Some Categories of Pastoral Care

Servants’ Meeting: The Reasons for Its Success or Failure

Servants’ Meeting: The Reasons for Its Success or Failure

We would like to speak in this topic about the importance of the servants’ meeting and its benefit, and what are the reasons for its weakness or failure? And what are the factors that help strengthen and develop it?

Its Importance and Benefits

1. The servants’ meeting helps strengthen their bond together, establish one spirit in the service, and create one mind among them through what they all receive of the same information in their meeting.
2. It is also a field for continuing in the life of discipleship, because in it the teachers receive lessons and sit in the position of listeners rather than speakers.
3. This also helps the life of humility.
4. Likewise, the servants’ meeting is a means for the growth of the servant, not only in knowledge, but also in spiritual life.
5. By assigning topics to the servants to present in the servants’ meeting, a new opportunity is given for study, reading, and research, because the servant who delivers a talk in the servants’ meeting is keen that his topic be of a high standard worthy for the servants to hear.
6. Thus, the servants’ meeting becomes a field for training servants at higher levels, and thus it becomes a field for preparing speakers for youth meetings and Sunday School conferences as well.
7. Indeed, the stronger the servants’ meeting becomes, the more it becomes a field for preparing leaders and consecrated servants, and it may even become a source for selecting future priestly fathers.
8. The servants’ meeting also trains the servant in seriousness and faithfulness in the service, and it also makes him feel that in his service he is under supervision and under guidance.
9. The servants’ meeting also has many other spiritual benefits if meetings of prayer for the servants or shared spiritual exercises arise from it.
10. It is also a field for example, through the personalities that appear in it and have their spiritual influence on the rest of the servants by the example of their lives, their good dealings, and their accuracy in the service.

All this we say about the ideal servants’ meeting…

But not all servants’ meetings are ideal. There are branches in the service where the servants’ meeting is weak or lukewarm. What are the reasons for that?

Reasons for Weakness

The servants’ meeting becomes weak if the servants do not find in it any spiritual benefit for themselves, nor any new knowledge added to their information, or if there are stumbling blocks or negative aspects in the servants’ meeting. What are the reasons for that?

1. If the meeting loses the element of preparation and planning and has no defined goal.
2. The meeting may also become weak because of the weakness of its speakers and the weakness of the information they present. Thus the servants find no motivation to continue attending the meeting.
3. If the meeting becomes a field for politics and news, or an explanation of disputes and conflicts, the servants feel that they fall into the sins of judging others and that their thoughts become distorted.
4. If the meeting is without discipline and order, or without commitment from the speakers, so that the original speaker is absent and the substitute speaks extemporaneously.
5. If the meeting becomes a field for commands and prohibitions from the head of the service and his assistants, with a spirit of domination and refusal to accept another opinion.
6. Or if the meeting includes sharp discussions that provoke nerves.
7. Or the meeting may fail because of division among the servants, and the absence of love and unity among them, or if every servant is an independent unit having no relationship with the rest of the servants.

Activating the Meeting

1. By having a planned program for it, and speakers who are strong in their knowledge and committed.
2. The program should include information from many aspects, not only educational, but the talks should also vary to include doctrine, theology, Church history, the lives of the saints, liturgy, spiritual matters, explanation of difficult-to-understand verses, and responses to common doubts, etc.
3. The meeting time should be suitable for everyone. It should not be so long that it conflicts with the other responsibilities of the servants, especially during examination periods.
4. There is no objection to exchanging some speakers with other branches, because the servants will undoubtedly enjoy having their meeting host a well-known speaker from among the servants to speak to them on an interesting topic (within his specialty), and answer their questions and comments.

However, it is not permissible to invite one of the bishop fathers or priests from other churches without permission and without the knowledge of the priests of the church. Rather, let “ALL THINGS BE DONE DECENTLY AND IN ORDER” (1 Corinthians 14:40), as the Holy Bible teaches us.

5. The servants’ meeting also succeeds if there is pastoral care for those servants who are absent, and care for the servants in their personal and social circumstances. This increases their bond and helps regular attendance at the meeting.
6. It is good for the meeting to have a spiritual order and not be merely talks that are delivered. In addition to beginning with the Agpeya prayers, the hymns or praises used in it should be carefully selected, as well as any meditations that may be given or readings that may be read.
7. There may also be a spiritual exercise in which all the servants participate together. This helps unite their hearts in shared spiritual life.
8. A prayer meeting in the church may also arise from the servants’ meeting at a suitable time.
9. The servants’ meeting may designate a day on which all the servants partake of Holy Communion together. This helps strengthen their spiritual bond. And if it is possible for the servants of some branches to gather together in one Divine Liturgy that can easily be arranged, so that they all partake together, this will have great benefit.
10. For all that we have said, every servants’ meeting should have an organizational aspect that strengthens its spiritual life and its knowledge, as well as strengthening the servants’ attendance.
11. In light of this organization, responsibilities and duties may be distributed among the servants. For example, one may be responsible for preparing the hymns and praises in an organized and attractive way, another may be responsible for recording attendance, one team may be responsible for pastoral follow-up, and another group may be responsible for preparing the lecture program of the meeting for the next three months, for example, while contacting the speakers and confirming the appointments with them.
12. It is good for the meeting to include more than one topic, with concentration. Those for whom one topic is not suitable may benefit from the second topic.
13. The servants should not be burdened with many meetings beyond the time available to them, so that some are forced, in balancing their time and the demands of their lives, to be absent from these meetings, and it may be the servants’ meeting that they excuse themselves from attending. Likewise, the starting time and the ending time should be specified and adhered to.
14. There should be no favoritism in inviting speakers, but rather objectivity. No one should be invited to speak in a servants’ meeting except one who is strong in his subjects and committed to his appointments.
15. For the sake of benefit, the talks may be recorded and placed in the servants’ library. There is also no objection to distributing copies of them to the servants, so that each one may have a complete file of everything that has been presented in the servants’ meetings as lectures.
16. Let the servants’ meetings be the subject of their prayers, so that the Lord may give a word to the speakers, and response and spiritual impact to the hearers.

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