The Pastoral Ministry

First published January 1997

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© Terry & Frances Watson, 1997
Unless otherwise indicated, the Scripture quotations in this publication are from the New King James Version of the Bible and reproduced by kind permission of Nelson Word Publishing

Introduction

'I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.’ (John 10:11)

'For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.’ (1 Peter 2:25)

Pastoral Ministry is the care of those whom God has saved and baptised into His church. One of the great pictures of this ministry is found in the relationship between the shepherd and his seep. 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want’ (Psa. 23:1). If any one cares for those who belong to the Lord, it follows that he must know Him and that God has chosen him to become a shepherd, responsible to the Chief Shepherd, who will teach him daily how to care effectively. It was said by Matthew of Jesus: 'But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.’ (Matt. 9:36)

The Heart of the Shepherd

This heart of the shepherd is therefore planted in every true pastor, if he is to effectively care for the flock of God. Although the word shepherd and pastor are clearly defined in scripture, it is important to note other words related to this vital ministry.

Who are the Pastors?

'The elders who are among you I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed: Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by constraint but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.’ (1 Peter 5:1-4 'This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.’ (1 Tim. 3:1)

'Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.’ (Acts 20:28) This last reference was spoken to the elders of the church at Ephesus when Paul brought to an end his three years among them.

Our Beginnings

For some background to ourselves, we should like to detail a little of our history. I had caught the early morning train as usual, travelling to Astaire & Co. Stockbrokers, at 117, Bishopsgate in the City of London, where I had worked since returning to full-time employment, after meeting Frances and planning to get married. The year was 1969. We had married in 1966, after knowing each other for five years, having met together at the Honor Oak Baptist Church in South London. We were both now twenty six.

Our friend John Corcoran, whom I had met on the train this particular morning, was involved in another Baptist church five miles away and we had enjoyed some joint young people's activities together.

The last three years had probably been the most traumatic of our lives as we discovered our increasing inability to live harmoniously together in marriage. We both realised that in our Christian experience, although we had been very faithful in our church life, we lacked the reality of the power of God, our lives were empty and fruitless. This awareness of a real lack of the Lord had created in me a desperate hunger and thirst for God, whose presence and reality I could not find although I prayed earnestly.

As John and I chatted together about these things, he passed to me a small card inviting me to some meetings in Crystal Palace in the home of Peter and Joy Palmer. The speaker was to be a
Mr. G. W. North and we agreed that we would attend.

My first impressions were not encouraging. Some people seemed very peculiar, making strange noises and at the same time gazing around the room. There were however some who really made me sit up and think. As they prayed, a sense of real love for the Lord emanated from their hearts and I began to be attentive. I do not remember what word our brother spoke but I do remember leaving the meeting that night with the knowledge that I had found what I had been looking for and all I needed was to ask God to implant this in my heart.

I must have agonised and searched for about three months, praying and seeking God without success, until one week I determined to arise very early each day until this blessing of reality was bestowed on me. The first two days I prayed without seeming success but on the third day the Lord Himself came and flooded my heart and I knew I had received the life of the living God. I had in fact been born again of the Spirit and been introduced into the life of God which I have never lost or doubted.
Being a very shy, introverted person through most of the previous twenty six years, afforded me very little experience of love in my heart. I remember the day my father died when I was twenty one years of age, there were no feelings of sorrow or pain. Now I needed God to release this new found life within me so that He could possess the rest of my life.

I would seek to pray openly but was often overwhelmed with tremendous feelings of insecurity. When driving on my own I would practice lifting up my heart to the Lord in the car, sometimes to the amusement of passing motorists - how I wanted to be free! One weekend we were visiting Exeter and we were to stay over, due to a breakdown with the car. During the Sunday meeting, determined to move into more of God, and sensing it lay in some radical step, I asked Mr. North if I could speak as loudly as possible from the front, and with his agreement I shouted one word: 'Glory'! I was free! The congregation exploded into praise and for some time it seemed as though God had come among them also in utter reality.

Frances chose for herself the hymn 'My stubborn will at last has yielded’ and God began a move in us both. This was to open up the beginnings of the ministry in our hearts, which we have enjoyed these past twenty five years. Having been blessed of God, secular work began to be an obstacle. In my heart arose a real desire to serve God and I was in conflict. Normal jobs of arranging the typing of work in the typing pool began to take twice as long as I took opportunity to share the Lord, and soon it was apparent that the two situations could no longer mix. I felt obligated to do my work, not preach the gospel. It wasn’t long before God's word came to me from reading the Scriptures, from a passage in Chronicles, 'who lodged in the chambers, and were free from other duties; for they were employed in that work day and night.’ (1 Chron. 9:33) I wanted to serve the Lord without restraint, and without having to go up and down to town everyday. I understood later that this was the call of God to me to be involved in His work and be available full-time. It seemed right for me to give up my work and make myself available. Andrew, our eldest son was two and a half and Philip was only a few months. I was desperate for something more, so we began to meet with a few folk in the home of Lionel and Nora Hemmings, who were involved with Mr. North. My decision to give up work was totally alien to most of our friends and family. My father-in-law expressed the opinion that I was irresponsible to abandon my family to the insecurity of serving God and that I would be giving up a good salary and putting at risk the beautiful three bedroom house we had bought overlooking Ladywell Park. However in spite of such opposition, one morning in July, I was to give my manager a month’s notice to terminate my employment. To his question “How will you live?” I replied, “By faith”, although at the time I didn’t really know what living by faith meant.

