PASTORAL CARE AND CREDENTIALING OF LIBERTY LEADERS
The Overseer Team is made up of district and regional leaders who assist the Presbytery in ministering at the local level to practical and day-to-day needs of the pastors, leaders, churches and ministries of Liberty Fellowship. Trans-local oversight through pastoral care and credentialing for church leaders flows out of the following beliefs and convictions:
1. Oversight is best fulfilled in the context of ongoing and growing relationships.
2. Spiritual authority is healthiest when there is a dynamic interaction between positional authority and relational authority.
3. Pastoral care primarily involves providing:
- Nurture – personal encouragement and support for the leader and family
- Counsel – guidance for present ministry situations and future ministry direction
- Prayer – intercessory partnering to address the challenging dimensions of life
- Accountability – an atmosphere of safety for ongoing self evaluation
- Resourcing – identifying helps available to address practical needs
- Ministry – caring involvement in times of crisis, change, and challenge
- Restoration – providing unconditional love and biblically-based restorative healing for spiritual leaders who have fallen into sin or harmful life patterns
4. Credentialing primarily involves providing:
- Certification – endorsement of one’s call and qualification to minister
- Accountability – oversight and protection for the minister and their ministry
- Legal entitlement – authorization for sacerdotal ministry (weddings, funerals, baptisms)
- Final authority – to confirm the minister’s qualifications and for dealing with impasses in problematic situations
5. It is generally desirable to have credentialing and oversight vested in one source:
- The leader and ministry may be resourced, receive inspiration and glean from a wide spectrum of other ministries
- Less communication and negotiation is necessary when the leader has a clear line of accountability to only one “influential and responsible party”
- There is less “space” for intrusion from spiritual powers to pit one influence against the other or to take advantage of situations where it becomes unclear as to who is responsible for a certain aspect of the leader’s life
