Individual Work – its importance and seriousness
A summary of the lecture delivered by His Holiness the Pope in the Servants’ Preparation Studies (Thursday, 22/6/1978)
Service is not merely meeting with groups or giving lessons in classes; rather, there is individual work, which has its importance and seriousness.
The Lord Christ used to meet with the multitudes, and He also had His individual work.
When He delivered the Sermon on the Mount, He delivered it to the multitudes. Likewise, His words to the five thousand men, besides the women and children, whom He fed. In the miracle of healing the paralytic, the house was crowded and could not contain them. Likewise, the multitudes pressed around Him when He met Zacchaeus, when the woman with the flow of blood touched Him, and when He was preaching from the boat…
All this crowding did not prevent the Lord from doing individual work..
He had His individual work with Nicodemus secretly and at night. He had His individual work with Zacchaeus, with Mary Magdalene, with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, and with Simon the Pharisee and the woman who wet His feet with her tears. Likewise, He had His individual work with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. This also includes His meeting with the man born blind after they cast him out of the synagogue, His meeting with the sick man at Bethesda, and His searching for the lost sheep.
His individual work also included His meeting with each one of the Apostles, whether in calling them or in private conversations.
After the Resurrection, just as He appeared to more than 500 brethren, He appeared individually to Peter because he needed this meeting, and He appeared to Mary Magdalene and to the two disciples of Emmaus. He also appeared to Saul of Tarsus in an individual encounter…
Likewise, the Apostles had their public work and their individual work.
Even the epistles they wrote: some were addressed to all the believers, while some were addressed to individuals, such as the Epistle to Philemon and the two Epistles to Timothy. These epistles also had their public work.
And you too, in your spiritual and evangelistic work, have your public work, and you have an important duty in individual service that you offer to certain persons…
So what is the importance of this individual work in service?
In public work, there is general speech addressed to everyone, and you do not know the extent of its effect.
But individual work is a special work that touches particular situations; it touches a specific problem and struggles to solve it. It is therefore a focused work.
Individual work is often a frank and realistic session, more influential than general speech. And there is another great benefit:
In public lectures, people come to the church. But in individual work, the church goes to them, especially those who do not go.
From this, individual work appears as evidence of love and concern, whether you seek the person, or God brings him across your path, or he comes to you. Your mere concern for him, your attempt to solve his problems, and your leading him to God are evidence of care and love…
It is also evidence that you appreciate the value of the one soul.
Individual work contains humility because it is an unseen work.
Public sermons are visible and known to everyone, whereas individual work contains hiddenness and humility, because it means giving a portion of your time and attention to an individual case, and being satisfied with that without seeking the multiplied fruit that appears in large meetings.
However, individual work may lead to public work…
The person with whom you succeed in individual work will enter the scope of the church and its meetings; he may even work in its activities.
And perhaps individual work may have a very tremendous result…
Such was the individual work done by the Lord Christ with Saul of Tarsus when He met him personally on the road to Damascus. But this meeting had a very profound effect on the history of the Church, because it brought forth the Apostle Paul, who labored in evangelism more than all the apostles, and through whose hands the Gospel spread with greater power.
Individual work may sometimes have a greater reward because of its difficulty.
It is very easy for a person to deliver a sermon or a lesson, but what is difficult is to meet individually with a soul that has its own circumstances and practical obstacles in the way of the Lord. He may spend a long time with this soul discussing and investigating, responding to ideas, searching for solutions, and encountering problems… Therefore, his patience in this work has its reward, because the solution was not reached easily..
And he may not find a solution, so his soul, which perhaps had been confident in itself, becomes humble, or the difficulty may lead him to more prayers.
Thus, we see individual work as a school in which a person trains in many virtues, because it brings him into the heart of practical life, far from theoretical speech and abstract ideals..
Individual work may be with one person or one family, or with two friends, or a group of friends, or any small group, but one that shares the same situation…
And you, blessed son, do you have experience in individual work?
Have you practiced this service with a relative, a friend, a colleague at work or school, or a person you have encountered?
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III — in El-Keraza Magazine — Ninth Year (Issue Twenty-Seven), 7-7-1978
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