Ministry
MINISTRY. The term ministry traditionally refers to offices of leadership in the Christian church, but there has been a growing recognition that it also describes the way the mission of the whole church is conducted. Both in terms of specific offices (ministers) and in terms of the work of the church in general, ministry has biblical roots. In Hebrew, sheret ("to serve") applies to temple officers and was normally translated leitourgein in the Septuagint. This use was carried over into the New Testament, where the various linguistic forms of leitourgein are used not only for general acts of service to others (Rom. 15:27, 2 Cor. 9:12, Phil. 2:30) but also for worship (Acts 13:3) and particularly for priestly and Levitical functions under the Old Covenant (Lk. 1:23; Heb. 8:2, 8:6, 9:21, 10:11). But the New Testament introduced the words diakonia ("service") and diakonein ("to serve"), referring to the menial work done by a diakonos ("servant") or doulos ("slave") to indicate the quality of ministry in the church. These words represent not status but the serving relationship of the minister to the one served: following the example of Christ (and, subsequently, the example of the apostle Paul) is at the heart of the Christian understanding of ministry (Jn.
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