Ministry Mania

By: Ransomed ransom

MINISTRY MANIA!

There is a mania that seems to have come to grip Christendom! I call it “ministry mania”! Conventions, conferences, seminars, healing crusades, outreach meetings, neighbourhood bible study groups. The list is never ending. New Christian groups of diverse brands are born by the minute. People get “called” to “full time ministry” overnight! Statistics of the ones getting saved, and the number of ‘churches’ and groups that come into existence rise like our present time inflation. The evolution of a “called” and “successful” minister (the word “minister” has begun to sound like our political ministers!) seem to follow a certain route: from a small neighbourhood group to a podium, then to a larger platform, followed by a few intervening flights in and out of the country (a sort of confirmation ceremony!!) finally does the trick. People, it seems, are no longer born again into a child of God, but straight into a minister of God! I sometimes wonder if I was on the other side of the LOC, how would the Christian community appear to me from that side. What would I have thought about “them” then?
The very definition of being a Christian believer has undergone a radical transformation in our times. And so has the evidence of being a bible believer. The only evidence of being a Christian that seems to matter nowadays is that one is a doing Christian. The more one does meetings, bible studies, seminars, evangelism etc. the more one is a Christian believer. The more one is an active member of a church or a group, the more one is a Christian – a mature and alive Christian! A Christian has come to mean a person whose primary and only goal in life is to quickly “evangelize” the world thereby speeding up Jesus’ return to earth. It is really very unfortunate that Christianity and the Christian faith have become victims of this type of reductionism and have come to mean just M-I-N-I-S-T-R-Y! This is of course not to say that we all know what the bible means by ministry, for I suspect that if we did, we wouldn’t see so much ‘ministry’ going on as it does today!
Of course there is nothing wrong in doing ministry. Of course there is nothing ungodly or unbiblical in doing outreach, leading people to Jesus and evangelizing the world so that Jesus comes back soon. We all are in one way or the other the result of some one’s ministry. It is the explicit will of God that all men be saved. The bible is very clear on it. But I do think that a ministry-centered/dominated/driven model of Christian living misses the entire point of the God-man equation. I believe that it is flawed and does not stand up to what God is looking for in us in the entire bible.
I believe that ministry is not a Christian’s primary calling; his primary calling is to God and God alone. It is one being called unto another Being. In this article, I want to present some reasons why I think this to be so.

