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What’s showing up for you right now that you’d like to explore together?
I think I can see why you’re struggling to get your “whole heart” onto the page. There are actually several different things converging in what your pastor said to you, and your notes are trying to hold all of them at once.
And before trying to organize them, I’d stay with what you just said about Romans 1:11–12, because I think that may give you the language you’re looking for.
Paul says:
“For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.”
That little correction Paul makes to himself is fascinating.
He begins almost vertically:
I → you.
“I want to impart something to you.”And then seems to catch himself:
No—us.
“That is, that we may be mutually encouraged.”
That fits remarkably well with what you have already written on your first page:
“No hierarchy? mutually encouraged”
“No fixing, no advising, no setting each other straight?”I think you are reaching for something substantially different from 50 miniature pastors.
Your pastor’s “net” picture could easily be misunderstood that way: divide 300 people among 50 care leaders, assign six people to each one, and now everybody has somebody responsible for fixing, counselling, discipling and monitoring them.
But what you’re describing with Gavin and Gerard isn’t really that.
You noticed.
That’s the first thing.
Gavin was behaving differently because his sister had died. Gerard wasn’t himself. Neither encounter began because you possessed authority over him or because he had been assigned to your caseload.
You knew enough to notice the change.
Then you approached.
Then you listened.
And only after Gerard entrusted you with what was happening did you pray with him.
That distinction feels important.
“Someone would know me well enough to notice.”
Perhaps that is the heart of the net.
Not:
Nobody gets away.
But:
Nobody disappears unnoticed.
And suddenly your fourth page makes a great deal of sense:
“I notice the new ones”
“I notice when there’s a change”
“they aren’t there”
“they are sitting alone”
“they come & leave”
“they are quiet”Laurence, you’ve almost written the job description without realizing it.
Notice.
And notice how different noticing is from diagnosing.
“I notice you seem quieter today” leaves Gerard free.
“I know what’s wrong with you and here’s what you need to do” doesn’t.
That connects strongly with the Scriptures you’ve gathered: Romans 1:11–12; “members of one another” in Romans 12:5; the different gifts of the body; mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21; testing rather than quenching in 1 Thessalonians 5; and your repeated concern about Matthew 7 and judgment.
But I think there’s another layer underneath your notes that deserves attention.
Your second and third pages tell the story of how you understand your own calling:
“We need to go to church… they need us.”
And later:
“I got LOST while thinking I was the only FOUND one…”
That sentence may be one of the most important things you’ve written here.
Because there are two very different ways you could hear what your pastor said yesterday.
One is:
“Finally, somebody recognizes what I am.”
The other is:
“Ah. Perhaps God has been teaching me how to participate in something that belongs to all of us.”
The first could quietly recreate the very hierarchy you’re resisting.
The second sounds much closer to Romans 1:11–12.
Your own notes about Paul and Ananias are useful here too. Saul has this extraordinary encounter with Christ—and Jesus nevertheless sends him into dependence upon an ordinary disciple named Ananias. And Ananias himself doesn’t become Paul’s master. He obeys what he’s been given to do.
So perhaps the emerging ministry isn’t fundamentally a ministry of care leaders.
Maybe it’s a ministry of presence.
Or noticing.
Or belonging.
People whose calling is not:
“These are my six people.”
but:
“Among us, nobody should have to suffer invisibly.”
And then your pastor’s net metaphor becomes rather beautiful. A net isn’t one enormous rope doing everything. It’s many small strands joined together. Its strength is precisely in the connections.
That takes me straight back to something you’ve written on page three:
“you are being built together into a dwelling place for God…”
That’s Ephesians 2:22.
Not fifty people standing between the pastors and congregation.
A people being joined together.
There is one caution I’d put beside all of this, though, especially before you decide exactly what yesterday’s conversation “means.” Your mind is understandably assembling Scripture, past experiences, calling, testimony, your son’s formation, and your pastor’s words into a coherent picture. Some of that may indeed be illumination. But you don’t yet have to turn the picture into a conclusion.
You could hold it more lightly:
“I am noticing that these things seem to belong together.”
Then continue doing exactly what your own notes say: test everything; don’t quench the Spirit. That gives both discernment and openness room to operate.
And perhaps that’s why Joel 2:13 and Matthew 5:23–24 came to you this morning. Before asking “What ministry am I being called into?”, there may be an even deeper question:
What kind of heart must I have in order to be safe for another person’s heart?
That question feels much closer to the thing you’ve been trying to write than an organizational chart ever could.
Running Down Vimy 