbo shrimp or the living dead or deafening silence. What do you mean by that? Like as an oxymoron? Yeah, something like that. We'll let these guys unpack and defend it later. But we don't we don't want to start there. And so we brothers, we'd like to hear your backstories. And if you will, don't take us all the way back, Ricky. Don't take us all the way back to the plains of Oklahoma. But if you could start from the time that you guys moved to Russia until when you then had to leave, what were you involved in in that period of time? And yeah, how did it go?
RossYeah, I'll start there. We met in in seminary in Fort Worth 20 years ago, and it was before we had kids, we ended up studying together at seminary and then moving together to Russia April of 2009 with the goal of engaging unreached, unengaged people group called the Udmurt. And by God's grace, we learned the language, learned first studied Russian, and then worked on the Udmurt language and started going out into rural areas, mostly villages, where we were handing out Bibles, talking to people about Christ. Long story short, in 2014, a group of believers had been gathered and it was time to plant a church. And I think it was it was at that point where I realized I was seriously lacking in in understanding even of what a church is, and have started to to seek out some answers to that. What would you add to that, Ricky?
RickyYeah, it was a unique situation. We were living in the capital city called Izhevsk, but we were kind of had the assignment of planting in this these Udmurt populated areas, which were rural, but the local authorities wouldn't give us permission to live out there. So it was very much just kind of parachuting in, sharing the gospel with people, and just praying for God to work through our our evangelism. And as far as I know, that church we planted in that Udmurt region was kind of the first evangelical, definitely the first Reformed Baptist church or Baptist church in that county. So it was just amazing to see and be a part of of God's God's work there.
DeanThat's awesome. So you guys were the church formed in 2014, and then how much longer did you stay in that region?
RossSo my family left in 2016. We moved to St. Petersburg. We the plan was for us to drop our stuff off in an apartment in St. Petersburg, go back to the States, do a one-year kind of training role with our sending organization. And then the plan was to move back to Russia to St. Petersburg, then in in the summer of 2017. So when the door closed for us to go back into Russia in 2017, it in one sense was a little bit easier because we we had already said goodbye to the only people in Russia that we knew, and we hadn't really formed any relationships in St. Petersburg.
DeanAnd and then Ricky, you stayed in Russia for a bit longer after your time in Udmurtia. Where did you go? What did you do?
RickyYeah, so I think I was in Udmurtia about a year after Ross had departed, was continued to work with that church, and they they were growing. They they had like relatives and villages that wanted us to start Bible studies with them, so we're we're doing that. There was still a lot to do, but in God's providence, when in 2014, when a war or skirmishes had broken out in eastern Ukraine, a Baptist pastor actually relocated to that spot where we were at in Udmurtia. But he and I spent time working closely together, but ultimately passed off that kind of lead pastor role to him. He was able to live there. But our organization was going through some leadership changes. And I was asked to relocate in 2017 to Moscow. While we were praying about that, I was in America and was attending a conference where I actually met two Russian pastors, and I shared with them about kind of our prayer about whether or not to move. And they said, Well, we really want to encourage you to move to Moscow and help us plant churches. And that's a church called Russian Bible Church. At that point, it was about a six-year-old church. It started with 19 members. When I became a member, I think I was somewhere around the 120th member to join my wife and I. Also at that time, because the lead pastor there, Evgeny Bakhmutsky, he was just an astoundingly gifted leader, particularly for his context, and understood the soul of his people to put it in Russian terms, understood his own culture really well, and began to develop a church that felt very, very Russian, but also different in that he was trying to build a biblical model. And so many people started coming asking, what are you guys doing that's different? And out of that, kind of organically, we developed a ministry called Ecclesia, which was kind of a pastor's training network that developed into conferences and modular training programs. And meanwhile, our own church, I think by the time this the second war started, the big war in Ukraine in 2022 started. I think when I left, we had about 400 members in that church. We'd planted multiple churches during that time. So it was it was the kind of thing that missionaries just pray for and and imagine getting to be be a part of. And by God's grace, I was just kind of invited into that group, mentored, and kind of stepped onto the plate right before it took off. So I'm I'm really thankful for that time there. And it was really a truly exciting, fun work to be a part of in Moscow.
DeanYeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So then eventually, Ricky, your family also has to leave Russia, and then you guys both settle in Europe. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing since Russia, how that's going, both Ross and Ricky?
RossYeah, so when the door closed for us to move back to St. Petersburg in 2017, a door opened for us to move to Cardiff, Wales, and began working on planting healthy churches in Cardiff and in the nation of Wales. Through a mutual friend, we're connected with a brother named Dai Hankey, who was gathering a group of people into his home that would become Redeemer Church Cardiff. And we moved here in the summer of 2017. In March then of 2019, there was a group of 12 adults that covenanted together to be Redeemer Church Cardiff. And myself and then Dye were appointed the two elders, pastors, overseers of Redeemer Church. Awesome. And and Ricky, Ricky's story would have him move into Wales. He can tell that. But it was a few years later in 2022.
RickyYeah, and in 2022, again, the war started, our our family was evacuated, and we went back to Oklahoma just for some time to we kind of from a distance, wrapping things up, praying about what would be next. But during that time, Ross and one of those pastors calls me and and says, We have an idea, we know you're you're still trying to get back to Russia, but if it doesn't work out, and this pastor said, We we have a group of people in an area without an evangelical church at the moment. They're driving into the city, into Cardiff to to be a part of our church. But some of them are interested in seeing a church planted in a town called Penarth. Would you come? And no promises, but come join our church, spend one year with us, and then during that year, we promise we will consider sending you out to plant a church in Penarth. So that's what Brandy and I did again with the invitation of a local church. We went, we joined, we just poured into that church. And in November, the 5th of November, remember, remember the 5th of November of 2023, Penarth Evangelical Church covenanted together. And I continue to be the lead pastor of that church to this day, alongside three other elders, two lay and and one part-time paid minister. Praise God for that.
SamYeah. So in 2024, you guys wrote an article for the Great Commission Baptist Journal of Missions. And it was really related to the experiences that you'd had in Russia and then I think in Wales since arriving there, as both serving as missionaries, but also as pastors. And the title of that article was Missionaries as Provisional Pastors. And you start the article by just observing that there's a confusion about church planting and a missionary's role on the field in church planting, and you go on to say that we have to understand what it is that exactly that we mean by the
What is a "Missionary"?
Samword missionary. So, can you guys tell us what do you mean by the word missionary?
RickyYou know, the word missionary in the New Testament comes from the Greek word apostolos, and because of that, there is actually a lot of debate in the kind of small mysiological world we live in about what a missionary is, what function he he fulfills. But in the most literal sense, you know, that word is defined as a delegate, messenger, member of an envoy. But in the New Testament, apostolos, you know, has kind of two uses. The first one is the very strict ecclesial use of apostles, and we see that certain people were designated by Christ into this role. And particularly their the criteria for being an apostle was the Lord's selection, like Jesus Christ Himself selected them to be his delegates. They were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ, and they had authoritative gospel preaching and teaching, which was confirmed by miracles. So that that was kind of a very specific and we believe a role that was for that foundation-laying period, and to use the Ephesians language of the first century, the which was going to unite the church throughout the ages with the teaching of the apostles and the prophets. However, there are other uses of the word that we would just say are missionaries, or literally just people who are sent out for a purpose. And so, whenever in the most general sense, it is someone sent out for a specific task, and in in kind of my understanding of that word, that task can be many different tasks determined by a church saying we're going to send this person to fulfill a specific need in an area that has a gospel need. So in the most basic sense, Sam, I would say a missionary is a sent one set out for the purpose of building up the local church in a possible variety of ways. Yeah, anything you'd add to that, Ross?
RossI think just my mind has gone back to how this podcast started with kind of the the oxymoron of the the jumbo shrimp and missionary who's serving as a pastor. And I think it would be helpful just to recognize that's probably not always been the case. Think about William Carey being sent out and he eventually established a church, planted a church, and then pastored the church. And I I don't think at that time anybody would have thought much about that. But I think we've come to an era in missions where the the missionary task itself has been largely reduced to evangelism. And so it is the job of the missionary to do evangelism. And in that era of missions, then I can see how maybe it is a little bit strange, but if we're talking about an understanding that when evangelism occurs and a people respond to the gospel and they're gathered into a local church, a church is established, whose responsibility is it at that point to shepherd, to teach, to model, to entrust then eventually that shepherding and leading work with others. And I think that's kind of what we were trying to get to with that with that article that you mentioned, Sam, is an answer to the question whose responsibility is it to shepherd until there are locals who can do that shepherding work.
