Ministry

This journey called Christian can be a messy proposition. Jesus did not create this life to be lived in isolation, memorizing scripture to be repeated out-loud to oneself in a hermitage. Corporate worship must be more than one hundred or one thousand congregants singing songs, lifting hands, listening to sermons, repeating the Lord’s Prayer, taking communion, talking to a few friends for five minutes after service and heading for home and lunch. Pastors and church leaders were never meant to carry the load of the congregation alone on their backs like Atlas holding up the world. Christian life and ministry is not an individual sport, it is a team activity played under the banner of the Cross.
Ministry is the proving ground of the principles of the Word. Ministry is helping people realize their full relationship with God and each other. Ministry is what every believer must be involved in to thoroughly appreciate his or her place in the Body of Christ. Connected to one another is the only secure and protected way of living life. Meaningful, intimate, supportive, accountable, and vulnerable relationships are what the Church was created to manifest for the support of each member, and as an invitation to those outside the family to come be part of the neighborhood.
Times of hurt and pain? Yes! Disappointment and misunderstanding? Yes! Worth the transitory pain to achieve and receive joy and peace? Absolutely! Jesus warned His disciples there would be trouble in the world (Jon. 16:33). James encouraged believers to rejoice in trials because their personal faith was being purified (Jam. 1:1-4). Some of the trouble and trial will come from those in the Family. But the struggle for koinonia (fellowship) is worth the results. John 17 records Jesus’ great prayer for His immediate and future disciples. He prays for His Church, His brothers and sisters, to live in the oneness He and Father experience. He prayed that prayer not because it was impossible, but because it is inevitable.
Theology is not the problem. Bible study is not the issue. True biblical relationship is!