The Barnabas Team
The Barnabas Team is a new initiative of Hinckley Baptist Church. Barnabas was an early Christian leader, named Joseph, who was so famous for being an encouragement to everybody that they gave him a nickname, “Son of Encouragement” – or “Barnabas” in their language.
People grow and benefit from those who encourage them, and so churches, and people in churches, grow by this ministry of encouragement. With this in mind, in Hinckley Baptist Church, we are developing pastoral and spiritual ministries within the life of the church to enable this encouragement to help people to develop and grow. There are two major, overlapping sides to this in The Barnabas Team: pastoral care and prayer ministry. Both are motivated by the compassion of Christ, and by our faith in him.
Pastoral ministry
Pastoral care is important in the encouraging and building of people up within the fellowship. In common with other Baptist churches, we have ordained ministers (pastors) and other members involved in pastoral care and other forms of service and mission: we recognise that God calls the whole fellowship to be part of God’s mission. So, many people become involved in pastoral care, for example; and in Hinckley Baptist Church, several people have long been visiting many members of the church, especially those who are elderly or else who are housebound (or both, of course). Their work will continue, and be encouraged and supported within this team, and they are joined by several new visitors. Instead of being individuals, possibly working or at least feeling isolated from others doing the same elsewhere, we will become more like a team. In particular we will become more aware both of those who are being supported and those who not being as supported as we would like them to be.
Visitors will be involved in visiting elderly and housebound members, but also in visiting other members of the church and congregation, as well as welcoming and visiting new friends.
Prayer ministry
Prayer ministry is the sharing with people who wish to receive support from God by the means of people praying with them and for them. There are two main contexts for this. One comes in the context of Sunday worship.
Prayer is openness to God, both in terms of what we communicate with God, and our openness to hearing what he wants to communicate with us. Prayer before the services is an important part of this growing and encouraging openness to God. After a service is over, sometimes people will have found it helpful, challenging or both in some way. As a result, they might want to take it further, and having people ready to listen, care, and to pray with them and for them on the basis of that listening and caring, before God. We want to make this more readily available for people. So we will be encouraging people to be ready to help in this way.
The other main context is the rest of the week! Sometimes it will be helpful to pray with people in their own homes. As a pastor and minister, it is helpful to me to have people I can call on who are ready to join in such prayer ministries, so that people who need to receive spiritual support can have that.
For both these contexts we will over a period of time be providing support and training so that those involved in this prayer ministry have the encouragement of the church and are enabled to grow spiritually in the way that will help them in their opportunities to pray with and for people.
Anthony Thacker