David, my co-blogger on the book of Titus, has a post on Who Is Titus? It provides helpful scriptural background on the person Titus. So who was Titus? He was a person groomed for leadership by Paul himself.
One of the ways in which Paul groomed Titus for leadership was through ministry tasks.
Ministry tasks are assignments given to emerging leaders which primarily test a person's faithfulness and obedience but often allows use of ministry gifts in the context of a task which has closure, accountability and evaluation.
We are aware of several ministry tasks that Titus was involved in. For example, Titus was given the task of fund-raising for the church at Jerusalem. Titus was also involved in confronting divisiveness in the Corinthian church. Titus responded to those tasks, and the scope of his assignments grew. The job of establishing leaders in the Cretan church, which is the occasion for the book of Titus, was a significant assignment. Titus apparently went further, for we see at the end of Paul's final letter (2 Tim), Paul referring to Titus in Dalmatia (modern day Albania). Most scholars believe Titus was sent as an evangelist to plant churches.
This is a pattern in leadership development. Increasingly important ministry tasks. In the beginning, the tasks may be smaller and more focused on developing faithfulness and obedience in the emerging leader. As a leader grows, the tasks move down a continuum toward being more focused on the task itself.
In my own development as a leader, I was given ministry tasks by different leaders. One early task was to pinch hit and lead our small group in the absence of our main leader. I did this for a summer. This was a growing time for me as I struggled with the demands of preparing for the study, learning how to lead a discussion, and how to engage others in the discussion and so forth. It was a relatively small assignment, but an important developmental step.
Later, in my early 30s, I was given an increasingly larger task by my senior pastor. He asked me to prepare and implement a strategic evangelism plan at our church. I set up a regular prayer meeting, arranged a series of testimonies of changed lives, set up an evangelism workshop, and taught a class on evangelism. Did I make mistakes? You bet. I had plenty of splinters around the edges that needed sanding, and God sanded me down appropriately. It was a ministry task. My faithfulness was being tested. God blessed those efforts, especially the prayer meeting, but I am convinced that God's primary focus at that time was having me fall on my face and learn to trust Him.
Another example from my own life was early in my experience as a RE. Like Titus, I was asked to confront divisiveness in the church. I was asked to directly engage a situation involving gossip which was infecting the church. Again, it was an obedience check. I learned to trust God in a situation which I felt totally inadequate to handle.
For the emerging leader, these kinds of tasks are primarily a time for character formation. For the mentor, these kinds of tasks are an opportunity to assess an emerging leader's faithfulness, readiness to obey, and facilitate the emergence of gifts.
If you are a leader, look for opportunities to develop emerging leaders around you. Like Paul, use ministry tasks. If you are an emerging leader, like Titus, be ready for the testing that comes with ministry tasks. View them as serving God, no matter how small in scope they may appear to be. Be faithful in those little tasks. And don't forget the little-big principle in scripture.
The material for this post was taken from Titus: Apostolic Leadership, Article 46, Titus and Ministry Tasks, by Dr. J Robert Clinton Phd
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