What is ministry? I believe that many people cannot truly understand it. Perhaps the reason is that the behavior of contemporary ministers fails to reveal what God intended ministry to be.
Ministry is all about serving people. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence” (1 John 3:16–19, NIV84) Ministry seeks the good of the people and what is best for the people before seeking the good of the minister. Ministry sees the people that God loves as having a greater worth than the minister. Ministry lays down its life and its agenda so that others can prosper and find life. Jesus served the people. “”I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11, NIV84) BY laying down His life, He demonstrated and became the role model for all who would minister after Him.
Paul understood that true ministry involves sacrifice. “Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:4–10, NIV84) True ministers will work hard and consider it joy. True ministers will endure hardship and in the process empower others to succeed.
Ministry is motivated by obedience to God. “Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make use of my rights in preaching it.” (1 Corinthians 9:16–18, NIV84) Jeremiah was motivated by obedience to God. God loved His people and dearly wanted them to repent and turn to Him. God asked Jeremiah to minister His Word to the people. “For twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day—the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.” (Jeremiah 25:3, NIV84) Jeremiah continued to obey God even when those he was ministering to would not listen. For 23 years, Jeremiah faithfully spoke and obeyed God. A minister will follow and obey and do what God has spoken even when the people around him reject the ministry.
Ministry is empowered by love for people. “If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:13–21, NIV84) A minister will see the people the way God has called them and do all he/she can to bring them into their God ordained destiny.
God creates ministers for the purpose of empowering the church to minister. “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Ephesians 4:11–16, NIV84) A minister understands their purpose is not to build their ministry but to build the people.
What I see often is that we have replaced ministry with short term pop culture fandom. Let me give you examples of what I have personally experienced.
There are some who would be ministers but their only desire to have a relationship with me is to promote their events. On social media, they do not share even encouraging words of scripture or teachings that might build me, but they use social media to announce their next event or to promote a meeting or activity they have done. Their promotion of their meeting revolves around “Come to my meeting and you will be entertained”. These people are nothing more than pop culture entertainers.
There are some who would be ministers. They develop relationships through the influence and leadership of others. They grow their “networks” because other ministers have allowed them to share. However instead of loving and encouraging the sheep of another shepherd and honoring the shepherd, they use their newly grown network to seek to have those sheep support their ministry. They seek to have the sheep support them financially because they are ministers. Truly, they have forgotten that it is the ministers who lay their lives down for the sheep and not the other way around.
This is a call for ministers who love people more than their ministry to rise up and empower the church. When the church is strong, our society and our culture will become transformed. Light will invade darkness and the Kingdom of God will be established. Ministry is very important.