My own views on serving God full-time were that He would 'supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.’ (Phil. 4:19) I needed to seek some kind of work which did not conflict with my call. I read in the local press an advertisement for a Double Glazing salesman and rang for an interview. I remember my manager remarking some years later that I had gone to interview him as to whether his job fitted in with my life, not the other way round, but I was employed! I recall the dread I felt in considering such a task as knocking on strangers’ doors, seeking to sell them something I was convinced they did not want, but even so, to my surprise, and I believe, the goodness of God, I was quite successful. I realised that I was in God’s school, learning to communicate with men and women, and for three years I remained in this learning place at times even being top salesman in London for three months consecutively, during my time there!

I had always wanted to be totally free. Eventually (in 1973) I gave up this work to be available full-time to the Lord. During this time we had begun to meet in our home in Crofton Park. How strange it is thinking of these early pastoral days because at no time did we plan to hold meetings. No one would have considered that this shy introverted man would have qualified for a leadership place in the Lord’s church, but people were being sent by God from quite a wide area, for encouragement and counsel and it seemed that God graciously gave us answers to their needs. We had started meetings on decimalization day, 18th February 1971 and within a couple of years, responded to the Lord’s prompting that we should sell the house. This resulted in living in one room in my mother’s home, a three bedroom terraced house in Forest Hill, not too far from where we had lived previously. Some of the folk who had gathered with us joined us in this new location.

These were very much learning days, God bringing in many souls but not really building anything solid. A lady who lived up the road was introduced to us by Brenda Mosley, Frances’s sister, who was working then as a social worker. This woman could equal the Samaritan we read of in John 4. She was living with her seventh man, but on hearing the gospel sought to bring her life into the order that God reveals in the Scriptures. One day she had a visitation from the devil who had her pinned to her bed and she felt she was being strangled. In this desperate state she cried out "Jesus"! and was instantly released after which she quickly sought our help and counsel. My immediate reaction was: “what have you in the house that allows the devil access?” Within minutes she had gone around her home and brought out a number of black plastic bags full of stolen property, devil inspired books and unclean literature for us to take away.

There was also another lady whom Brenda had met, this time in the early hours of the morning, stumbling home from a drinking spree. She was suffering from lung cancer and her drinking was to deaden the pain. "My brother-in-law will pray for you and you will be healed." Brenda had told her and God did as we asked, filled the woman with his presence and took all the pain away. Her testimony at the small gathering the following Sunday silenced us all and we gave glory to God for his amazing love to her. However these two ladies did not go on with the Lord and we were left in quite a state of bewilderment. One day I read a Scripture which helped me understand the ways of the Lord. 'The children you will have, After you have lost the others, Will say again in your ears, "The place is too small for me; Give me a place where I may dwell." Then you will say in your heart, "who has begotten these for me, Since I have lost my children and am desolate, A captive, and wandering to and fro? And who has brought these up? There I was, left alone; But these, where were they?”’ (Isa. 49:20-21)

Eventually we rented a three bedroom house in Bromley, Kent. I went to see the owner, an English gentleman married to a Swedish lady, whose work required that they should move to Sweden. They were asking twenty five pounds per week rent. I requested that not only should our family, now increased to five persons (our youngest son John was born in Forest Hill) be able to live there, but also that the small church of a dozen or so folk who were gathering with us should be able to meet also. He was delighted and confessed to us that he was also a Christian. Our first Sunday we were amazed that our number had doubled, as people came from many areas, and we were surprised that they had even heard of us. Within eighteen months sixty people joined us regularly in fellowship in our 15’ x 12’ living room. As God moved among us many hearts responded to the ministry of the Spirit and it became increasingly necessary to consider what to do next, especially as by now our landlord wanted to sell his house.