RickyYeah, and so we would kind of see kind of two New Testament categories for a missionary. But first off, I think is a good example, is Epaphroditus. He is called an apostolos. In the ESV, I think it's translated as a messenger in Philippians chapter two, kind of verses 19 on. He's being described. And he was kind of sent out for the purpose of actually just bringing an offering to support Paul. And then he sticks around and supports the ministry. But but after a while, he got really homesick, and Paul sent him back and he said, Hey, celebrate this guy when he comes back to Philippi. So there you kind of have that general use of the word missionary or apostolos of so he's just sent out, he fulfills a task and and was faithful in that task and completed it. But then the New Testament also gives also a pattern of missionaries who are very much doing that ministry of of the word. And in this article, we use the term provisional pastors, and obviously that's not a New Testament word. And we chose that verbiage because we're trying to paint a clear picture of what we're getting at. Provisional meaning itinerant or temporary, and then pastor meaning he's he's shepherding, he's doing the thing for a while. What you see your pastor do in kind of an American context. Sunday after Sunday, he's caring for the sheep, he's preaching the word, he's raising up and and teaching other pastors. Day to day, that work very much looks like the kind of you know, mundane work of a pastor once the church is planted and gathering. Now we kind of have a and even bring it up in the footnotes of that article, see that as actually the work of the evangelists mentioned in the New Testament, that is an itinerant office for people to go in temporarily to fulfill what we would call like pastoral work, but then by intention move on and keep doing that work of church planting in other areas.
SamYeah, and I think Eckhart Schnabel in his book, Paul the Missionary, actually makes exactly that point. He he talks about how the exhortations given to Timothy by Paul, he says that it's closely connected with teaching and exercising leadership in the local church. So I think that's a helpful resource as well in thinking about these conversations.
RickyYeah, we could even go back to like Eusebius in his history of the church. He he said that the the work of the evangelists was to go out and to preach the gospel and establish new churches to raise up leaders and then keep moving on. And so even for three centuries, we see that there was this expectation there would be people doing that work. And that's what we're trying to get at. Therefore, like the criteria for screening and sending all missionaries shouldn't be the same. It really depends on the purpose. Is this person being sent out to do that work of planting a church, kind of leading it towards maturity and able to raise up elders who will take up the place and then move on so that the gospel can aggressively continue to move forward?
RossI think we also recognize that we live in an era where often Paul is held up as the missionary whose model we should all follow, and Acts becomes the the missionary playbook, then. And I think we in this article were essentially trying to say we we are not Paul, and we we don't have the authority, we don't possess the authority that Paul possessed as an apostle. So we we fully recognize that Paul is never referred to as a pastor, he's an apostle. He does but he is doing a lot of teaching. He's doing I and he doesn't have a problem referring to himself as a teacher. He does that in both of his letters to Timothy, refers to himself as a teacher, and he therefore is doing the work that even we are doing today in in local churches, teaching. It's one of the competencies of of an elder pastor is to be able to teach. And I would also add much of what I understand about pastoring, both what is a pastor, what does a pastor do. I've learned that from Paul, from his inspired scripture in writing. So yeah, but we we would fully acknowledge, not trying to make the argument that Paul is referred to as a pastor in in the New Testament, although it seems like every place he goes where he he establishes a church, he does the work of a shepherd until he gets run out.
DeanYeah, that's very good.
Should Missionaries Serve as Elders?
DeanIf I'm remembering the article that Sam referenced, the the person in the New Testament that you guys really extract the most lessons from is Timothy, and what you call him in the article is an itinerant missionary that served as a provisional pastor. Could you just unpack that whole statement for us a little bit? And and particularly maybe the the implications for us in modern missions.