REASONS WHY “MINISTRY” SHOULD NOT DEFINE OR DRIVE OUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
Let me clear the air by spelling out my reasons for the position I have taken in this article. The scope of the article does not permit me to go into an elaborate treatment of this issue in focus. But I would give it a try anyway. So here are some of my reasons:
1. Man was not created in the context of “ministry; he preceded it. The intension of God in creating Man was to have a moral and volitionally free being, intellectually and spiritually capable of worshipping his creator. Ministry as we mean it today did not even exist when we came into existence. What then was our “job” then? What drove us then? What must drive us now as Christian believers after our re-creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17)? Should it be doing ministry or setting our whole being in tune with God? Shouldn’t it primarily be offering ourselves to God “as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God” which is our “spiritual act of worship?” (Romans 12:1, 2) or to live lives that are unholy and out of tune with God but ministry infested?
2. Nowhere does the bible prescribe a Christian to live a ministry driven life and assume that God is either pleased with him or that such a life amounts to a godly life. We are constantly exhorted and challenged to live a God driven life. A very sticking contrast with the most serious of consequences is spelled out for us in this context of ministry dominance versus God dominance by none other than our Lord Jesus Christ himself. In Matthew 7:22-23 Jesus says to his disciples: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons, and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Think for a minute. Such great ministry. And all that Jesus has for them is to declare “‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers”?” “Evildoers”? Why?
3. The bible is at variance with our theology of and approach to missions. Its position is that of putting the horse before the cart and not the other way round. A godly Christian life must lead the way, with ministry following (never leading the way) like the cart that follows the horse. I really love the passage on the prophet Isaiah’s commissioning by the Lord in Isaiah chapter 6:1-9. The paradigm is crystal clear: being (what you are) precedes doing (what we do as ministry). What about us? We have clearly gotten into the habit of putting the cart before the horse. The horse has even stopped to matter to us. What matters is that the show goes on at any cost. Bible colleges and seminaries must survive in the most business-like manner. Organizations and groups must expand and stay. This is where, like a defective industrial unit, we continue to produce pastors, evangelists etc. by the hundreds without ever paying attention to quality control. And so sickness has continued to breed more sickness! But let us remember that our ontology is the most important thing to God and only then our ministry.
4. Christian activities or ministry does not automatically grant God’s approval for God does not approve of His people’s doings divorced from their state of being and becoming. Have we forgotten how the OT is so full of God sending His prophets and declaring to His people that He hates what they do without settling their inner lives, their beings? Haven’t we noticed God’s dealing with Annaias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5, where they had to face God’s wrath because their actions did not match with their state of being? The God of the bible is indeed very narrow minded in relation to His work; He would rather not do it than do it wrongly!
5. The Pastoral Epistles especially 1 Timothy chapters 3 to 5 lay out very stern and clear instructions or criteria for ministers. These passages are a must read in the context of Christian living versus ministry. All the criteria that the leaders/ministers are to meet before they minister are life-oriented and character-focused, not ministry dominated. That really speaks something about the way the Lord looks at Christian ministry.
6. Very often, doing ministry and then looking at ourselves through our activities and achievements could be really very deceptive because so very often, our doing of ministry can be easily divorced from our beings; what we do can be done without any concern whatsoever about who we are. The only problem here is that God always looks at who we are, not how or who we appear to be. One such scripture is 1 Samuel 16:7. Here the Lord says to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him (meaning Eliab). The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart”. What I am and what I am changing into (Christ-likeness or some other-likeness?) can so easily and secretly be ignored and covered up in the heap of our Christian activities. But in doing so, we have fallen into the most dangerous of traps. God’s acceptance of us or His rejecting us is always based on our inside, on our ontology and not on externalities like ministry.
7. Jesus never gives ministry as the sign or a criterion of authentic Christianity; in fact at places, he states that those who do this could be in danger and in for a surprise on the last day. I have already referred to Mathew 7:22-23 in this context. In fact just before this passage, Jesus talks about the criterion of distinguishing authentic Christian from the counterfeit ones. Jesus says: “Watch out for false prophets. Thy come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistle? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit….Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them” (Mat. 7:15-20). It is so very easy for us to slip into clothing that covers us externally; our Christian works, our ministry or designations can cover us. Bu this is not Jesus’ criterion of discerning authenticity; his criterion is the inside – under the religious clothing; to scrape the surface and peep into the inside where the real person is. That’s where the fruit of personhood is. That’s where our real nature is. That fruit of a person’s nature will differentiate the authentic from the false. Not ministry. That is where God’s eye is set.
8. In John 13:34, 35, Jesus gives us the most explicit criterion of qualifying as his disciples. He says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this will all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”. Haven’t we substituted so much in place of love? I remember the editor of a secular news paper talking to me about our community. What he said to me still echoes in my ears. He said that if I came to his office, he could show me hundreds of letters that one Christian had written against another Christian wanting them to be published in his daily but which he, a Hindu editor, did not publish out of shame and embarrassment!! How do people know who Jesus is? How do people know that we are disciples of Jesus? Francis Schaeffer used to say, “Love is the final apologetic”. So true.

9. Last but not the lest, to those who may quote to me the great commission in Matthew 28:19 and 20 and make a case of it for ministry without any thought to the whole counsel of the bible, I say that Jesus has given us many other commandments too. This one is the last. What is the biblical reason or logic to do this without bothering to do the previous ones like “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Mat. 5:44, 45)? Or “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Mat. 22:37-40)? Why should the last one dominate your life and mine and not the first one which Jesus himself called “the greatest” of all the commandments and the second one which is like the first one? And please do not miss Jesus’ final words: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”! Mark’s version says “There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:31)! What then is our logic for a ministry-dominated life? It makes me feel suspicious. Is it because doing ministry is the least challenging part of being a Christian believer, and in effect, the most easily doable?

In closing, let us ask ourselves the question: why does ministry even exist? What is its role in the cosmic affairs of things? Is its role that of a means or to be the end of all things? It didn’t exist before the fall. What we had then was God and man. And it will not exist after the redemption and restoration of the human race and the entire universe. Then too, only God and man will exist. No evangelism. No outreach. Ministry is an intermediate phase and is necessitated because of the fallen state of things as they exist now; it was not the original design of man, nor was it intended to be the destiny or purpose of us humans. God alone was. And God alone is. And God alone will be! What then was God’s expectation of us before the fall and what is His primary expectation from us now and what will it be after all is set right? What is God looking forward to? God saved us for one reason only – that we may be saved. Saved for Him! All else is a by-product of our saved-ness. The primary is always God. And me. And only from here, from our saved-ness, will authentic Christian ministry flow. Indeed, it ought to flow. But not from anywhere else. And not before we have become saved for Him.

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