Inwardly, it means forming their minds and hearts, their thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and whole life as Christianity requires. It is the state proper to those whose distinctive mark is life in Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Keeping Christians in outward order is governance. Giving them the proper disposition in inward life is the edification of the soul, or care for their salvation.
If someone is zealous, guide him toward what is better. If someone has grown weak, awaken his zeal. If someone has turned aside, bring him back to the proper path. If someone is crushed by grief, comfort and encourage him.
If someone undertakes what is not fitting for him, instruct him. If people quarrel, reconcile them. If an offense has occurred, judge rightly. If poverty weighs someone down, arrange help. If they do not understand something, explain it.
If passions overpower someone, show him how to master them. Thus always, now by word and now by deed, now with strictness and now with kindness, now alone and now together, keep one aim in view.
That aim is that all may be perfect and lacking in nothing (Jas 1:4). Everything belonging here is this: in common peace, to bring all to the most perfect knowledge of the faith and to a holy life corresponding to faith.
Thus each of those governed and edified by them may be perfect, “a man of God, equipped for every good work,” εξηρτισμένος (2 Tim 3:17). To attain this, “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season.”
“Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching” (2 Tim 4:2).
The second duty of the Church’s representatives is the work of ministry. Saint Paul calls his apostolic labors a ministry in Rom 11:13, 2 Cor 4:1, and 2 Cor 6:3.
When he came to some place, he converted people to the faith. He sanctified them by the mysteries. He established the order of common or ecclesial assemblies. He explained everything concerning Christian life.
He ordained presiders to conduct all these orders and to lead Christians toward further progress. Then he departed for another place. The continuation of apostolic ministry in each local Church remained wholly with the presiders.
They fulfilled part of this ministry by leading the saints to perfection, as already said. There remains sanctification by the mysteries, and the conduct of church assemblies so that everything there is seemly and according to order.
There also remains the warming of the spirit of prayer in all, and keeping them in noetic and heartfelt communion with God. This is what the Apostle here calls the work of ministry.
It embraces everything performed in the Church, all ecclesiastical rites: those of prayer, sanctification, and completion, that is, the mysteries. This is the heart of pastoral labors.
The word, by which pastors chiefly act in fulfilling the first duty, truly works. Yet unless it is sealed in the heart by the power of God, its action evaporates, and the soul is empty again.
What is sown by the word is united with the soul through the grace of the mysteries. It is then further developed by the prayer rites of the Church.
The spark cast by the word is implanted by the grace of the mystery, as people usually say of fire, that it catches. It is fanned into flame by prayer. Grace builds up.
Therefore the work of ministry in this sense must occupy the greatest part of pastoral care and concern, as indeed it does in the Orthodox Church.
Conduct this part in a manner worthy of God, O pastor, and you will see the wondrous fruits of your pastorate. This is the invisible, mystical shepherding of the flock.
The final duty of pastors he calls the building up of the body of Christ. The body of Christ is the Church, catholic and one. The Apostles built it and brought it into being.
How did they do this? They converted persons and communities and joined them to the common whole of believers. The Church grew as a building grows when new stones are laid layer upon layer.
The Apostle uses here the word οικοδομή. It does not mean the inner ordering of a house, or economy, but its building, its construction.
With regard to the Church, this is the addition of new believers, the spread of the faith, and the enlargement of the Church’s borders.
How the Apostles did this is clear. But how can and should the presiders of each particular Church fulfill it?
They accomplish the good ordering of their own small Church by leading the saints to perfection and by carrying out the work of ministry. Yet this is not the building up of the whole body of the Church.
It is the building up of only its smallest member. The Apostle also lays upon them the duty of building the whole body of the Church, together with building their own small part of it.
They could not, and cannot, fulfill this otherwise than by acquiring new believers. How is this done? By sanctifying the children born among Christians, and by converting to the faith those of other beliefs living in the same locality.
This includes those living in the same community or nearby. When possible, it also includes undertaking more distant journeys with a preaching purpose, or preparing suitable Christians from among their own and sending them where needed.
History shows that ecclesiastical presiders strove to fulfill exactly not only the first two duties, but also this last one. It was fulfilled in our Russian Church as well.
In recent times its fulfillment has been undertaken more decisively through the establishment of a society for this purpose, with a central body and diocesan branches.
Our holy fathers and ecclesiastical interpreters, when expounding this verse, speak generally of ministry for the salvation of souls.
Saint Chrysostom sees three works in each of those who have received a special ministry and special gifts in the Church: “Do you see? Each one builds up, each one orders, each one serves.”
Saint John of Damascus writes: “These gifts are given so that those sanctified in the faith may be directed toward perfection, through the ministry of the community of those who received these gifts.”
Oecumenius says that special persons were appointed in the Church with special gifts “for perfection, that is, for the final progress of the saints, or, what is the same, of the faithful, so that they may serve in the Church and build it up.”
THEOSIS