RickyYeah, I I would say to to start with the word itinerant, sometimes itinerancy might be described as someone who's just constantly on the move. Right. And that that definitely wasn't what Timothy's ministry looked like. So if I was to say, if you were to zoom in on my week this week, I look like I'm doing the normal work of a normal pastor, not of the work of a itinerant minister. But if you were to zoom out, Dean, on my 20 years or nearly 20 years on the mission field, you know, we've lived in five different cities. We've been a part of church planting in three different locations. And therefore, you couldn't make the argument that my ministry hasn't been itinerant by design with great intentionality. And so, and that's what we see is the pattern in in Timothy's ministry in the New Testament. Sometimes when he was going into a place with an established church, he was very much focused on strengthening that local church. But then, you know, to Timothy ends with Paul saying, okay, now it's time to move on, and I'm gonna send a replacement to somebody else to come in and keep strengthening that church, but I need you over here now. But also when he was traveling with Paul into pioneer locations, he was probably just helping plant the church. You know what I mean? So so I see that he was planting and strengthening local churches, but he was a man on the move if you were to see his ministry from from 10,000 feet for for lack of better word. And so that's what we're getting at with itinerant. Not that you don't rent a house in one location, but or that you're constantly going from village to village, but overall by by design, you're trying to establish something, i.e., a healthy local church that is self-sufficient so that you can move on and repeat that kind of process all over again. And that means, therefore, there's a sense of intentionality of particularly, I would say, training up churches in doctrine, but also the 2 Timothy 2:2 work of entrusting the faithful men that which we've been entrusted, namely the Word of God. So training people who can fulfill that constant and stable pastoral role after we move on.
DeanYeah, it's a really helpful point to make because I think the standard use of itinerant is not the way that you guys mean it in the article. You know, Timothy's itinerancy was really church-centered. You know, he planted himself down in that church there in Ephesus and worked to build it up and its doctrine and and and in many other ways. In fact, in the article, you guys draw attention to 1 Timothy 3, 14 and 15, where Paul says to Timothy. Timothy, I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. And so Paul here is making this clear statement that Timothy's itinerancy was very church-centric and was based in a in a church, that he was tasked to labor to see it grow up into health. So I thought that was it's really helpful.
SamAnd we just think about the way that we come to interpretation of the New Testament on these things. So often it seems like we try to make a straight line from observation of what we see in the text to your prescriptions for how we ought to go about this work when really what we're after is wisdom. You know, what wisdom would the scriptures give us in how to be a sent one, how to be a pastor or a deacon or a faithful church member.
RossAnything else you want to unpack from that phrase? Yeah, I was just gonna add with that phrase the itinerancy, the provisional pastor. The provisional pastor really we landed on that because in the scope of that article, we couldn't explain all that we would want to really based on Ricky's dissertation, his PhD dissertation on the evangelist. And so, Ricky, I think it would be helpful if you just in a few sentences would explain what you mean by the evangelist. What work did you do, and then why did we choose provisional pastor instead of evangelist?
RickyYeah, I mean, it's not like anything very new. There have been people throughout church history who saw that there was not only the universal church office of apostles and prophets, but also this itinerant office, this itinerant preacher of the word, kind of invested with the authority to preach the gospel and plant churches, which would be the evangelists. Then there was the local church office or the more stable church office of pastor-teacher. Even a Baptist theologian named Louis Drummond, he said that there are three kinds of leadership offices, the universal, the itinerant, and the localized, particularly pointing to Ephesians 4, and saying, But all of these are given to the church. Apostles and prophets to the universal church through the scriptures, evangelists given to local churches, ministering there for a time to strengthen and establish that church so that the gospel witness can continue on in that community, and then the kind of static or established leadership of a pastor who will continue to build that church up in health. And so that's the idea of is just a minister of the word sent to establish a church plant. And therefore, the he does serve as kind of a prototype for every other future pastor. So, therefore, like the pastoral epistles, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, I don't mind those being called pastoral epistles because that instruction given to Timothy applies to anyone who is fulfilling the work of an elder as well. So, yeah, that's kind of the essence of it. I think we've lost an important definition there. And so when people are looking to the New Testament saying, well, what am I as a missionary? They say, Oh, I'm Paul. The problem with identifying ourselves as Paul is that so much of what Paul wrote about himself and his own ministry was in defense of his universal church office of the apostle. And and particularly he's defending the universality of the gospel. But when we take that universal church office and apply it to ourselves, it kind of puts us outside of the local church, where I would say Ephesians 4 is unmistakable that the evangelist and the pastor teacher are inside, serving inside primarily of the local church, even if that means they first must plant the church to be serving and building it up.
