What is Your Ministry?

We all have a ministry. What’s yours?

A friend of mine and I were sitting in the car rider line yesterday hashing out faith questions and religion. She is fairly new to the faith and she has lots of questions and a few complaints. For example, she asked me today how long she would be considered new? That’s a good question, one I never really thought about, but then again, she always gives me lots of food for thought. She went on to ask if there was some type of boot camp or something. I chuckled at that, I told her, not one that I know of.

She dove in head first at her new church and not only attends worship service and Sunday school, but a women’s study too. She says that the life timers treat her differently, but she feels like she has had deeper experiences than many of them.

She raises an interesting point. Those who have spent their lifetimes engaged in church can sometimes lose sight of the life changing, breathtaking beauty of grace. People who have lived much of their lives separated from God feel like grace is as precious and essential as oxygen. It’s brand new to them. It’s a lifeline.

The life timers, as she calls them, know this too, but we can lose sight of, “How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” New believers are often desperate for knowledge and understanding and those of us who have believed for as long as we can remember, really need to remind ourselves how very important each sheep that has been found, is to God. Maybe we should all do a little better at welcoming them and make a better effort at answering their questions, remembering we were all lost at one time.

They may have questions that we need to be asking ourselves. Her second question for me today and the one that really stuck with me, was what does it mean when people talk about their ministry? I told her that just meant how you share God with the world around you. She wanted to know why they just don’t say that. Maybe we all have a little Pharisee in us with the overuse of religious terminology.

Whatever you call it, all Christians have a ministry. It doesn’t have to mean that you stand in a pulpit and preach every Sunday. You may teach Sunday school or you may keep the church nursery. Your ministry may just be to the little ones you are raising at the moment or it may be being the face of Jesus in your work place. It may be welcoming new believers to the faith and taking them out for coffee. But here’s the deal, if you belong to Jesus, you have a ministry.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to stop and ask yourself what it is. Does it need some definition? Has it grown stagnant? Maybe it’s time to start something new. If you don’t know, pray about it. It’s all about the journey. Jesus is ready when you are.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