#13
Actively involved in serving one another in love.
People Who Need Care . . .
◦Receive quality, Christ-centered, confidential care for their hurts and needs
◦Find hope, healing, and a new sense of self-worth through the support of a Lay Pastors
◦Know they are remembered and supported by their congregation in times of personal difficulty
◦Receive ongoing care for continuing needs long after the onset of a crisis, when many others have forgotten about them
◦Grow in a deeper relationship with their Lord as they experience God’s unconditional love for them through their Lay Pastors
Your Pastors . . .
◦No longer shoulder the entire burden of caring in the congregation, as if the pastor were the only one able, willing, or called to do this ministry
◦Receive support and care from the lay people who are part of the congregation’s Lay Pastors Ministry team
◦Reach more members of the congregation with quality PACE ministry
◦Experience renewed joy and satisfaction as they equip others and so extend the reach of their own ministries
◦Have more time to focus on the ministries that only the pastor can do
Your Lay People . . .
◦Discover, cultivate, and use the spiritual gifts they have been blessed with
◦See themselves as active partners in the mission and ministry of the church
◦Find all aspects of their lives enriched by the distinctively PACEing skills they learn and practice
◦Experience great joy as they see God working through them to bring hope and healing to a hurting person
◦Grow spiritually as they experience the Lord’s loving presence in community with other Christian caregivers
Your Entire Congregation . . .
◦Discovers that many members want to be involved in meaningful ministry and will respond to the call to become a Lay Pastor or LPM Leader
◦Becomes a more loving community that is more sensitive and responsive to people’s needs for care. ◦Is able to provide more quality Christian care, so that fewer people slip through the cracks. ◦Is able to reach out to the unchurched who are hurting and introduce them to the healing love of Jesus in their time of need
◦Sees itself as not only being served by the pastor, but as a caring body of believers actively involved in serving one another in love.●
COMMENTS
in relation to Who Benefits from Lay Pastors Ministry?
Lameck Omwobo (Kenya) says:
Since I was introduced to lay ministry in the year 2002, my life has changed, I have learned.
Many finder mental spiritual Truth has has helped me to nature many pastors and lay leaders in various churches here in our local I really appreciate professor Byeong, for continuing support of spiritual articles that has changed not only my life but so many lives here, we really touched and thrilled to learn more from Lay ministry in order to be able to serve God even more better in our ministries.■
Timothy Hunphun (USA) says:
Every Sunday afternoon‘s training in lay pastors ministry at PACE International Fellowship is full of fun and joy, and I love attending it. It’s being witnessed that Rev. Dr. Byeongchae Seo (leader) and Dr. Timothy Kim (coordinator) have profound enthusiasm for PACE.
Besides being a beginner in English who makes mistakes and creates laughter and at the same time experiencing an improvement in my English speaking skill, I am witnessing spiritual and intellectual growth each Sunday. I am seeing the blending of curiosity for each PACE module and desire to implement what I learn, which I have come to value so much! After attending the PACE training, I have come to believe that it is more honorable to serve the Lord through showing love to our neighbors and people who are in need of our help, and in practicing this we ourselves will be positively changed sooner than later.
As a person who has a strong commitment for PACE and working
for it for a very long time, Rev. Seo always look peaceful yet bold and resourceful. PACE ministry is filled with humility and sacrifice! It demands that we lower our attitude! And Dr. Kim’s witticism and humor is essential for the role as licorice.
God will always open a new era for His people to be trained and ready to go for Him. PACE ministry is now training for this era of the saints. After receiving the training, these equipped saints will carry out Jesus’ command: “Take care of my sheep” (John 21:16). We will have to be well-trained and be filled with joy.
If we participate in this PACE training with joy and peace in our heart, we will surely experience the anointing of God’s Spirit. Dreaming of the day with passion and unwavering faith in God, we hope to go further in our endeavor to serve Jesus Christ our Lord with gladness. ♠
Byeong, Melvin University, says:
People, pastors, and entire congregational will get benefit! How do you find this from other programs or ministries?
I am enjoying to reading daily bread, UPPER ROOM, every morning. Actually I was not very interested in reading that booklet in Korea, but while I was in Nagaland PACE School, I was reading at 2nd floor every morning 6am. It was happiest time for me in a day, so it became my personal habit. Since I came back to Korea, still reading and try to keep the habit. Why the booklet made me interested?Because mostly laypeople talk about their own life, personal stories,notonlyhappythingsbutmostlydifficultstories.Peoplewanttohearpracticalstory.That’swhylaypastoralcareisimportantbecauseoftheirrealstories.Pastor’sstory?
Yes, of course they are true but they focus more on biblical instruction to give because they are teachers, so sometimes not real but instructive.