SamAnd there's some clues there in Ephesians 2. You think of Ephesians 2.20, Ephesians 3.5, where Paul references there the apostles and the prophets talking about them as the foundation. Some language there that, you know, are not just convenient to say, oh, they're just relegated to the first century, but there's really seems to be some internal clues in the text that are suggesting that these universal offices don't continue in the same way. Right.
DeanSo I I think it's no surprise to any of us that there are a lot of conversations around this question. Should evangelists, should missionaries serve as pastors and whether we call them provisional or not. I think there's a lot of pushback to the ministry strategy that you guys have followed across multiple cities and multiple countries, right? And we want to come back to that and hear from you guys again.
Paternalism and Training Leaders
DeanSam, I think it'd be helpful to hear from you for a minute because you came into a situation in Central Asia where you were asked to serve as an elder at a local national church, but you really wrestled with that, and you've actually written about this. And I've actually heard you frame that as a concern about paternalism, which paternalism typically we think about as a reason not to serve in leadership in a local national church, but you kind of came at it from a different angle. Could you sort of unpack that for us for a minute?
SamYeah, so we were serving in Central Asia. We were a couple years into our assignment, and the local church pastor there in the church that we were partnering alongside of to do church planting on the Black Sea coast in Central Asia asked me if I would consider coming alongside him to serve as an elder in the church. He was the only, he was a single elder that he had tried and been burned in trying to raise up some others. It's a difficult context with believers from a Muslim background. And he was just asking for help. And you know, I had internalized principles of, you know, stay in the background, don't, you know, ever take work away that nationals can be doing. And those things were really important. They're born out of the experience of missionary history. So back in the mid-19th century, there's this movement to address issues of paternalism called the indigeneity movement. And there's this movement to address missionaries who show up on the field and they build buildings and they control all the resources. They establish themselves almost as like kings of a little fiefdom. And there's this effort to push beyond that and say, this is not what needs to happen. And so you have the rise of this movement, and then you fast forward to the collapse of empire and a post-colonialism that takes this to its even most radical end, which is it comes along and says, you know, we don't have a need for foreigners to do anything. We don't even need them here at all. And I think that pendulum swinging a swing so far to one side, and you know, these principles that we just sort of accept as best practice may not be serving us in every case in the way that we sometimes think they were. And so in this particular case, it occurred to me that if I told my national partner there, no, I wasn't going to do this, I was essentially saying to him, I know better than you know what you need. And if I did this for you, it wouldn't be good for you. And therefore, I'm not going to do it. That's another kind of paternalism. It's a reverse kind of paternalism. It's saying, I know better than you what you need. And thankfully, I had a faithful brother who sort of challenged me as I was thinking through this and, you know, whether or not to take this step. And he just challenged me and said, What biblical principle would keep you from doing this? You know, here's a national brother. You've cultivated trust with him for a few years. He's asked you to step in and to help him. And clearly there's great need. You don't have to do this forever, but you know, you're going to have the opportunity to model what it means to faithfully shepherd in this context. And that's part of training others to do it too. And so with fear and trepidation, we stepped into that role. I wouldn't recommend it for everybody. A church has to recognize its leaders, people who would serve in this role, they need to be elder qualified. You can't just do it because you're a foreigner. In fact, you shouldn't do it simply because you're a foreigner, and you should. And I think we need to heed the lessons of history related to paternalism, but we need to be thoughtful about it.
RickyI would add to that, in many ways, by stepping in, we're, I think we're all Baptists on this call. And therefore, we believe in the authority of the local congregation. And by actually stepping into a congregation and submitting to other elders or to the congregation's authority and electing you, in many ways that's showing a lot of humility saying, I'm not only stepping in to serve you, but you're serving me, and I'm also a person under authority here.
DeanYep. Sam, you said something there at the end about the value of modeling, and that's one reason you chose to be an elder at that church on the Black Sea coast. Ross and Ricky, you guys also talk about the importance of imitation in cross-cultural work. So can you touch on that for a minute? Why do we need to keep this in mind that showing young believers, young leaders what these things look like is so important?
