My Philosophy of Ministry

My understanding of what “ministry” is and ought to be is as follows:

Biblical “ministry” is, in every case, a calling of God, a passion, a natural outcome of thanksgiving and debt to God for grace. It is always carried out through the power of God’s Spirit as we submit to God’s authority and shun the notion of coercion or dominance over others. At its heart, ministry is serving God, by serving others.

A biblical philosophy of ministry centers around a ministry of mutual service, brotherhood, and submission.

• Such ministry focuses above all on serving God by loving and serving each other for the good of the body.
  
• Such ministry champions the concepts of shared leadership, mutual respect, reciprocal accountability, and communal responsibility, and an atmosphere of encouragement, respect, and trust in the pursuit of ministries of all kinds.
  
• Such ministry was exemplified and enjoined by Jesus (in washing feet and much more) and encouraged in numerous other biblical texts which promote “one another” concerns in our life together.
  
• Such ministry is especially important in a time when ministers, leaders, and churches are increasingly influenced by secular business models, in which the primary concerns of money, property, and issues of power and control rise to the top in actual practice, even when these are not the stated concerns. When these issues become the main agenda, the ability to pursue and accomplish authentic and joyous ministry is undercut and sometimes brought to a halt.

The purpose of a “ministry of mutuality” is to encourage and accomplish genuine and joyous service to God by serving others, regardless of how a particular ministry is defined and set up. For example, ministries of preaching, of education, of children, of the elderly, of music, of building maintenance, of prayer, etc., may take different shapes depending on the need, but are all driven by the same spark: God’s Spirit at work in our hearts for the sake of service.

The goal in all cases and with all people (both inside and outside our walls) would be the pursuit of the biblical mandate called the ministry of reconciliation, in which we are all reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.

The result would be a win-win strategy for all parties involved. Concerns about problems, inequities, and the like could be adequately addressed and healing could occur in a context of mutual respect, trust, accountability, and shared leadership.

Twittering Away at Ministry

Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, or many other social networks, is really a disconnect. Even though these are very useful media and can be used for outreach and gaining interests on all levels, there is a philosophical difference between them and the heart of authentic ministry. I'm not condemning them (I'm on all of them). But the heart of ministry defies their very limited scope.

Let me explain: The world is now a context-less mass of jumbled thoughts one on top the other. If I don't like this thought, I go to the next. As if watching a giant TV, we are a collection of highly opinionated individuals given to meaningless chatter, easy arguments over stupid things, and a concomitant disinterest in anything of substance. While we can engage in important ministries of various kinds utilizing the social networks, they are not the place where ministry finds its soul.

So-called "Christian" society has been seduced into this wasteland of shallow thinking and impatient practice (and sometimes is one its greatest advocates). And they have done it when they have been specifically called to something quite the opposite. (But in today's churches, who wants to hear that!)

Recently, N.T. Wright spoke to a group of 900 attendees in California on the topic of virtue. Here's a report about that:

Wright, quoting St. Paul’s exhortation to be “transformed by the renewing of your minds,” emphasized that the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives doesn’t preclude the need to be thoughtful and disciplined when it comes to living out our identities as new creations in Christ. “Our culture prefers effortless spontaneity with occasional divine intervention in emergencies,” Wright stated, “but virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices have become second-nature,” a process requiring time and intentionality. He likened the practice of virtue to the challenge of learning a second language. “We will often get it wrong,” he said, “but it’s worth persisting for the goal of what lies ahead.” [Source]

Time and intentionality; focus and deliberation; allowing ourselves to get to know someone or something well enough for that person or thing to become part of us: this is not the culture we live in anymore! Certainly, we must learn how to engage in ministries of various kinds within that reality. But we don't want that confused and disconnected reality to define the heart of ministry.

The heart and soul of CoffeeWithPaul.com and of BibleDashboard.com, and of this very blog about Authentic Ministry, are all about reading Scripture responsibly, contextually, and as if in conversation. This does not happen by accident or overnight. It happens through the power of the Spirit as we submit to that Spirit in energetic, focused, and yet humble conversation.

This is not a message that many Christians seem to care about today. Later, I'll talk about the marketing mantra of giving the people what they want, and what has developed in the devotional world of doing exactly the same thing. Later.

