When I taught a course on incarnation and the urban poor for Fuller seminary I read an article that asked the question “What do we give up to move from poverty into the middle class?’ The research showed that what we give up is relationship for efficiency and accomplishment. I think that this is what we see in both pastoral ministry and the medical profession these days – we have given up seeing our purpose as relationship and reinvented it as accomplishment and efficiency so what matters is how many people are in church and how well we preach rather than how well we relate and how well we know people (or even God).

Our first congregation was a small church of 75-100 in a village of 200 people. I know there were many times when people there felt the same way about me. Visitation and personal work is hard, demanding, and it can feel inefficient and ineffective. But it is organic and absolutely necessary. Factories can churn out disposable products at high speed. Oak trees grow slowly from small acorns.

Acts 9:32 says Peter “went here and there among all the believers,” taking time to visit a bedridden man, visit a group of grieving believers who had lost a friend, staying with a believer named Jason in his house, and going to Cornelius’ home personally to share the gospel when the Spirit led him. When released from prison, he went to a home where believers had gathered for prayer to give them the news personally.

Christian ministry is face to face, person to person, and house to house, meeting people personally where they are, or it is not the kind of ministry Christ and the apostles exemplified for us.

I could not disagree with you more.

The main issue I see here is Gospel Stewardship. Theologically it’s rooted in the Great Commission. I believe it’s our missional responsibility to reach the largest number of people possible. So we stretch our imaginations to leverage technology, systems, and structures to advance the Kingdom.

From everything I see this is a Biblical precedent in the early church. When I read through Acts 6 it appears that apostolic leaders are devoting themselves to prayer and teaching and then select other leaders for pastoral care with the widows of the church. i.e. helping feed them, making the visits, having conversations, and knowing them by name.

If Peter made his primary responsibility “pastoral care” and visitation for the 3,000 plus, there would be no time for prayer and study. Peter depended upon those that they and the HS empowered to serve. The pastoral care we see in the book of acts comes from apostolic directives rather than the apostles themselves. Historically the apostles had a great reach without being physically present. Like the NT church we are just leveraging the technology of the day (NT church – written / modern – video) that opens new opportunities.

I believe pastors who lead multi-campus ministries effectively have an apostolic gift. J. Robert Clinton defines apostleship as “the gift to have the leadership capacity to move with authority from God to create new ministry structures to meet needs and appoint leadership in those structures.” While the apostles in the early church were responsible for the church they were not obligated to do personally all of that for which they are responsbile.

I hope to be an apostle one day, I really do. I dream of being able to devote the majority of my time to prayer and the ministry of the Word, but for now I’m just waiting tables as a campus pastor.