RossI think in most cases, when we're talking about church planting, we're talking about establishing a church in an area where there would be few, if any, models of a healthy church. And certainly when people are being converted and being added to the church, they themselves would have no context for a healthy church. And we've already touched on quite a few things as to why I think this is so important. We understand ultimately that the congregation of a local church has the authority to appoint and to remove elders, also to affirm and to remove members, but those are things that have to be taught. And so we want to model for a season healthy church polity. We want to teach on that and then model it. So modeling that is going to look like leading a members' meeting where we not only teach on polity, but then we model what that would look like. We also want to model expository preaching. We want to preach good sermons and we believe that the most effective way to teach people how to study the Bible for themselves is for them to gather on a weekly basis and hear good expository sermons. And by that work, then the Lord, by his spirit, transforms the people of God from one degree of glory to the next. We also want to model what it looks like to be a faithful pastor. So again, we're we're working with people who, in some cases, have never been a part of a healthy church because they've just been converted and been added to the church. In some cases, people are coming and joining the new church plant from another church, but maybe not a healthy church. And so we want to model healthy pastoring, faithful pastoring. And I've not figured out a way, and I I've not found it in scripture or just in experience, how to do that modeling apart from being in that role and preaching good expository sermons, modeling healthy authority and and so on.
SamYeah, are you guys sympathetic at all, though, to the concerns that this is short-sighted, that you don't actually care about training up leaders, you need to, it's this, you're satisfying this need to do this yourselves. You know, are any of those objections warranted? Like, how do you guys think about that?
RossI so specifically the what would the concern be? So that by eldering, by pastoring.
SamYeah, that it's taking away the roles that nationals could be filling from them.
RossI think when and where that's the case, you want nationals filling those those roles. I think the the work that we're doing So this is not either or for you. No, the this is we are intentionally working towards raising up faithful men who we can entrust this work to of shepherding. And we've come just by God's grace here at Redeemer Penarth. If we are about to make that transition, I'll be stepping down from my role because the Lord has raised up Nash, He's brought in Malcolm, and Nash will take on the main preaching pastorate. The church has gotten to a point where they can largely afford to pay him and with a little outside financial help. And so we're working towards those in indigenous principles. Yeah, I think that's always the goal. So my question is always how how are you doing that? Do pastors matter? Does a healthy church need pastors? If so, what are you doing to raise them up?
RickyYeah, I think if people were to challenge me and Ross's ministry with that kind of accusation that you're being short-sighted, you don't care about training up leaders, I would say, well, no, look at look at everywhere we've left, everywhere we've left, we've left behind people who continue to carry the work forward. And and so I would say actually, we're not being short-sighted, we're being long-sided in that we're wanting to make sure that the work we're part of continues without us. But the sympathy I I would have is that if you don't have in mind that one of your main priorities is to raise up people, therefore, you're going to have to train people how to rightly handle the word. You're going to have to to mentor people to to godly character. If you do lay that aside, those those elders don't just accidentally appear. We have to keep 2 Timothy 2:2 as a priority. But in doing that, I just think of 1 Timothy chapter 4. Command and teach these things, let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity until I come. Devote yourself to the public leading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. That's that's saying, like, you know, you're doing this long enough that they even notice you're getting better at it. And so, how are we going to do that if we're not ourselves in the role for a while?
DeanYeah, that's really helpful. Well, one of the critiques that comes out is that you guys stay for too long in these roles leading in the church as provisional pastors. We're not going to ask you to put a number to how long you should stay. I know that's it's very contextual the answer to that. But could you help us think a little bit about what we're looking for in National Brothers to consider them ready to take on leadership roles in the church, and maybe particularly that first among equals or that primary teaching pastor in a local church? What are some things to look for?
