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Corporate, Team & Individual Ministry

The Ministry of Reconciliation moves forward as we work in partnership with the Father and with each other. Our Lord Jesus worked where he saw the Father working, and that is a goal for us, to grow more sensitive to his working in the lives of others. The Father is obviously the leader of the ministry, where he works, Jesus works and we follow. The Church down through the centuries has been the physical manifestation of Jesus in the world, or the ‘body of Christ’, doing what he would be doing if he were physically here. That work, lead by the Father and carried out by the anointed Church is the Corporate Ministry. We can look historically and see what he has done in the past, compare that to what we are taught by the Spirit of Christ in the Scriptures and lead forward into what he wants us to be and what he wants us to do today.

We find in this the predominant idea of Team Ministry, meaning a local group of the repentant who partner together to bring the Ministry of Reconciliation to their local community and to the ends of the earth. That team can be comprised of two or three in his name, to as many as God brings together in one place. In this team comes nurturing, encouragement, accountability and training. Together they seek to be sensitive to where the Father is working, so as to follow the head of the Church, our Lord Jesus, into the lives of those who are responding to the work of his Spirit. We never initiate the work of the Gospel, but desire to be sensitive to where he is working. To look for those who are hungering and thirsting after the truth, who are willing to abandon the old and throw themselves head long into the new and stick with it to the end of their days.

Individual ministry seems to come out of Team ministry, where individuals are assigned certain regions, peoples or tasks. But these individuals aren’t ‘lone rangers’, but are part of a team somewhere where they have been trained, nurtured, encouraged and held accountable. Technically there is no individual ministry, for when we are even on personal assignment, we are working where the Father is working, and where the Holy Spirit is working. That is a team in it’s self. But in relation to us, who are living here at the moment, someone with an individual assignment we will call as being in an individual ministry.

Individual ministry is a part of the Team Ministry, and the Team Ministry flows out of generations of Corporate Ministry. And it all circles around the work that our Lord Jesus carries out through the leading of the Father. To be in the Corporate Ministry, we must be on the same page, when it comes to developing our understanding of the truth. Commitment to the partnership in the Gospel is a willingness to work with, serve and love the other partners. Taking time to not only work together in the Gospel, but to worship together and rest together, and in the midst of all this to give ourselves to concerted times of prayer together.

Within this framework of Corporate Ministry the kingdom moves forward, the partners become like Christ by learning what he wants, experimenting on how to practice what he wants. To critique in safety and to refine that practice. We learn of his faithfulness in this environment. We have ample time to forgive, and experience a growing freedom from our old nature. We learn to recognize the world’s system, and have opportunity to overcome it.

This all happens in Corporate, Team and Individual Ministry, which is the body of Christ, the physical manifestation of Jesus Christ in the world today.