Growing into a mature church ---------------------------- Pastor Stuart Briscoe once told about an incident that happened the first week that he was the pastor of Elmbrook Church. A woman came up after the service and asked him if he would find the answer to a technical question that she had about a particular Bible text. Briscoe replied, "No, I will not." The woman got a shocked look on her face, as if she didn't hear him correctly. "What?" she exclaimed. "No," Briscoe repeated, "I will not find the answer to your question." She looked at him as if to say, "Well what are we paying you for?" He continued, "But here's what I will do. I'll show you how to find the answer for yourself." And, he proceeded to do that for her. In that exchange, Pastor Briscoe was following a sound biblical philosophy of ministry, based on our text. Rather than doing the ministry for that woman, he was equipping her to do the ministry herself, so that she would grow to maturity in Christ. One of the most crippling ideas to pervade the church over the centuries is that there is a special class of Christians, called "clergy," who do the ministry, while the rest of the church sits back and lets them do it. John Stott (One People [Falcon], p. 30, cited by James Boice, Ephesians [Baker], p. 142, italics in Boice) quotes a remark of Sir John Lawrence to this effect: "What does the layman really want? He wants a building which looks like a church; clergy dressed in the way he approves; services of the kind he's been used to, and to be left alone." - Steve Cole