You will know the words "to feed the church of God" from Acts 20:28. Here Paul exhorts the office-bearers of the church at Ephesus.

Take heed ... to yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which He bought with His own blood.

1. The Church of God⤒🔗

What strikes me is the great respect with which Paul writes about the church. We sometimes say so easily: 'the church' or 'the congregation.' But do we realize what the church is? Paul uses 3 words: 'flock', 'church of God', and 'the one bought by His own blood.' There is even a climax to these words.

1. The first word is flock. The congregation does not consist simply of a number of individual believ­ers. Rather the congregation is a flock under the good Shepherd. To be sure, the believers are in many ways different from one another, and so are their children. Nevertheless the Lord gathers them to be His flock. However, even though this flock is under the care of the Lord Jesus, the Good Shepherd, it is the flock of God. He is the Owner.
    
2. Yet, Paul does not call it the 'flock of God' but "the church (ekklesia = 'called out of') of God." The members have been called by God, out of the world and led to Christ. God gave Christ, placed Him in this world, and calls people out of this world to Christ. That's why "the church of God" is "the flock" of people who believe in Christ.
    
3. He "bought her with His own blood." This is a correct translation. The blood of Jesus is God's "own blood." Nonetheless, this is a very strong expression which we do not encounter anywhere else in the Bible in this way. I prefer to translate: "which He (God) bought by means of the blood of His own," that is, the blood of His own (Son). After all, Jesus, the Son of God, gave His blood. He is the Lamb of God Who bore and took away the sin of the world. But notice what that meant to God. He gave His own, His beloved Son in order for Him to suffer and die. He caused His own (Son) to suffer damna­tion, because He wanted to snatch sinners from that damnation.

That is how He laid the foundation on which He could build a church to Himself. That's how He purchased to Himself a church, by means of the blood of His own (Son). This high price makes clear how highly the Lord values the church. This value can only be explained from His great love for sin­ners.

As office-bearers we need to be reminded of what the church is, in order to have the right attitude and vision for our task.

2. Our Task as Office-bearers←⤒🔗

Indeed, it is not only so that we as special office­-bearers have a task to perform. All the members of the church are to be engaged in the general office that they have as believers. One of our tasks as special office-bearers is precisely to activate the others.

1. But we do have a special task. After all, the Holy Spirit has made us overseers, as Paul puts it. That too is a very remarkable thing. The Holy Spirit makes us office-bearers when we in a lawful way are called and appointed to the special office. He gives gifts. He causes others to notice those gifts, so that brothers with those gifts are nominated, and by way of the election by the congregation He calls to and places them into the office. Let us remind ourselves of this. Then we'll sense the weight of the office and we'll know ourselves to be instruments of the Holy Spirit, and we'll be committed to the Lord, and not to the will of the majority of the members of the congre­gation. Then we'll sense that we're not the ones who have to do it all but rather that we are instruments in the hands of the Lord.
   
   What is our task as instruments in the hands of the Holy Spirit? Paul says: "Take heed to yourselves..." That does not only mean: See to it that you are a living and worthy member of the church. It also means: See to it that you look at your labours as office-bearer in the right way. Let your labours never become merely routine, something you simply have to do! Know that the Holy Spirit has made you overseer over the flock of God. Perform your labours as office-bearer in the awareness that He is pleased to work through you as His instrument.
    
2. What else is there to be done?
   
   You see, there are two sides to our life, body and soul. That is the reason a congregation has more than spiritual needs; it has also physical needs. The physi­cal needs are to be supplied as well. That is also why there is the office of the elders and the office of the deacons. The office of the elders focuses more on the spiritual needs. The office of the deacons focuses more on the physical needs. But these two offices are one. Both elders and deacons are "overseers". Both are to "oversee" the flock.
   
   What are the needs of the flock?
   
   a) We are to see to it that there is food. The Word of God is to be ministered, the riches and the obliga­tions of the covenant of grace are to be unfolded, in order that the sheep may be able to eat and drink from the fountains of salvation.
   
   ​Or to put it in terms of what we read in Acts 2, we are to see to it that the church's life is fourfold:

• a learning church;
• a loving church;
• a worship­ping church;
• a witnessing church.
  
  Drs. Veefkind's "Between Old and New" calls attention particularly to the crucial need for our worship services to be such that we worship the Father in Spirit and Truth. In his article he makes a focal reference to Jesus' words in John 4. You will know that in this chapter Jesus also speaks the cru­cial words "I am"¹(verse 26). The Bible says that the Messiah has come and has told us all things. It is His voice that comes to us in the Bible. We must see to it that the Messiah's voice is heard in the worship services, and not merely the voice of the preacher, voicing his opinions.
  
  b) We are to see to it that the sheep will walk in the paths of righteousness for Christ's sake, that they will not wander away but rather follow the Good Shepherd.
  
  c) We are to see to it that in case of deficiencies and difficulties the needs will be met. Also we are to be good managers in "financial management" and "keeping the archives," as the respective articles spell out.

These, then, are our tasks: We are to take heed to ourselves and oversee, feed, provide for the flock of God. The Lord God functions through Christ, Christ through the Spirit, the Spirit through us office-bear­ers. The more readily and diligently we through the Spirit of Christ perform 'our' tasks, the more the work of God prospers.

Do you see it and desire it? Is this is how you are engaged in the special office?

A young elder once sat down with an older elder and said to him: 'Sometimes I find it so hard to be an elder that I regret I ever became an elder.' The older elder looked the young elder in the eye and said: 'Make sure that the office is a service of love. Then you will not regret you ever became an elder.'

If only we labour in love and in faith look to the great Shepherd of the sheep, it'll be a service of love and joy! If only He is glorified. Therefore let's go and look to Him and labour while praying:

Let Thy work appear to Thy servants, and Thy glory to their children. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us...Ps. 90:16, 17