What is a minister? If you look up the term you will find things like clergy, someone who administers sacraments, politically it is someone appointed by a sovereign authority. Ministers can be teachers, pastors, evangelists, prophets, or apostles.
If you listen to my pastor's wife Laura, full time ministry is, "about 'doing life together.' But this life is messy! It involves hurt and grief and growth and tears... counsel friends who are struggling in their marriage, encouraging them to continue walking through the “tunnel of chaos” to be all that God intends for them to be... take your friends to chemotherapy, you cry with them and rejoice with them at each twist of the cancer roller coaster... It means you experience anger when faced with the devastating consequences of sin in a young life…again..."
Ministry is really just loving the unlovable and lovable. It is loving anyone and everyone right where they are. Ministry is meeting someone in whatever place they are, jumping in, and hopefully allowing them to see Christ in you so that they can discover or allow Christ into themselves. It is about observing Jesus in everyone you meet, and allowing them to observe Jesus in you.
When walking in love, Ministry, Oswald Chambers says, "Does God really mean us to take no account of the evil? "Love . . . taketh no account of the evil." Love is not ignorant of the existence of the evil, but it does not take it in as a calculating factor. Apart from God, we do reckon with evil; we calculate with it in view and work all our reasonings from that standpoint." So if a person is wrapped up in an evil lifestyle, love does not deny the existence of that evil, but neither is that same love mitigated or void because of it.
Ministry certainly includes preaching to the masses. It is accomplished in part by praying, praying, and more praying whether directly for the individual, or in the private prayer closet. For me, ministry includes writing. Writing in the form of reporting on the human experience. To commit to words people's walk and struggles with God. But what I do in writing, I see from experience is a very effective way of ministering to the individual. To jump in, to observe, and then to shine the light on God's perspective in the muck and mire of life. To look from inside the kingdom of God and be a light. Not a blind guide leading a blind, but an illumination of the path. Someone's problems are not there to be fixed by the minister. They are to be reported in proper perspective so that the individual can see clearly to rescue themselves. So that they can be encourage to keep going with God's path seems an uphill battle.
Jesus did not condemn the adulteress. He did not tell her how to fix her problem. Jesus stood with her while the people around cast their judgments. He did not console her and say look at these mean people. He stood with her until they were all gone. Then, once the crisis was over, He told her, go and sin no more. Get it? He jumped in and stood with her in the consequences. He didn't rescue, he illuminated the path. "Those who are without sin cast the first stone."
That is the beautiful expression of what I see ministry to be.
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