How do itinerant workers benefit the church?
Over the next few days, I’ve scheduled a series a posts relating to itinerant servants, that is, believers who travel from place to place in order to proclaim the gospel and strengthen the church. This topic is far from academic or conceptual for me, because I have a close friend who believes that God is leading him into this type of service.
It was exciting to see that Josh from “Called to Rebuild” is also writing about this subject in his post “The benefits of having an outside worker.”
In his post, Josh is responding to my post from last week “Thinking about itinerant servants and the church.” Like I’ve said before, I love it when discussions overlap different blogs. This is one of the powerful aspects of this medium.
Josh suggests two ways that traveling servants benefit the church (I’m paraphrasing):
1) The church has the opportunity to learn from someone who has different experiences, perspectives, and callings.
2) The church can learn from someone on whom they will not become overly dependent.
Read Josh’s post. It’s very good.
What do you think of the benefits that Josh lists? Can you think of others?
Alan,
Brother, a great post about itinerant workers! This is the New Testament example of the church, and church planting. Groups need to be equipped to meet around a profound foundation and revelation of Jesus Christ. Believers also need to be equipped to function under Christ’s headship. This does not happen without effort. Most of us, coming out of years of institutional mindsets, need to go through a ‘detox’ process. The role of itinerant workers is to help believers detox from religious mindsets, as well as to practically help us live out and function in community life. Without this, the organic church body usually reverts back to dependance upon a clerical figure and a false foundation fills the void of a foundation of Christ that was never laid.
A great book about the role of itinerant workers is a book called ‘Finding Organic Church’ by Frank Viola. This is a great read about the Biblical role of apostolic workers and their essential role in church planting.
Jamal,
Thanks for the comment. I’ve read most of Frank’s books. But I haven’t read that one yet. I think that “detox” may be an important aspect of the work of itinerants today. One of the questions that I’m examining is whether or not itinerants today could work with both more organic churches and more institutional churches.
-Alan