Also laypeople know well about people, especially their peer Christians than their pastors, so much easier to share their inner stories, pains, struggles, losses, difficulties, because they believe their peer will listen to them well. Not saying here they or they do not believe their pastors, but they are more comfortable to pour out their feelings more often to their colleague. We pastors need to understand it, so lay pastors’ ministry is effective.
I am thinking that this ministry gives hope to the church, and people, pastor, especially to the laypeople themselves. Most of laypeople want to do something; it means they want to accomplish something valuable for church, for God, also for themselves. I have trained and usually I made Leadership Group, we call it MLG, at the end of PACE equipping seminar. If we look at the ending page of Training Manual, there are checklists, from 1 to 10, how much they are motivated, mostly circled 7 to 8, means they are motivated 70-80 percent, but some marks 10, means motivated 100 percent fully. Actually they were waiting for this kind of ministry for many years, but they couldn’t find it, which means that church did not give them to develop those ministry, and in the other way, their church didn’t give them permission to do, to serve, to care for people, which means they have no authority to do by themselves.
One was to talk to his wife, she was also there, but looks very young, less than 30 years old, anyway he said very sorry to his wife at that moment, because he was drunk almost every day, he is actually a patient of defoliant which got from Vietnam war, so his life desperate past many years, so he has been behaving to his wife badly, he said sorry again to his wife in front of us. And second promise was that he wants to do God’s work from now on, then we didn’t know what he meant, but later on I heard from the pastor and also I have seen with my eyes many times, because I have visited and re-equipped them next few years. First, he made LPM Office in the compound of the church that was big enough to sit 15-20 people, lay pastors were gathering at the office all the time, once I visit the church I sat there and talked with them and he did other things that made pond with pretty fish in the front yard and got up 4 a.m., early morning every day, to ring the bell which is traditional bell at rural churches, even during in cold winter season he got up so early, probably 4 a.m., come to church and ring the bell, so people come to church for dawn worship service, 5a.m. He changed through PACE. He kept the promise for next many years.■
ADDITIONAL COMMENT
by BYEONG
Ministry Cycle: I learned from my experience that the cycle of ministry is about six years. In the end, no matter what ministry we start, we have to last six years. Of course, this is what I got from my personal experience of parachurch ministry, but I think it also applies to ministry and various ministry within the church.
Then why do we need to do six years? Of course, the short-term project will be completed in a year or two. However, long-term ministry takes a longer time unlike this, because it takes that long to achieve the bigger desired goal.
This is especially true when we’re conducting nationwide ministry. In our case, changes were needed about six years after the lay pastors’ ministry began in Korea. In about six years, two phenomena appeared, one was being almost satisfied with the entire Korean church as we expected. In addition to, whole of Korea were covered by this ministry: from East to West and South to North; without heresy, almost all were included. Particularly, our ministry permeated various denominations, including Presbyterian, Methodist, Holiness, and Baptist. At that time, all churches were interested in the theme of the lay ministry. It was a time when the concept of ‘partners in ministry’ was essentially requested by laymen.
The other was that the staff and volunteers who joined our ministry began to think, “We’ve done our job now. What’s gonna happen the next?” For six years, they devoted all their energy to holding church’ seminars, pastors’ seminars, and annual conferences for the National Church, and it became clear that they grew up a lot and almost finished their doctorate degree, so they are no longer needed to work with me, Byeong. We altogether have done our job: “to fulfill God’s mission, that’s helping the church of Korea by Lay Pastors ministry,” and no longer needed personal growth.
So, as a ministry leader, I began to worry. In other words, will it be closed to the ministry? Or have we find at a crossroads of finding a new breakthrough? This was a worry that occurred in the sixth year of ministry. So I began to study how the ministries in the States that were ahead of us at this point. In the meantime, two organizations caught my sights. One was the George Barna Institute, and the other was the World Evangelism Association of Billy Graham.
We already know the ministry of Rev. Billy Graham, and another one was the George Barna Institute where was a famous institution which researched the future trends of the ministry and provided it to churches in the States. I looked at the final direction and destination of these two ministries. And I found that George Barna Institute finally founded a Christian publishing company, and Billy Graham founded a theological school, as well known Golden Cornwell Theological Seminary.
So, it seems that our ministry direction and future destination are not the Company like George Barna. If so, for the long run, we need to make school, and opened the PACE International Seminary in India in 2015 and Melvin University in Kenya in 2021.
It is regrettable that many parachurch Institutions usually close their doors around then without making another leap through the seasonal cycle (spring, summer, fall, winter), and now hope them to make another leap after six to seven years, and if there are three or four time of this cycling, that will be a meaningful ministry and institution with a history of two to thirty 30 years.