"In Ministry" has to be thrown in the garbage.

Ok.  I have been sitting on this possible blog for a very long time.  Part of the reason why I have not written it is because I just haven't had the time, but the other reason is because when I thought about approaching this subject it would have sounded really condemning instead of trying to better understand the perception of the term 'in ministry', so I waited until now.  I feel as though I will not be ranting...I hope.

'In ministry' has bothered me from the very first time I heard it.  The reason why is we hear a lot about how we are all called to be disciples, but then hear in church those who choose to go to Seminary, or be a Pastor are going 'into ministry', or 'feel called'.  We define those who are 'in ministry' and put them in a category much like we do engineers, or doctors, or teachers.  The reality though is as far as I read in the Bible, we are all 'in ministry'.  Jesus doesn't call the Disciples to make converts who will do other things than be in ministry, but He calls the Disciples to make Disciples.  See I think the term 'in ministry' should be used for all people who have devoted their lives to Christ, follow Him, and live it out in whatever context they are passionate about.

One of the great explanations and understandings of 'in ministry' is given by none other than Martin Luther (he was the leader of the Protestant Reformation).  He tells a simple story about a shoe repairman.  He asks the question, what would glorify God more: if the man stitched crosses in the shoes, or he made really good shoes?  Luther's answer is of course that the man make really good shoes!

Not everyone is called to be a missionary, or pastor, or theologian, or any other vocation deemed 'in ministry'.  Some are called to make really good shoes; some to be great teachers; some to be great doctors; some to be great pilots, or artists, or builders, or engineers, or ceo's.  It does not matter what we are called to do, but it matters who we are doing it for; it matters why we do it.  We all have the ability to be 'in ministry' if we are doing it because God has given us the gifts to do it; we do whatever that is to the best of our abilities and to the glorification of God himself.

I have a friend who is a physiotherapist.  He is one of the most exemplary men I have been privileged to get to know.  He runs his business from the platform of giving people the best care he can.  He has told me there are many ways to make lots of money in the business of physiotherapy, but is not taking any of them.  Why?  Money is not his end game.  He knows he has been given the skills and abilities to run a physiotherapy clinic.  So, he does this with integrity and to the glory of the One he serves, God.

I am convinced we cannot get stuck in the attitude that a select few people do the Lord's work.  If we are a follower of Christ we better being doing His work all the time.  It is not just for those who work in a church, it is for everyone.

Many of us like to put things in categories.  One of the categories is following Christ.  More often than not, 'doing the Lord's work' is left for Sunday's and whatever other days we attend church; it is confined to a building and location and to be frank, it is killing the fame and renown of Jesus Christ.  What we need today are people in every vocation doing the work of the Lord.  It's so simple.  It's so easy.

Why don't we do it?

I believe there to be two main answers to this question:

1. We don't want to allow God into our lives.
I might have raised some eyebrows with this sentence, but seriously look at it.  Why do we believe only an elect few can do God's work.  If we are with Jesus we have ALL been set apart, we have all been made holy.  If we have all been set apart then we are all commanded to bring the name of Jesus to every place.  If we leave it up to the Pastors, missionaries, and others to do the work it will never be done.  In fact this isn't even the main role of a Pastor or Missionary in my opinion.  Their roles are to help educate and be resources for people to go back into their contexts to bring the fame and renown of Jesus.

The truth is, we have categorized our lives so much God is only allowed in this aspect of my life.  In other words we tell God, "you stay there."  The only way to believe this is to allow God to take our entire being, everything we do, give it to Him, and allow Him to do what He wants.  What He wants more often than not are people willing to live lives of integrity for His glory in every vocation.

2. We don't want to give up what we have.
This is an incredibly hard thing to say and do.  When we have journeyed so far with the above attitude it's really hard to allow God into our places of work.  Some of us know if we do, there will have to be changes; we will have to make tough decisions; we will have to give up things; we will have to stand up for things.  All of these give us reason to not allow God into this area of our lives.  In short, we are not willing to submit, to yield to God.

It is incredibly sad because we have fallen prey to the belief that people doing the Lord's work are an elect few.  If this is the case then we can choose to do things with a little less integrity in our workplaces.  We can cheat corners and cheat people along the way.  We can do things for ourselves without considering those we work with.  This is the belief of a lot of people who operate in different workplaces who claim to follow Jesus.  What we don't understand is, in letting go of the control and making decisions based on who we are doing things for the outcome will be utter contentment, joy, understanding, and integrity.


We need to change our understanding of 'in ministry'.  In fact, we just need to chuck it in the garbage, along with the idea that the church is the only place where the Lord's work is done.  Jesus needs His followers everywhere, in every place, in every vocation.  He needs people to set an example of what a follower of Christ looks like.

I've heard it said that you can truly tell who a follower of Christ is by who they are from Monday to Saturday.  We all need to be 'in ministry'.  If you are a follower of Christ there is nothing else you can do.  When we make a commitment to follow Jesus it is an entire life commitment.

Shall we let go of the term 'in ministry'?


That's it.


Thoughts are always welcome!

Failure is a Great Reminder

Failure. Why are we so afraid of it?  I am a person who absolutely hates failure; I hate being told things aren't good enough; I fear it.  But this week I was reminded it is in fact one of the greatest reminders one could ask for (or not in some cases).

