This was a grand conference indeed!

What a Conference!

It was on Wednesday afternoon that my wife and I hit the road to the Kopanong Hotel, in Benoni where Ministers & spouses were going to spend four days being strengthened as servants of Christ.

I thought that this would similar to conferences that I attended previously. How wrong I was. 

It was different from beginning to the end and it was the first of its kind to involve spouses. The organisers were well prepared to equip us with various teachings from all angles of life. The worship was there. The Bible study was there along with marriage in ministry, parenting in ministry, finance in ministry, and advice as to the keys to effective ministry. Even entertainment was laid on for us which included storytelling from ministers’ experiences

Our keynote speaker, Prof Elna Mouton from Stellenbosch University, was fantastic. She spoke about our calling in ministry, celebration in ministry, and our suffering in ministry

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We came to understand that in ministry we are called to respond to God’s gift in Christ, to belong to God’s people, to praise and worship the Caller, and we were called to remember what God has done for us at Calvary. He took the bread, His life, bread of life, and took you and me as Christians to the ministry. He called us to be His servants.

When Jesus was about to be betrayed, He took a loaf of bread and gave thanks and invited us to celebrate with Him. We celebrate his life and He gave it to us to live. When we meet in His sanctuary, or elsewhere, we have what to celebrate, celebrate the life of Jesus Christ.

In ministry, we do not deal with souls only, but we are also confronted with the issue of finance, relationships, family issues, political problems, security around us and others. We give counseling to our people, but when it happens to us, when we are stressed and burned out in ministry, we do not have anyone to run to. Stress in ministry is imminent and without being more careful it can lead to heart attack.

At the end of this conference, everyone was convinced that ministers and their spouses needed more time like this to refresh and put in spiritual food, The suggestion was that this should often be organized on the Presbytery level.

Pastor Solomon