In January, as a member of the Commission on Inter-Church Relations (CICR), I had the privilege of meeting with the leaders of two church bodies from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Because of risk-management concerns, we did not meet in the DRC but in Zambia and Tanzania.
I share this story here because the president of one of those church bodies said, “We want WELS to help us train our new pastors, but we also want them to help us train the spiritual leaders we already have. We think that there is always a need for us to keep growing in faith and in ability to serve Christ’s people. We want to have a culture of continuing education.”
We are blessed in our confessional Lutheran church body to have well-trained pastors. But no matter how well-trained we are, there is always a need for us to keep growing. The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know. Let ours be a culture of continuing education too.
As pastors, spurring one another on to love and good deeds might also include this matter of stewardship and growth. If you have thoughts about how we can create and maintain such a mindset among us, please let me know.
Grace and peace,
In Jesus,
Brad Wordell