This week I made a MAJOR scheduling conflict, affecting 2 completely separate important events.  For those who don't know me, you may think, 'oh, well that happens', but for me, no.  I love being the person everyone can count on; I love being the person people call if something needs to get done; I relish being that reliable person.  This scheduling conflict had so many reminders built into it.  Let me explain a few you may be able to relate to as well:

1. We may be great, but God is greater.

I have a love/hate relationship with this concept.  I love being great, but the moment I think I am great I have a God-smack moment.  You know, the moment God smacks you across the face and says, 'Hello!'  I often laugh at these moments after the fact, realizing how crazy I am to think how awesome I am without putting it into the greater perspective of how awesome God is.  Maybe you have been God-smacked.  I am smacked on frequent occasions and every time, it's no fun at first, but refreshing in the end.

2. Failure is the way to learn and a way to remember we are not God

How easy would it be for all of us to never make mistakes: we would never have to worry about disappointing anyone, never worry about an exam or meeting, never forget anything, ever again.  This looks pretty good, but if this were the case, WE WOULD BE GOD!  As stated above, I hate failing, but at the end of the day I love what it does: it helps me learn.  Even if the only thing I learn is I am not God, the failure is worth it.  I am learning to love failure because it will always lead to better things.

3. We need help.

One of the things I have always struggled with are thoughts like, 'I have arrived', 'I know all', 'my way is the best way'.  Yes, I have and continue to struggle with this to the extent of not praying because I don't think I need God!  It's true, this is me.  After I have failed it's an incredible reminder I have NOT arrived, know all, or know best.  I in fact need help, not just from God, but others as well.  I would tend to bet if you were truly honest with yourself there are some of these thoughts in your head right now.  Failure is a good way of bringing us back to truth: we need help.

4. We need others.

My primary love language (see The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman) is words of affirmation.  More often than not after I have failed I go into isolation.  Why?  I don't feel myself to be worthy of people because of this failure, even if it is the most seemingly insignificant mistake.  If I didn't have others I would probably stay in that isolated state.  What I need is words of affirmation from others.  I can tell you the thing I wanted the most after this specific failure was for someone, anyone, to tell me I am still a great person.  In this case it was my lovely wife and mother who gave me these words, the two people I actually failed.


I am sure there are other reminders that come through each failure, but these are the one's I think are the most important.  If we fail, yes we should ask for forgiveness where needed, but we should remember at the very least there is a God who continues to accept us, no matter what the failure.  Jesus came to earth to die for us, so our failures would not be held against us.  Take each failure as a reminder of how much we need God because we NEED God, a lot.

Failure is becoming less a fear of mine.  It's becoming more of an expectation because I am not perfect, far from it.  Through each failure I am trying to learn, something, anything, even something so small, because if there is nothing for me to learn then I don't need God.  For me to believe that would be catastrophic, so I choose to believe, be reminded, and admit I need help.

I am always thankful for failure in the end.  Sometimes it's painful, but this is good.


That's it.


Thoughts are of course always welcome.

Acceptance or Judgement?

The need is clear in my mind for all of us.  We need to judge less.  I catch myself time and time again talking to my wife about someone for 5, 10, 15 minutes and at the end of it realize I have been judging that person the entire time; by something this person said, or did, or just who this person is.  Ridiculous, I know.

This got me thinking of why we are so judgmental.  To me its pretty simple: we get judged by everything we do on a regular basis.  Our work is judged by a boss or supervisor; we get judged by how well we cook by people telling us if it's good or not; we get judged by how we are dressed; we get judged by our speech, whether we are tactful or not.  It's no wonder why we judge others, we ourselves get judged all the time.

It is really tough to categorize judgment.  When is it needed?  When is it not?  How do we exercise it?

I really like things simple.  I try hard to live a simple life, not complicated by unnecessary things.  So, here is my simple assessment of judgment.  It is really not our place in any way to judge people unless they themselves ask for it.  If we are going to judge ourselves that is our choice (I do believe we need a healthy view of ourselves), but we have no right to judge another person (outside of a work environment, but even here we tend to judge not performance, but the person, sad but true).

This world is too full of people giving their opinions on people who have no business giving an opinion at all.  We see a person like this or like that and we say out loud something critical that brings judgement on that person.

No where is this more prevalent than inside the church.  We give critiques on how loud music is, or how long the message is, or we don't like how this person acts and the list goes on and on.  More often than not we give our opinion of things and call it fact, but really it's just unnecessary judgement of a person.  I personally fell prey to this on Sunday morning this past week.  I won't get into the specifics,  but I judged heavily and gave my opinion on a matter as what would be best and who did it help?  No one.

The reality is we pass judgement on another person because it is easier to look at what someone else needs to change instead of what we need to change in our own lives; we judge because sometimes we are afraid if we had a healthy view of ourselves we wouldn't like what we see.  So, instead of investing in a healthy view of ourselves we just look at others and tell them the ways they ought to change; the things they need to improve upon.

Jesus tells us not to judge others because the standard we hold others to will be the standard we will be held to (see Matthew 7).  To me, that's sobering.  Not only is Jesus telling us not to judge, but He also does it (see John 4).

Maybe instead of judging others we should start accepting them as they are knowing we don't have things together either.  Maybe what is needed is not more fixing others, but more looking at ourselves and seeing we have this massive 2x4 log sticking out of our eye and we need to take care of that before we tell others what they need to fix.  Maybe this is Jesus' way of saying, you have no right to judge anyone because you will never be perfect enough to judge.  Maybe this is just another way of saying we don't think Jesus is enough, so we judge thinking we are helping Him (just ludicrous, but this is primarily what is at the heart of judgement).

We judge way too much.  We need to stop.  We are not helping others by telling them what they are doing wrong, we are just doing more damage.

We need not be afraid of looking at ourselves and getting healthy.  The more we start to get healthy ourselves I can guarantee the less we will judge.


Thoughts are of course always welcome.