On reflection, this was our first big mistake. We had been in our established church for twenty three years ( I had begun to attend Sunday School at the age of three) and had seen no real fruitfulness or blessing but now God was moving powerfully among us in our house. Should we spoil all this by what seemed a backward move into an established place once more?. These thoughts were of course wrong, outworked not by the direction of the Lord, but by our own hearts, and led us to make the unwise decision to divide into three areas: one in Bromley, one in Lee, and another in St. Pauls Cray in the Orpington area. These were to be under the direction of three leaders: Hugh Osgood, Ian Wilkie and Joe Gurnett, whom we had made elders.

As far as Frances and I were concerned, it was with much sadness that we soon realised that the blessing we had known had come to an end. We took up an itinerant ministry visiting these three groups and another at St. Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, where we had met a precious brother Don Smith, and his wife. It became increasingly obvious that we were no longer in the will of God. After eighteen months we prayerfully came to this conclusion and sought unsuccessfully to make amends and draw the groups together again. Much prayer was made to the Lord as to what we as a family should do, and it was clear that we should start afresh in the home we had purchased after moving from Bromley.

An interim period between Bromley and Eltham was again a remarkable manifestation of the goodness and grace of God as he cared for us and our growing family. With two weeks to find a place to live we were offered another house, a four bedroom property, the Manse of the Elmstead Lane Baptist Church in New Eltham. God had wonderfully provided for us financially during this time, allowing us to survive on a small profit made by selling the property in Crofton Park. Now these funds had come to an end, however, when meeting together after one of our church meetings in Bromley, a young girl pressed into my hand a piece of paper which turned out to be £2000, all the money we had spent during the previous eighteen months in seeking to live in the ministry of the Lord. This money, together with another sum of £3000 enabled us to buy the detached house which has been our home for the past twenty one years. (The balance of £10,000 being paid off over fifteen years).

Here in Eltham, in June 1975 we began what we called the 'Eltham Green Fellowship’ which was a second chance of finding ourselves again in the blessing of God. Within eighteen months of gathering, 100 of us squashed into our living room, using chairs and stools, babies on our laps and with some floor space for the children, all eager to learn of God. Eventually we had to move up three doors into the house of Alan and Betty Stewart at No.1 Eltham Green as they had a larger living room, moving the Sunday School to our own home. We now grew to 130 and began to upset the neighbours who lived in house numbers 2 and 3, who were becoming distressed by the activity on Sundays, as children and adults moved from house to house.

We seemed to have no choice but to make application to the council to meet in No.1 as a church. Although we didn’t actually believe that we would be accepted, it would give us valuable time to seek another property for the growing church. The council gave us six months to comply with their enforcement order to cease those meetings but also gave us opportunity to apply to the Secretary of State, which we did, giving us a further six months of breathing space. By the end of 1979 we had secured temporary accommodation in an extension of one of Eltham’s Anglican churches and moved to the other side of the town for a period of two years.
In 1978 we had approached the Minister of the Eltham Green Methodist Church, just 5 minutes from our home, as to whether he would permit us to use his building which had a main worship hall in good condition, a rear hall badly damaged by vandalism and three internal rooms. We agreed to help him with maintenance, which his elderly congregation of seven persons were unable to do. They gathered together in one of the small rooms, while their guide company used the main hall for flag services eight times a year. It was agreed by their leadership that we could use their hall except for these eight Sundays. However, I believe that church life must have its continuance and so, as they had refused us permission to use the hall regularly, we continued to look elsewhere for accommodation.

Nevertheless it seemed that God had given us this place, so although we had been refused its use, we held on to our conviction that one day the church would gather in this building.

In 1981 the property came up for sale for £50,000 and so prayerfully we needed to consider what price we should pay. It was agreed that a sum of £32,500 should be offered to the Methodist church, via their solicitors. Frances and I considered how we could give to this offer and agreed that we should sell our own house now worth £49,500, which would certainly be enough to cover the sale price of the building. However, after a year waiting for a buyer, no-one even came to look at our property; and as time passed, money came in from the church, enough to place a substantial deposit.
Our bank manager who had recently been appointed, was a Christian brother. After consultation with him, he agreed to approach his superiors with a request that as a church we raise £27,500 through the bank, representing 90% of the purchase price, to which they agreed. There was however another interested party, a leading Muslim leader and prominent race horse owner, who had recently sold a horse for two million pounds. He confirmed with the Methodist Church that he was willing to pay the £50,000 asking price. On one occasion while we were borrowing the building for a conference, he and his representatives viewed the building and decided to buy, so the church fasted and prayed until we had the assurance that God had given us the place. News was then heard that the Muslims had withdrawn their offer, so we were now free to go ahead with the purchase. In April 1982 we moved in.
The vision God gave to us was a place where we could live, meet, and fellowship. Over these past fourteen years we have been able to enlarge the property, providing extra facilities, including a baptismal pool, new toilets, kitchen, lounge and Sunday School rooms, together with a three bedroom and a two bedroom flat. Surely evidence of God’s goodness in his leading of us as His church.