THE DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS OF YOUR CHARACTER AND MINISTRY (Vol. 3 of The Believer's Character Development and Ministry)

In this volume are thoroughly examined the functional importance, relevance and roles of human and non-human development partners on the character and ministry development of every believer.

Human and non-human partners should not only be considered by the believer as being unavoidable for his character and ministry development, but they should also be accepted by him as being particularly indispensable and important to his moral, spiritual and Christlike growth and maturity as well as to his world consciousness.

The development partners cannot, in the context of the normal socio-economic environment of every living being, be avoided by the believer. This is so, because they are the involuntary and voluntary co-helpers with the believer in growing, grooming, maturing and defining his character and ministry. They most especially supply him with the human requirements and characteristics that constitute the cultural, social, sociological, historical, worldly, informal and formal education, ethnic and ethical contents of his life and identity as a human and social being as well as a believer and minister. They are also the inevitable guardians and regulators of the norms of his social relationships and responsibilities. In addition to these roles, the development partners also provide the contents of the physical and material environment as well as the geopolitical and communal backgrounds in which the believer lives as a social and human being and where he carries out his existential, social, spiritual and ministerial activities. The human partners, in particular, through their everyday socio-economic activities and their material and physical interactions with the believer throughout his lifetime, equally contribute the human, earthly and worldly elements, activities and responses to life issues, all of which when combined with the believer's biblical knowledge, enable him to differentiate the earthly from the heavenly, the worldly from the spiritual, the ungodly from the godly, the sinful from the holy as well as the obvious differences between the believer and the unbeliever. Understanding the differences between the contrasting contents of the believer’s earthly and Christian life enable him to carry out his ministerial and evangelistic activities with knowledge and without mistakes.

The knowledge that is to be acquired by the believer from his spiritual apprenticeship and general culture connects him to the various positive and negative aspects of human lives and character. From these, his own life and character can also be positively or negatively impacted, though their negative impacts are not necessarily adopted by him.

However, the enlightening and educational advantages derivable from knowledge can only be fully appreciated and gainfully appropriated by the believer, if he is beneficially and wisely sensitive to the negative and dangerous effects that could be exerted on him as a believer and minister from the dangers, pitfalls, embarrassments and limitations that are generated by spiritual ignorance, little learning and illiteracy. The humiliating disadvantages accruable from ignorance and the unquantifiable blessings of knowledge become particularly evident in the present knowledge-driven world when it is positively acknowledged by the teachable minister, as it is to most educated human beings, that knowledge is power as well as the facilitator of relevance and social mobility to the knowledgeable. On the other hand, ignorance always reveals itself as being disgracefully disadvantageous and fatally dangerous to whoever is ignorant or illiterate.

With his audience being majorly literate, the modern-day believer and minister cannot afford not to be well educated and also not to be committedly propelled to continue to invest his best to expand, deepen and update his knowledge base and horizon, so as to succeed in rightly connecting to his literate audience. With his wide intellectual horizon, the true believer cannot run the risk of being outdated in knowledge and current affairs, publicly mocked or embarrassed, because of his lack of knowledge and ignorance of happenings around him and globally.

Apart from the above factors, the believer and minister should always be conscious of the negative influences that can be exerted on him by “the bad and the ugly” among the human and non-human development partners, to whom he is unavoidably connected in his day-to-day activities and even in through his general culture.

To be barricaded from these potential pollutants of his godly character and ministry, he must always convince himself that, with their sinful character, exaggerations, moral excesses and aberrations, ungodly and godless development partners, who are enemies of God and His Church are, in reality, destructive or anti-development partners who are potentially dangerous and negative to the development of his Christian character and ministry. As a result of this, such potential enemies of his character and ministry development must be unfailingly avoided by every believer, like a plague, so as to be shielded from having his character and ministry fatally polluted by them.

To do this effectively, it is incumbent on him to precautionarily remind himself, in his daily activities and interpersonal relationships, of his identity as God's soldier, servant and ambassador, who is “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16), for whom “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4) and the love of the world and the things of the world are synonymous with the hatred of God (1 John 2:15). He must therefore be continuously mindful of the biblical truth that he cannot and must not allow his developing character and ministry to be negatively impacted by any ungodly development partner, because he is under the divine compulsion not to be “conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of his mind that he may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). And being unyieldingly convicted of his sonship of God and the need to live and behave in such a way as to qualify for his eternal home with his heavenly Father, he must invest his best “to set his affection on things above and not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2). He must also bind himself with the stubborn determination to always live his life, behave and carry out his ministerial activities, by unfailingly ensuring that his character visibly identifies him as a genuine child of God, who is a convicted member of His chosen generation, royal priesthood, holy nation, peculiar people, and who should “shew forth the praises of Him who has called him out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). His character and ministry should, in fact, show that, though “he is in the world, he is not of this world” (John 17:14-16). He must also be preoccupied with the conviction that, because his final and eternal home is in heaven (John 14:2), he should not block or abort his access to it by flirting with negative and worldly character and ministry development partners, whose impacts on him shall be completely averse to his character and ministry. The above godly convictions should therefore be implanted in the interpersonal relationships with the human and non-human development partners of the believer’s character and ministry.

As you apply the timeless truths and ideas in this book to your life and interpersonal relationships, your character and ministry shall be positively and rightly developed with only godly principles, biblical directives as well as wisely enriched with the excellent and impactful examples of heaven-compliant development partners as well as heroes and giants of faith.