The title of the first chapter of this book is No Longer the Lone Ranger. I remember watching the Lone Ranger on television when I was younger with my father. The Lone Ranger was a fictional cowboy that alone fought the bad people and rid towns of illegal activity. Traditionally, the pastor in many cases was the solo leader of the church. He had mountains of responsibilities during those times, but he was able to handle most of the responsibilities on his own. The church of today needs multiple staff members to work along side the Pastor. The book on pages 12-16 gives reasons why there should be multiple staff members in the church.
The reasons listed for the need of multiple staff members are as follows: no one has all of the gifts, the loss of volunteers, the changing roles of the pastors from generalist to specialist, the increasing numbers of large churches, the expectations and needs of people, the loss of church loyalty, and because team ministry is biblical. I would briefly like at this point to comment on some of the listed reasons.
Indeed, no one has all of the spiritual gifts although various people according to the book believe that the Pastor should. Jesus is the only person who possessed all of the spiritual gifts. Those people that believe that the Pastor should possess all of the spiritual gifts have to realize that the pastor is only human, and he is, therefore, limited. As humans, we are limited physically, but unlimited spiritually. The loss of volunteers means just what it states. Increased costs of living and cultural and lifestyle variations in the changing world has cut down on the ability of people to volunteer.
Additionally, due to changing times, the rises in problems that people have that did not exist in the past, a ...