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Bodybuilding

For church leaders bodybuilding is not about building muscles, but about building up the body of Christ. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul explains this as being the aim of the church and its leadership "to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up" (Eph. 4:12).

Bodybuilding is the reason why God gives gifts to his people and this verse, when taken in context, implies that every Christian has a work of ministry to fulfil (Eph. 4:7). A little later in the chapter (vs 11-13) Paul explains how "Bodybuilding" works in practice. Bodybuilding is about increasing the church, building her up, ensuring that her members are edified as each member uses their particular gifts as the Lord enables, and so gives service both to God and to His people. The responsibility of church leadership is to put all this into practice in the local community of believers. This module has a number of questions for reflection - do spend some quality time on these. You might like to print out this page and work through these off-line.

Pause for Thought : How do you feel about this responsibility?
How do you think you can be used for this "Bodybuilding" task?

Training is preparation
Preparing God's people for works of service is an important role for the leadership of the church. It is a way of ensuring that God's people are not set up to fail, or sucked dry until they lose the motivation to continue in their ministry. Preparation is needed for all tasks in the church and this requires some training. Training can be delivered in many forms - it isn't just about attending training courses.

Pause for Thought : Do you believe that training has a role in the church? How do you currently prepare God's people for works of service? Should there be more training in your church?

A daunting task
Read Romans 12. Here we have a description of the church, a treatise on the way that Christians should behave within the community of believers, the importance of putting our effort into our service for God in the church and how we should always be ensuring that we sacrifice all for God. It is a daunting task for church leaders and a sobering chapter. To be responsible for a church and to meet the expectations of Romans 12 needs more than just good preaching and inspiring worship.

Pause for Thought : What areas do you feel most comfortable with? Looking at the chapter what areas are the biggest challenge for you?

The responsibility of leadership
"Now we ask you brothers, to respect those who work hard among you who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work." (1 Thess. 5:12,13)

Leaders are to work hard amongst God's people and to direct the church and to admonish those who need it. But this doesn't really give a good idea of what the leader should be doing. One contemporary model that could be used to better understand the functions of church leadership is John Adair's "Action Centred Leadership". This is a well known leadership tool and in the hands of responsible and skilled workers it helps leaders identify how they can contribute to the people of God so that the body of
Christ may be built up. Basically "Action Centred Leadership" is about meeting three needs:

the need of the task	what needs to be done to meet the objectives of the organisation, or the work group.
the needs of the individual	meeting the developmental needs of the individual allows them to give maximum contribution.
the needs of the team	the team will need trust, confidence and esteem to work together smoothly and effectively.

Therefore church leaders should be involved in ensuring that their church: achieves the task, develops individuals, and works as a team. With reference back to Romans 12, how does this model fit for the role of church leadership :

Pause for Thought : What are the tasks to achieve? What should individual members be developed to do, or to be? How should the community of God's people work together? Out of these three areas, what activities could church leaders be involved in, in order to build up the body of Christ?
Task :
Individual :
Team :

One writer considering the role of leadership decided that there was one need that is missing from these three, a leader's own personal needs. It is difficult to lead people effectively if a leader does not have their own needs being fulfilled. There are too many occasions when leaders sacrifice themselves for God's people and are not concerned for their own needs. We have already seen that church leadership is a daunting prospect, that the responsibility for "Bodybuilding" is immense.

Pause for Thought : What do you need to work on in your own life to ensure that you own personal needs are met? What help do you need in addressing your role of "Bodybuilding"??

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This module has been written by Brian Boley, Director of BodyBuilding. BodyBuilding is a training consultancy taking Ephesians 4:12 as it's mission "to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be builtup". They help churches and missions develop and train God's people in the following areas:
- Training: helping people to train and develop others
- Encouraging: establishing the right culture within the church for people to learn and develop
- Planning: ensuring that people are prepared for the future
- Mentoring: establishing mentoring as a way of growing disciples
- Gifting: helping to discover and fulfil God given ministries

More specifically bodybuilding can provide a training consultancy looking at the specific needs of your church and advising on or providing a training response. For example: teambuilding courses for leadership teams, developing mentors within the church, training leaders for the future, presentation skills training for Youth workers, Home Group Leadership development.

These are just some ideas but all churches are different and require a different response, if you wish to find out more or correspond regarding a specific issue then please contact Brian Boley (Director of BodyBuilding) on [email protected]