Pastoral Ward Ministry Overview
Impetus
The Pastoral Ward Ministry, known earlier as Pastoral Ward System (PWS),
was started in 2020 just before the advent of Covid-19, with the primary goal
that none of the church members fall through the cracks for lack of spiritual
oversight. Our church has since grown after the inception of the Pastoral Ward
Ministry with an average attendance close to 500 on every Lord’s Day. Hence,
there is a need to strengthen the work and therefore we relaunched the work late
last year with much deliberation in the BOE meetings, resulting in clear
processes and an operational mandate for the elders and leadership teams
leading the wards. We also renamed the work appropriately as a ministry,
namely, Pastoral Ward Ministry (PWM).
Grounds
It is certainly an important ministry as it builds upon the Biblical
Model of Pastors and Elders as undershepherds of God’s Church as set forth in 1
Peter 5:1-3.
The elders which are among you I
exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and
also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: 2 Feed the
flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by
constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; 3
Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. 4
And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory
that fadeth not away. 1 Peter 5:1-4
From the above text, one can tease out two key components of the role of
Pastors and Elders in exercising pastoral care for the flock of God; it is to
feed as well as to exercise loving oversight over God’s sheep. It would be
clear to most of you that the feeding of God’s flock is primarily through the
pulpit, the proclamation of God’s Word by the Pastors; it would also include regularly
led study of God’s Word in the context of the church fellowship by individuals.
On the other hand, it also involves the oversight of God’s flock with respect
to their spiritual growth and formation. Such as how do we promote, maintain,
and measure the growth and spiritual formation of God’s flock through gospel
centered pastoral activities. This means several things. Given that while preaching is central, it is
not enough for the formation of Christian Discipline and Growth in each of the
sheep of God’s flock. This therefore requires other activities such as
exercising oversight leadership in prayerfully casting a vision of what can be
achieved with the resources we have, planning of relevant pastoral activities
and building capacity for the future, including Care Groups but not limited to them,
and executing the rolling out of programs and activities. It also includes establishing
regular accountability events such as regular prayer and review. All this is to fulfill the role of oversight
as called for in 1 Peter 5:2. It would also not be surprising to see this happening
in large churches of the past. I would like to provide one positive example and
one negative example.
Examples
I chanced upon a negative example of what would happen to a church when
Pastor and Elders fail to exercise oversight that we alluded earlier. This was
brought up by Don Carson in a paper entitled “Some Reflections on Pastoral
Leadership”,
where he mentioned how a local church grew to 600 in membership because of the
wonderful preaching of the Godly Pastor and then gradually declined to 250.
There was no split in the congregation. The members just drifted away. Don
Carson attributed the decline to the lack of exercising due leadership in
oversight.
When expounding the pastoral practices of John Calvin in Geneva, Tim
Keller based his talk[1]
on several books on Pastoral work such as one by Scott M Manetsch, “Calvin’s
Company of Pastors – Pastoral Care and Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609”.
Keller underscored the same point that while preaching is central to Pastoral
care, it is not enough for the formation of spiritual discipline and growth of
each of the sheep in God’s flock. More needs to be done in pastoral care
activities through detailed organized programs as evinced in the work of
John Calvin and his fellow pastors in Geneva in turning medieval catholic
community in Genva to a reformed community and society.
Tasks Ahead
Essentially the goals of PWM are two-fold.
Firstly, it to exercise oversight leadership in organizing FERC into seven
wards and through the agency of each ward leadership team to organize and
oversee activities such as Care Group, whereby bi-weekly Bible studies are
conducted using Centralized Bible Study (CBS) materials, and other fellowship
activities such as Sunday lunch and Outdoor walk on a quarterly basis. Also, within
each ward, the leadership team would conduct bi-monthly meetings to plan and
review the progress of the Care Groups in the Ward as well as the welfare of
individual members of the ward through the Sheep Dog program. Besides the aforementioned
programs, regular pastoral visits are also conducted for each ward member by
the Elder accompanied by the brother or sister assistants from the leadership
team. The visits’ outcomes are then reviewed by the Board of Elders monthly.
Pastoral care for each member of the ward is mediated through Pastoral visits
and each would be visited on average on an 18-month cycle.
On a quarterly basis, the leadership team of each ward will review and
report on their respective ward’s progress at a PWM meeting. They
do this to encourage each other with good practices and to pray together for
the progress of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.
Newcomers are also engaged and taken care of. This is done through the
agency of the Follow-Up Ministry (FUM) for the first four months, and they
would then be inducted to the Newcomers Care Group (NCG) for a period of seven months
where the newcomers can get to know the Elders as well as the teaching of the
Church and for the Elders and Pastors to know them. This is planned once or
twice a year. Thereafter, they will be assigned to a ward and a suitable care
group. This NCG program will be launched in March 2024. Newcomers who worship
with us regularly for more than four months and have the desire to make FERC
their home church would be encouraged to join the NCG program. Stay tuned for
details.
Secondly, within the context of each particular ward, the feeding of
God’s flock is done through the Care Group (CG) Bible Study. The goal of the
PWM is to have at least 3 CGs or more that meet twice a month to study God’s Word
using the Centralized Bible Study (CBS) Materials with facilitators trained by
the CBS program as we roll out the first book of studies, in 1 Thessalonians.
The work of PWM is mediated administratively through the PWM committee
chaired by Elder Wilson Oon with Elder Loh as the deputy and members include
Sister Ong Lay Ling, Brother R. Mohan and Brother Dominic Ho. The PWM committee
reports to the board of Elders.
Your Gospel Partnership
We covet your prayers for the Elders as well as the leadership team of
each ward. Do pray for us as we roll out the Newcomers Care Group (NCG) and as
we meet to review the progress of each ward in the month of March 2024. We ask
and pray that you would be forthcoming to give yourself to fellowship with the
Lord’s people in the ward and to join a CG in your ward if you have not. Please
indicate your interest to your Ward Elder.
As another of our esteemed Elder sums it succinctly, “PWM is not
meant to be yet another burdensome ‘add-on’. It provides an organizational
framework that SUPPORTS the CBS. Every CBS has a ‘home’ ward and those in the
ward not already in a BS group are encouraged to join one. Every member is
included in one Ward so that pastoral oversight is provided for everyone – so
no one falls through the cracks. Ward members are also encouraged to
participate in fellowship activities organised at ward level so we can know and
reach out to more people in the church.”
Let us pray together that as the pastoral care is mediated through the
pulpit as well as the pastoral ward ministry that “that your love may
abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve
things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the
day of Christ; Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus
Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:9-11
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