CANDIDATE INFORMATION PACKET - Ryan Fields

How do you view your role as senior pastor in the following areas (Christian education, youth ministry, evangelism, missions, counseling, visitation, music, financial stewardship, pastoral and intern staff, and administration)? Perhaps I could respond to this question in a broader way, in that I believe that senior pastor should be interfacing with each of these because they all play a role in helping the church to properly make disciples and see that those disciples become fully mature in Christ. The senior pastor's responsibility isn't to implement various programs that now run on their own; it is to see that these various programs, job responsibilities and staff positions serve the end of making and maturing disciples, whatever that might look like and whatever particular priorities it might mean for that day, week, month, season, or year. In other words, the senior pastor needs to be flexible to give due attention to any one part of the church's life and ministry as it is required. He is to ensure by God's grace that the making and maturing of disciples is something that is deeply rooted in every element of the church's culture. So, the senior pastor would be constantly asking: how can we cultivate this kind of maturity? How can we help our people to grow in grace; to deepen their relationship with God through Scripture and prayer; to cultivate greater relationships with their family, their church community, and with believing and unbelieving neighbors; to grow in a biblical understanding of the world and in a biblically informed engagement with the world; to enlarge their understanding of how their work is done unto God; to seek to serve others, especially the poor and marginalized, through hospitality and incarnation; and to become increasingly faithful stewards of their time, talent and treasure? He would also be asking: how is such maturity in Christ best cultivated? What aspects do we need to weave into our church culture so that this sort of maturity is the natural outcome? Of course ultimately I believe that the making and maturing of disciples is completely reliant upon the grace of God (John 15:4-5) even as we are called to cooperate with that grace (Phil 2:12-13). I also believe that the life of discipleship must be modeled by the pastoral leadership of the church, who should desire that believers continually mature in their relationship with Christ while they model what it looks like to grow as disciples of Jesus, increasingly imitating Him in all of life. Regarding non-essential doctrines which are not specified in the EFCA Statement of Faith, how would you deal those who disagree with you regarding an important, yet non-essential doctrine? The beauty of the EFCA statement of faith marking out what we understand as the essentials is that it frees us to recognize that disagreements about other matters are "disagreements within the family," things that God's people have a difference of opinion about but always with the recognition that the other position is a legitimate evangelical position to hold. This doesn't mean that these doctrines "don't matter"; these doctrines are quite important for articulating the proper implications of the gospel for what God's people should think and how they should live. Rather, it means that we respect our brothers and sisters who come to different conclusions on these matters even though those different conclusions may manifest in important differences between our church communities. This is especially the case when these brothers and sisters come to those different conclusions because they are convinced from the Word of God that they are so. We must continue to seek the truth of God's Word by really listening to each other while ultimately being willing to "agree to disagree" on these as non-essentials. The church should also seek to partner in gospel ministry to the fullest extent possible amidst these disagreements, knowing that

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