The loneliness of ministry

Towards the end of his life the apostle Paul wrote a final letter to his young protégé Timothy, from his prison cell. In it he urged Timothy to be bold in taking up the charge that he had been given to preserve and promote the gospel. However there is more than a tinge of sadness in Paul’s words.

2Ti 1:15 NIV  You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes.

After all that Paul had done to bring the gospel to the very ends of the earth and the esteem that he had been held in, there were very few there for him in the end. After all, he had planted many churches throughout Asia Minor, churches that were of great prominence then and for centuries to come.

But at the end “everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me”.

But isn’t that what happened to Jesus as well?

That is the nature of people. We often forget whose shoulders we are standing on. Those who have gone before us, in very recent times as well as historically, are soon forgotten. People want to make their own way. But they need to be reminded constantly  who has been involved in bringing them to this stage.

The whole concept of eldership, or more correctly ‘oldership’ has lost its power. Is this part of the reason that the church has been caught up in fads and fashions and the latest ‘move of the Holy Spirit’, usually somewhere other than “here”?

We often forget that our task is to pass on unchanged the faith once delivered to the fathers, not to try to improve it or change it. Of course our means of delivery will change as society changes, but the content must not.

Will we recover the proper concept of eldership in our time, or will we continue to follow the ways of the world in leaving the future to the young with no reliance on the wisdom of age? Will we condemn the young to have to relearn all that has been taught in the past? Or will we help the young to stand boldly on the shoulders of their teachers in the Lord and so further increase the advance of the Kingdom of God? Even more so, will the young reach out for this wisdom of the elders?