Supporting Ministry

On another occasion, I found myself as an employee of a non-profit para-church organization. Only here, I had to raise my own support, which I was willing to do. So, I asked the administration to share with me their years of experience and wisdom for best doing that. They kindly complied by offering a one-night class on the topic at which it became painfully clear that the principles being offered were conventional theory pulled from a hand-full of fund-raising books, very few of which principles were actually being followed by anyone in the organization, including the presenter of the class.

I then discovered the dirty little secret that more than a few of the employees of this ministry were making well below their target incomes, several in the poverty-level range.

* One very talented and giving gal was actually homeless and was sleeping temporarily in the back room, having left a job in another state to come to this ministry, and was now feeling somewhat duped (or at least not fully apprised) before coming.

* One very accomplished man had quit a 6-figure a year job to join this ministry, only to find himself dumped out and "on his own" when raising support was not quite as simple as he was led and allowed to believe.

Later I learned that this ministry shared the fate of a lot of others, limping along month to month, often late with its monthly obligations, and was often in arrears. When I approached the president of the ministry with concerns about all of these matters, he offered me these words as consolation: "It is common for non-profits to struggle like this. It is part of serving God with a glad heart, despite hardship on our part. But God always brings us through. It is about faith and sacrifice."

I was not comfortable with this answer. So I quietly backed away. Though I greatly respected many things about this ministry, and certainly most of the people who were there, I have great trouble accepting that God calls us to be irresponsible with our debts as a way of operation or toward those with whom we partner in our ministry.

Now, of course, there are many fine churches, non-profits, colleges and so on. I am not here to trash the sincere and hard-fought efforts of countless people. If you are engaged in "professional ministry" on any level, and you are happy about it, then may you be blessed!

However, most of the people I have known over the years who have been engaged in professional ministry of one kind or another are, after a while, weather-worn, if not weather-torn. They love the notion of serving God. But there are other realities of such "professions" that may not actually be part of the package God called them to.

The search for authentic ministry is not a vain one by any stretch. The systems which exist now to support real ministry are often inadequate and poorly based.

Under the Bus

I was working as the "senior minister" for a church of about a hundred people when I was stopped in the church parking lot by one of the church leaders (in his late 30's), keys in hand, and told, "You'll now be driving the bus on Sunday mornings." Driving the bus can be a very useful thing to do, depending on the circumstances, and so can a thousand other things, but this was not where my time was most needed or best utilized. So, I attempted to be tactful as I thanked him and suggested we give others opportunity to volunteer for this fine ministry (which was the first time I had even heard of it. And I was the "Senior Minister!" -- which obviously didn't mean much.)

However, this was more about who was the big dog on the play ground than about ministry, and I was, that very day, summoned to the council for (in the words of the council), "not being a good employee."

Grimacing, I proposed we talk about the nature of calling and how to equip ourselves for and pursue ministry, but that had little place in this or any other meeting. I then attempted to strike up a conversation about how and when "a bus ministry" was discussed or decided upon in the first place. What were the foundations for this need? What were the ministry goals? Who were we trying to reach? What was our 30 day strategy? 60 days? 6 months? A year? Did we have an exit strategy? What kind of budget was being allocated to it? Who was responsible for it? How would we get volunteers? And about a dozen more questions. I wasn't against the idea. I was just against playing blind-man's bluff, creating a "ministry" that would be banging into walls right out of gate and destined to fall on its face.

But these were the wrong questions to ask. It was made very clear to me that I had a "job" for which I was being paid and that job came before any of my silly theoretical notions about "ministry." The record had now been set straight: I was something like a Wal-Mart greeter, only with a whole lot more (obviously useless) education loans to pay back.

For this and many other more important reasons, I didn't belong at this place, so I wrote a nice letter of farewell, found the door, and left this "employee position" for another unsuspecting candidate.

___________________

Defining "authentic ministry" can be a challenge. Is it merely a matter of heart? Is it only selfless? Does it happen only when someone else recognizes it? Or only when I (you) say it is ministry? I would say, no, no, no, and no. There's a lot to this, but I have just one point here: Just because a group of people in charge decides that "this thing here is a ministry," and even though you are paid to do it, doesn't make it ministry at all. At that point, you are just a bus driver.

