Relational Ministry 101: Person

If relational ministry is the beat of this generation, and I suspect Andrew Root in Relational Ministry is accurate, everything comes down to understanding what a person is and what relationship is and what relational ministry — person to person — is all about. I cannot imagine any pastors going through seminary today not reading this important book. Andrew Root is calling pastors and ministers back to personal ministry, even more, back to person-to-person relationship as the heart of ministry.

So far this is my book of 2013.

Where can pastoral ministry become more personal in ministry? What are the obstacles? Why is this a problem in ministry?

To be a person is to be in relationship as a person with another person. To love is indwell the other. To indwell the other however is not enmeshment or co-dependence. To indwell the other as a person is to sustain one’s personal integrity and indwell, or share life, with that other person as a person without losing ourself in the indwelling.

Too many pastors and leaders want followers and they want to indwell the other at some level but they don’t want to open up to the indwelling of the other. One-way indwelling is not indwelling; it is coercion or seeking to influence someone into your way of thinking. Genuine personal ministry indwells.

To indwell another is for another person’s being to become part of our being, and our being to become part of their being.

How does this happen?

1. A person indwells through action. Actions manifest personhood.

2. A person indwells through communication.

3. A person indwells because a person is an embodied spirit. Spirits share; demons overpower. Spirits indwell to share.

4. A person is indwelled because a person is broken. Sin is the brokenness of relationship.