RossI think just practically one thing I would say is ask the question of all men in the church. I'm picturing this in a one-to-one. Do you aspire to the office of overseer? 1 Timothy 3 1. Those who aspire to the office of overseer aspire to a noble task. Do you aspire to that? Usually the answer you get to that question is, I don't even know what that means. And then ask that brother, would you be willing to study with me for one year? And that does a good work, even that question in that exercise to see is this somebody who's willing to put in some study in addition to his 40-hour a week job. And then at the end of the year, he would know how to answer that question. Yes, I do have a sense of aspiration. There's this internal desire that I have. Well, then for that brother, you better have a very clear plan for what the next couple of years look like to help him make progress to the point where the church, the congregation would recognize him and be willing to appoint him. So I think just simply put, to answer the question, Dean, I would say you're we're looking for men who have a godly aspiration. Okay. That's helpful. Ricky Don, anything to add there?
RickyI would probably just add that it's not just dependent upon whether or not I think this guy is ready, but whether the church is ready to follow him. And so there's probably going to be a time where, you know, I can point to to Ross's model actually and experience here in Cardiff. Once you see that the church is following that pastor, let's say you're kind of to use our familiar terms, functioning as the lead pastor. He's like the associate pastor, but then you notice they're following him really well. What, you know, if I moved, would they continue to follow him? And once you see that that congregation is ready to follow that shepherd, I think that's a good sign. You're not only preparing the man, but you're also preparing the the flock.
RossYeah, that's helpful. I mean, I hope it goes without saying, but we're we also are looking for the the character qualifications that we see in 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, those yes and amen. And in fact, I want all members in our church to be growing in those character qualifications and especially the men to be doing so. But yeah, not all men aspire to that office, and and that's okay.
RickyI think church planters are also usually quite strong leaders and very focused leaders. And I would want to make sure that I have the church's kind of practices in place, so putting things in order is a big part of it. Not just that there is a a qualified pastor, but the church itself has gotten used to operating with a healthy ecclesiology. And so there's there's that work that needs to be done, that that might be fleshed out in a different way. Maybe it's having a constitution, members' handbook, but these are things that help guard the church. Whereas early on, the missionary being a strong leader is going to guide and be kind of those guardrails, but after a while, you want to have the congregation trained up that they know the guardrails and they want to protect those guardrails as well.
DeanYeah, I think that's a really helpful way of saying it. Brothers, this has been really good.
Different Roles in Missions
DeanAnd we've asked you mainly to help us think about provisional pastoring, about developing men to be leaders in local churches, but not all that are sent out as missionaries can serve as elders in local national churches. Maybe it's men that for whatever reason are not qualified to do so. Maybe it's sisters, single or married, and yet all of those folks aspire to have influence in local national churches where they serve. So, sort of as we wrap it up here, what counsel and encouragement would you give to that category of missionary?
RickyYeah, I think that's why having these two kinds of categories is actually very helpful. The missionary evangelist who needs to be elder qualified, but then just the general missionary. That could be a missionary sent specifically to evangelize Muslim women in the Middle East or to carry out some sort of diaconal ministry by having that kind of broad category of missionary and not pigeonholing us all into one thing. It actually opens up the opportunity for just a church say we have this specific need. It'd be great if we had someone kind of set apart to help strengthen this area. And so that makes it where missionary teams can be very broad and very diverse. And I think one New Testament kind of testimony to it is Andronicus and and Junia were, I mean, depending on your your interpretation, but as I understand it and many other scholars, they say she's a woman. And it sounds like she's being called a missionary. And she was highly valued. And so we we need more women on the mission field. We need mature sisters in Christ to serve alongside evangelists to ensure the the churches are strengthened and established.
SamYeah, I think it's so important to recognize that what we're not saying, I mean, the conversation that we're having is can or should missionaries serve as elders in local churches? This isn't, we're not suggesting at all that this is the end-all be-all of getting the gospel to the nations and seeing the church established and strengthened among all peoples. This is a particular mode amid all the different things that are going on and all the different things that are happening. I think it's important to stress what Ricky just said that I think is so helpful, which is there are lots of roles in this task and and things to do together. The role of missionary and the office of pastor, which is a biblically prescribed office, sometimes those overlap, but very often they don't. And that's good. It means that everyone has a role to play in seeing the Great Commission fulfilled.
DeanYeah, that's helpful. Last word to you, Ross. You have anything for us? Amen. Amen. Okay. Friends, that's it for episode two. Thanks for listening. Ross and Ricky, brothers, thank you for being with us today, and may the Lord continue to use you guys to see churches planted and strengthened, churches that will glorify God and will endure. We're thankful for you.
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