Pastoral Objectives

Installation Response

1^st Peter 5:1-11

Central Baptist Church, Lowesville, VA

15 October 2006

Chris: Today is our official installation as your pastors.

Karen: Today is a new beginning for us as ministers and you as church.

Chris: We will learn to be your pastors;

Karen: You will learn to minister with us.

Chris: We stand before you to minister by word and deed. We stand here to lead and serve as examples alongside you—

Karen: Alongside, you, not for you. There is more than we can accomplish on your behalf.

Chris: We will visit the sick, preach God’s word, counsel, encourage, comfort, and mourn with you.

Karen: We will engage the church in ministry to the world beyond these walls.

Chris: As we preach, we will ask you to share your gleanings with others around you.

Karen: As you receive, we expect you also to give.

Chris: We will surely fail you at times. We cannot fulfill all your expectations.

Karen: You will surely fail us at times. We will all fail God, for we are all frail humanity.

Chris: As we fall down on our responsibilities, we will need each other’s forgiveness, along with the commitment to return to faithful service.

Karen: Together, we covenant to give you our best efforts. God requires commitment from believers, both pastoral leadership and congregation alike. None is excluded from God’s demands on our lives, efforts, time, energy, and material resources. We covenant to lead by example.

Chris: In calling us as your pastors, your covenant is to enable us to be effective. We will rely on your understanding of the community in which we all serve together. We will rely on God to enable us to see beyond your and our limited perspectives. We will rely on your determination to see the community around us from God’s perspective rather than our own.

Karen: We will look upon these walls not as the church, but as the launching pad for God’s mission in this world. Our resources will be tools for ministry, not a collection of memorabilia.

Chris: Our lives belong to God as servants. Our resources belong to God’s mission in the world. We will work together with you to turn our lives more completely into God’s hands. We will grant the concept of ownership to God.

Karen: We are on a mission—not our own mission, but God’s mission.

Chris: If you will stand with us to give the cause of Jesus Christ central place in our lives, God will do much through our efforts and resources.

Karen: Who is Central in Your Life?

Chris: Who is Central in our own?

Karen: As your pastors, we challenge you to walk with us—

Chris: Alongside us that we might minister together.

Karen: Together we pledge our lives to the mission Christ has set before us, that the entire world might join in our fellowship with God.

Chris: What Central Baptist Church will become will depend on our commitment as pastors and as a body of believers. We will cherish our history and our heritage.

Karen: We will focus our eyes upon the next chapter God would write through our lives and efforts.

Chris: What will Central become as a result of our lives?

Karen: Who will others say was Central to our faith?

Chris: As we take up the mantle as your pastors,

Both: Let us work together to make Christ Jesus Central to our lives, giving our all to the mission of His cause.

—©2006 Christopher B. Harbin