different roles

Here Pastor Mark speaks about  the three "offices" that Jesus has throughout the bible:

• Priest: offer sacrifices to God on behalf of people's sins
• Prophet: communicates to people truths about God
• King: with authority to reign over a group of people

As we are getting sanctified by the Spirit we are given gifts that would allow us to serve God effectively. Each of us are very different, given different gifts (1 Cor. 12), which will make you more suitable to specific leadership roles, and often the leadership roles are "categorized" into one of these offices. For example:

• Priest: serve others by caring for them, encouraging and support them (e.g. Caring Ministry, one-on-one encouragements)
• Prophet: serve others by speaking God's word to them, and rebuking them if necessary (e.g. Bible study leaders)
• King: serve others by being stewards of the resources to run the fellowship, and executing and planning events (e.g. Program/Event Coordinator)

There is one year when I was in committee, and there were three brothers (the more vocal ones), and the discussion of this came out because each of them were very different. One of them was really organized at planning and running events (so he was the king type). Whenever the other brother spoke about God, one was always inspired by his zeal for the Word of God, and it always brought conviction (so he was the prophet type). The other brother was the person who cares for the people of the fellowship and often made effort to talk as much people as possible and meet up on one-on-one with some of them to encourage them (so he was the priest type). I thought that was cool.

I just wanted to share this (not because I think this is like very important to know since it is kind of technical), but cause of two things:

1. We are sinners, so since we are different it is easy to come to disagreements and hurt one another. So it is important to know how to listen and understand where the other person is coming from. And also to forgive and offer grace when one is offended (just as God forgives and offers grace to us).
2. In the Old Testament, there are great servants of God that fulfills one of the offices of Christ, and I want to dedicate a great portion of my next blog posts to speak about it because it is a way that Christ was foreshadowed in the Old Testament, which is really neat because it gives us a better understanding of the overarching themes of the bible.

More reference for the three offices: http://carm.org/prophet-priest-king

Another reference for Christian leadership: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12913395/Christian_leadership.pdf