Money and Ministry

I remember my first step onto the Bible college campus I attended one week after my 18th birthday. I was excited! I was going into ministry and I had chosen (I thought) one of the best places to study in the world. I already knew I wanted to become a Greek scholar, teach Bible in colleges and churches, and be an author. I never changed my major and I never lost my interest. Not even to this moment.

Although I have been side-tracked by life a few times, my passion for ministry over the years has only gotten stronger. However, it didn't take me very long before I began to understand the difference between calling and personal ministry (on the one hand), and professional, institutionalized "ministry" (on the other). Make no mistake about it: there is a difference.

What we call "Professional Ministry" has become the standard avenue for doing ministry: get paid to do a "ministry job" as an employee of an institution (college, church, foundation, etc.), complete with a job description, list of duties, a review board -- and relatively low pay.

But, hey! Ministry is about sacrifice, right? So who cares about the money?

And then there are those "ministry jobs" in which you are required to "raise your own support," which means you learn the skills of fundraising and spend your time "selling yourself" (in more ways than one) to others and getting them to donate to your good cause. Even so, you still have a job description, a list of duties, a review board, and of course, low pay.

But remember, this is ministry. If you show concern over money, you are a mercenary. And we can't have that.

It really doesn't matter if you have more training than a lawyer, as much hands-on experience as a medical doctor, or more education bills than both put together, you are in the field of ministry. So sit down and shut up about income. Besides, anything to do with spirituality is supposed to be free. Isn't that right?

If your wife gets to live in a substandard home, your kids wear hand-me down clothes, you drive a car with two bent fenders and a rusty undercarriage, and you live in someone else's house -- it is all part of ministry.

Smile! This is what God has called you to.

Right?

Richard Dawkins and Authentic Ministry

Religious people of all stripes -- Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, etc. -- can be arrogant, short-sighted, hypocritical, stupid, oppressive, closed-minded, insulting, two-faced, and many more terrible, awful, pathetic things.

Atheism certainly fits into this group as a religion (kicking and screaming as some Atheists might), despite the fact that it does not accept the notion of a deity. Religion is related to or manifests a faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality -- a definition that fits Atheism quite well, namely, a faithful devotion to the belief (notion, assertion, fact) that there is no God. Atheists can be just as evangelistic as any other religious group, and I rather enjoy listening to and reading Richard Dawkins, surely the best known evangelist for Atheism today. A very intelligent and articulate spokesman, he engages energetically in the ministry of Atheism, often in some kind of dialogue with (mostly attacks and dismissals of) the practice of Christianity on one level or another.

But I'm not here to fight against Richard Dawkins. In fact, as a Christian I often find myself nodding my head in agreement with some of his caricatures of historic Christianity. As a matter of fact, a lot of the criticisms brought against Christians by others are the result of Christian incompetence, willfulness, or even ignorance.

Now, I don't agree with Dawkins on many things. He is not merely criticizing Christianity for its hypocrisy, but for its foundations, though he tends to run the two together. (And in that sense, he reminds me of Christian apologists against atheism who put up straw-men). Even so, lively debate can be a good thing to shake the cobwebs out of our heads--if we will but do that (i.e., think).

The ancient philosophy of the man called Jesus Christ, as rooted in and interactive with what we call the "Old Testament" (to the ancients, merely "Scripture"), and some of his earliest followers, as now written down in the "New Testament," is an extremely valuable and precious witness of faith. My concern here is not to debate the questions of Jesus' existence, or anyone's delusions about God (one way or the other). I'm more concerned about the practice of the faith Christians espouse, but about which they are increasingly ignorant and shallow.

And this impacts directly on authentic ministry. Ministry is nothing more than serving someone else. I don't know his motives, but Dawkins appears to be trying to provide a service for mankind by raising the level of thinking about reality. As Christians we can kick and scream if we like, but maybe we should thank him for calling us out. Frankly, he's punching the daylights out of a lot of what parades itself as Christianity . . . and just as frankly, it's an easy mark.

Maybe we should stop yelling at Dawkins and look in the mirror. The ancient philosophy of Christ and his followers (utilizing both experience and the Jewish Scriptures) is centrally about serving and loving others. But today, "Ministry" has turned into an institutionally-based profession.

We don't need to defer to Dawkins, but maybe it is not a bad suggestion that we consider the nature and calling of authentic ministry. What good is it if we wax eloquent on whether God exists, but don't know the meaning of genuine ministry.