Ministry is not something special we do; it is something we live.

Posted by Alan Knox on Sep 27, 2012 in blog links, service | 4 comments

Katie at “Backseat Driver” has written another good post called “Questions Continued: What About Financial Support?” The post is a continuation of a series that she is writing about questions raised concerning organic / simple / missional church.

Now, don’t let the topic or the labels concern you. This post, and many of the others that she’s written, can help us think about who we are in Christ regardless of how we organize ourselves as the church. In fact, some of these topics may even help us modify how we organize or don’t organize.

While this particular post is about “financial support,” the basis of the post is what it means to minister to or serve others.

At one point, Katie writes:

When we work at a job/jobs, it means that there is not a lot of extra time to “do” ministry in the way we have thought it had to happen in the past traditional sense. This is where we think of ministry only happening in time slotted meetings, prepared orations of teaching, directed study, preplanned activities and organized events. The Simple, Organic, Missional paradigm is that ministry is not something we do, but rather live, and it fits into our lives naturally in its’ various contexts. It is not something for the “chosen few” professionals, but rather the whole Body of Christ. It is not “slotted” but fluid, and responsive to the direction of the Holy Spirit. We look for opportunities at work, with our families, in our neighborhood, with people we associate with through our children, communities of activity, in fellowship with other Christians, etc. to live ministry and Christ fluidly and naturally in all contexts. I spoke with a guy recently who resigned from a pastoral job and went back to school to become a nurse. He shared with me that he feels he is ministering to others far more through his nursing job, than he did through his weekly church events that were called “ministry”.

What Katie describes is exactly how Scripture uses the term that we translate as “ministry.” It’s the same term that is often translated as “service.” If you are serving someone, then you are ministering to that person. It really is that simple.

Ministry is not about a job, or a position, or a set time, or a special event, or an affiliation, or an education, or a title… it’s about serving others in Jesus’ name… whenever and wherever.