Stop Doing Ministry
I’m guessing you’re familiar with the story from Acts 6 where the widows in the church were not getting fed. That’s a bad situation. I know how grumpy I get when I’m hungry. I can’t imagine how grumpy a group of hungry, older women can be. That can’t be good.
The grumpy, old women weren’t getting fed because the apostles weren’t getting the job done. These leaders were supposed to be focusing on prayer and teaching God’s Word (see Acts 6:4), but instead they were stuck trying to pull off a not very effective food distribution effort.
So who’s at fault? It could be the people in the church who are just showing up for services on Sunday morning but not engaging in ministry. Maybe they haven’t studied the Bible enough to learn that it’s not biblical to pay pastors to do all the ministry of the church.
It could be the fault of the leaders. Maybe they’ve fallen into the “I can do it better” trap. Maybe they aren’t really leaders, so they aren’t spiritually gifted to empower other people in ministry.
Either way, here’s what strikes me about this passage in Acts. The apostles were engaged in ministry. In that day, food distribution was just as much a part of the ministry of the church as praying and teaching. They were doing ministry; they just weren’t doing the right ministry. In other words…
It’s possible to do the work of God without doing the work God has called you to do.
That should be alarming for us. Because as the church grows, it requires us to prayerfully consider questions like this:
- Am I encouraging people to serve in ministry?
- Am I helping people determine their gifts?
- Am I empowering new leaders?
- Am I a leader, or am I just in a leadership position?
- Am I doing what God designed me to do?
Fortunately, the apostles decided to empower seven other leaders to take responsibility for the food distribution. That allowed the apostles to get back to focusing on prayer and the teaching of God’s Word. I guess you could say they stopped doing ministry, and encouraged others to do it instead. As a result of that, “God’s message continued to spread. The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem, and many of the Jewish priests were converted, too,” (Act 6:7).
People pay me to figure this out for them, but let me share this advice for free. If you’re doing all the ministry, you’re probably going to lead a small, ineffective ministry that’s not consistent with God’s plan for your life. So what are you going to do? Are you going to continue to do the work of God, or…
Are you going to do the work God called you to do?
Tony, as the Lead Pastor of Bikers’ Church, I want to thank you for this great post. This is exactly where we are as a church plant – me needing to learn to release more and more to those within the church so that I can focus on what I am supposed to be doing.
Like your book, this was very timely.
Rob
Im in a part-time job so that I can concentrate on what God called me to do. I write children’s books and use the proceeeds to provide funds for my children’s ministry at Church. Im freeing up the the pastoral staff to minister and not to worry as to how much the construction paper costs and can we afford it this week. My goal is to underwrite the whole department. That is part of what Im called to do. The other is to share the Gospel which is in my book. “He Called, I Answered” In His Love and Care, Mary
Almost twenty years ago I served as a missions pastor in a large church. My desire was to see our missions program grow into an effective ministry that was reaching out in many places in the world. I worked and worked until I was worn out but nothing was happening. Finally in frustration I cried out to God, “I can’t do this. Please send me some help”. Graciously he brought in three gifted men and our missions board was formed. With that perfect mixture of gifting and the sharing of the work load the missions program exploded. I learned that my failure to delegate and let others help became a bottleneck that slowed everything to a crawl. I have also discovered ministry becomes much more enjoyable when you’re sharing it with others.
Thanks much Tony. I want to share this with our Management Team at Living Hope. They function as the “nuts and bolts,” get-it-done ministry designing team at our church. We have seen God move recently in a couple specific instances when people in our church followed God’s lead and DID MINISTRY they knew they were made for. They didn’t wait for us to figure out what the flow chart looked like, and who they reported to. And God blessed theri efforts. I’m all for strategic planning and a simple church structure for ministry, but I pray we don’t strategize and micro-manage work the Holy Spirit is nudging people in our church to do. GREAT post. God bless.
Awesome, loved this… thanks Tony
This was awesome..If all leaders would learn how to lead and teach others our churches would grow and more people would be equipped to do ministry,,